The Art of Speed

The first time I saw him, he was half-animated, rotoscoped, as the techies call it, a combination of live action video and superimposed drawings. He was strolling along the Brooklyn Bridge spewing poetry to an impressionable young dreamer in Richard Linklater’s Waking Life, which anyone who saw the movie knows, is a dream. He told the young boy, and by extension, me, his audience,

“…this entire thing we’re involved in called ‘The World,’ is an opportunity to experience how exciting alienation can be…”(click here to watch the 2-min. scene).

The second time I saw him was a month ago, which was about ten years later, though it was some time before I made the connection. This time he was in the flesh, and yet he was nearly just as animated. He was still in New York, but in a different capacity. He was working as a tour guide behind the microphone of a double-decker tour bus belting out the words of the George Gershwin song, But Not For Me, to a befuddled tourist audience, exchanging forgotten lyrics with tone deaf hums. When he gets to the end, he gives credit:

“Written by a young, ambitious, desperate New Yorker, named, Gershwin, who lived three blocks up on the left.” After a moment of confused silence, a delayed clap slowly emerges from the bus. “Thank you, now,” he says, “Welcome to New York City.”

And welcome to Bennet Miller’s documentary, The Cruise (available on Netflix-On-Demand), an urban romance story in which the male lead, tour guide extraordinaire Timothy “Speed” Levitch, has a wild affair with the female protagonist, The City, looking nearly as lovely in this film as she does in Woody Allen’s movies. And it’s not even film, it’s black and white digital video, one of the first movies to prove to critics and audiences alike, that DV was a viable format, not restricted to fathers videoing their firstborn’s first footsteps. A decade or so later, the Oscar for best cinematography would go to a movie shot mostly in digital, Slumdog Millionaire.

Click here to watch scenes from the film.

In case you had any doubts about Speed being anything more than a goofball, a few minutes into the film, Speed’s double-decker floats down 7^th Ave, his high-pitched expressive voice providing a lyrical narration for two floors of tourist riders as his words build in momentum to a rapid clip.

“This is 7^th Avenue South in front of you, the modern semi-expressway of Greenwich Village, one of those rare districts that occurs throughout human history. Four and a half blocks from where Edgar Allen Poe has a short-term residence, deep in the heart of his opium addiction. Although he has many residences during that delusional time, he writes “The Raven” at 61 Carmine st. Six blocks from where Henry Miller decides he hates New York City forever and moves to Paris, two blocks from where Willa Cather lives, three blocks from where E.E. Cummings lives, 3 blocks from where Sherwin Anderson lives, 4 blocks from where H.L Mencken lives, 4 blocks from where Theodore Dreiser lives, 5 blocks from where Nathaniel West lives, 5 blocks from where D.H. Lawrence lives, lasciviously…”(and on and on he goes).

After re-watching the film for a third time a couple weeks or so ago, curiosity got the best of me and I googled Speed and saw that he had moved to Kansas City to, among other things, try and start a touring company, but would be appearing in New York to do a few select tours on Mother’s day weekend. The tours were a bit out of my poor man’s price range, but for $20, myself and a guest could see Speed live at some yoga studio in the East Village where he would be doing a performance of some kind on what was last Saturday night. Naturally, I dragged the lovely Shula Ponet with me.

It had been some time since I had set foot in a yoga studio. As a stiff man, I felt alien, out of my inflexible element; and was further dismayed to find out it was a sit-on-the-floor event. But when Shula and I found a spot in the corner of the room next to a pile of jumbled notes sprawled across the floor, I was happy.

Not only did this lead me to the deduction that I would soon be sitting right under the man himself for the duration of the performance, but more importantly that his chaotically strewn about notes were an indication that the freewheeling guy I witnessed in The Cruise had not been compromised or worn by whatever a decade and a half of life, post mid-twenties, can do to suppress a man’s soul. Though I had just seen Speed in the film, I had seen the Speed of yore. The Cruise was shot over a decade ago; a fact that is made strikingly clear by the presence of the World Trade Center towers--Speed's interaction with them is unforgettable.

He is a man who seems to age like a bottle of wine, the older he gets, and the older you get, the more refreshing he is, and this is mirrored in his physical appearance. Since seeing him last, his Jew-fro had more life, and his face had rounded, not as a marker of lethargy, but rather as a testament to his fluidity, and suspicion of all that is square. Unfortunately, someone had an ill-conceived idea to allow the 3-man accompanying electro-band to take the center-stage, stashing Speed into the corner next to nobody’s like me. Though his spoken songs were driving the room’s energy, I don’t think I would have been alone had I started a chant, less music, more Speed.

