On Saturday, our block had its first-ever block party. For many reason, including just plain old forgetfulness, it was scheduled on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews.
We stepped out in the morning to people preparing for the day of games, rides, food, and fun. Most of the block consists of old-time Park Slopers — real Park Slopers, perhaps, people who have lived here for a few generations with their families on the same few blocks of houses, lined with trees and cars. People on this block are predominantly white, middle class, Irish Catholic, and they are amazingly insular. For the majority of my eight years on this block, only a few of neighbors have said more than a word to me, though I’ve tried. Other blocks, I might note, are very different and more diverse.
Anyway, what was interesting about the block party on Saturday/Yom Kippur was our coming home. It was around 6:00 pm, and all of the families on the street (and there were many) were sitting among folding tables, eating BBQ and drinking and carousing. At first, it felt like we lived in another part of the world, perhaps Pittsburgh, but then as we moved down the street toward the apartment, feeling increasingly alone and unwelcome, it felt like New York, perhaps not at its finest. The few Jews on the block were not there and the two newly transplanted Southeast Asian families were nowhere to be seen.
It was not exclusion, nor indifference that I felt. Nor did I feel persecuted, disenfranchised, or scorned.
Rather, I felt like this was why I had moved to New York, to be part of the great mass of anonymity, to be a part of everything and yet have no one know you enough to acknowledge, credit or blame you for anything (unless you’re famous). I couldn’t blame anyone, including myself, for those feelings. I’m assuming my neighbors see me as an interloper, a temporary resident, a non-Catholic, a minimal participant in the life of the neighborhood, a recipient of the general safety and benefits of the area. And they are right.

I listened eagerly to author Dean Hamer today on the radio, who argued that religiosity and faithfulness are directly inherited in our DNA. Mr. Hamer’s new book, The God Gene : How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes, sounds absolutely fascinating, even though Publisher’s Weekly and others have panned him, in part because he is the scientist behind the “gay gene.”
Mr. Hamer is going out on an evolutionary limb with this hypothesis that, buried deep within our system, is a genetic code that, to varying degrees, provides transmissable expressions, feelings, and assumptions about spirituality, the afterlife, and our place in the world. Mr. Hamer, perhaps most provocatively, makes the case that this can be scientifically proven. I want to believe him that my own faith in some kind of godhead inheres within my physical being and is not a pure result of cultural modifcation and socialization. I’d like to believe, too, that all animals have some correlary to this gene, that their connectedness to us and us to them is physically enabled. And I’d like to believe that my own, particularly Jewish, faith is connected to 4000+ years of historical inheritance.
Of course, I haven’t read this yet. But for the longest time, I’ve felt that the interconnectedness of the world could be both physically and spiritually based, that circumstance and superstition are a subset of reality, and that ecstatic love and passionate prayer are intimated in our primordial and unconscious lives. Pushing this further, I wonder if ultimately these are the same things, the physical and the intangible, for which we’ve created artificial divides, much thanks to the Ancients.
This is from the inside flap of the book: “Popular science at its best, The God Gene is an in-depth, fully accessible inquiry into the cutting-edge research that is changing the way we think about ourselves, our world, and our culture. Written with balance and integrity, without seeking to confirm or deny the existence of God, The God Gene brilliantly illuminates the mechanism by which belief itself is biologically fostered.

For those of us, like me, who continue to thinking that surfing is what one does when clicking from random webpage to random webpage, this video of a
surfer on a 75 foot swell may change such thoughts. (And yes, apparently, the vid is real. Thanks to J. Kottke.)

Last night marked the first night of the Jewish New Year, a typically happy occasion. But it was sadly marked by the death of our small black cat, CD.
I miss her tremendously and only hope that she passed through the eternal wall in peace. She was a tough cat, a street-fighting cat, and she brought her instincts into her house and our hearts.
We were always slightly scared of her but her personality and occasional sweetness was rich and strong. The world feels emptier without her and I have many feelings of guilt for not reading the very odd behavior she exhibited yesterday all day.
We still don’t know how she could have passed away so suddenly but I’m sad that she’s not here, now.