Though his poems, songs, and ramblings, cross numerous forms and form many crosses, if there is a unifying theme to the chaos, he is challenging his audience, his tourists bus riders, cult-followers, moviegoers, fellow-pedestrians, and I imagine everyone who is fortunate enough to meet him, to awaken to the extraordinary madness of the world; to wrestle with, acknowledge, absorb, and inhale it, until it its fragrance intoxicates the blood and makes it boil to a point of awakening.

My writer’s voice does not do his sonic one justice, but among his repeating words last weekend (bracketed by improvised spacy music): “…Any Bodhisattva will tell you that matter, just doesn’t matter, and yet, it does, and that’s just what’s the matter with matter…Don’t let those going through the motions, get out of this night alive, without having emotions….” In a scene in the cruise, as he watches his audience board the double-decker he tells the camera,

“I am learning slowly in my cruising career that you cannot expect people to transform in an afternoon. They are not going to rewrite their souls, and re-tool every day that they’ve lived thus far before they come onto the double-decker bus, and yet I expect that, I expect the total transformation of their life, an entire rewrite of their souls, I am fighting minute to minute, every moment that they’re on the bus, to make everyday they’ve lived thus far seem as some abstract wreckage that might have happened but is probably a delusion, and that this is the first real day of their lives.”

Having a front row seat allowed me to hang with the man himself over the course of the night. After finding out he had given tours on buses in San Francisco I asked him which he liked doing better. He said San Francisco was a breeze. He could do 6 tours in one day. Here, a double-decker bus loop of the city could take over 3 hours, he said, and just crossing the narrow island of Manhattan to go through Rockefeller Center often took 45 minutes.

"In New York, that loop made me feel like I was in one of Dante's layers of hell."

N (sarcastically): So you preferred New York, then?

Speed (seriously): Exponentially.

A Rabbi On The Horizon

I went to high school in a bank. In and of itself, this is funny in that it’s unusual, or out-of-the ordinary. But what elevates this factoid from my life from being one that is merely surprising to one that is comical, is that it was a Jewish school. When I started going there it was a Fleet Bank, but within a year it had switched, to Bank Boston. I remember when it switched because soon-to-be frustrated Fleet customers would stop in during their morning commutes or lunch breaks only to discover that they no longer had any business being there, and that they were now not going to have enough time to do their banking that day.

I could be mistaken, but I believe now it is a Bank of America, which is my bank. The expression ‘too little too late comes to mind;’ it would have been very convenient. I should also mention that the building I speak of that I believe is now a Bank of America is no longer a school. The school still exists, however, the year after my friends and I all left, some family named Gann donated an abundance of money, and it moved from the heart and soul of Waltham to what would generally be considered a nicer area, where there is an abundance of grass and no Arbys Delicatessens nearby. But back when the bank was a Fleet Bank, and was a Jewish high school, with the exception of grabbing free lollipops that Fleet had put out in fish bowls to improve customer satisfaction, we students ignored the ground floor. Our school occupied four small floors above the bank. And so it was that the foundation of our Jewish high school was a bank. Funny, right?

Well, not everyone thought so. There were many benefits to being a part of a school that was still searching for its footing. For example, some things, such as attendance records, were too trivial a concern for a school that was trying to establish itself, and in fear of its very survival. After all, the school was still called The New Jewish High School and I can only imagine that some of the faculty’s morning prayers included a special request from above that they would find a Jew with both the will and the pockets for a Jewish school to carry their legacy. But there were also some down sides to the bank school.

While the school’s small size made for a cozy social environment, coziness is not something one reveres when in the company of those that one finds to be unpleasant. The student population got along, more or less, famously, but the faculty had their favorites, and their least favorites. And for some students, their least favorite faculty achieved a level of disdain that made life at the school especially trying. I was not one of these students, but nearly all of those who were in this population happened to be my friends.

I bring all this up because something else happened recently that I found to be quite funny. My parents recently decided to remove everything that gave the Ehrlich home its character and replace it with modern décor, what I would define as a purposeful pilfering or purging of architectural character in favor of achieving a look that denotes a sense of being ‘of the times.’ As you might have guessed I have yet to reach the humor in this, though it is somewhat funny that this construction or demolition is all being done after the four of us sons have left the nest. Strike that, 3 of us, but Dan is definitely getting close. I could care less now that I’m out of the house, and I hope my parents will be done with it all soon, if only to spare my upper 80-year-old Grandmother from having to house my parents, and from having to listen to my Mom’s attempts at an Irish accent (our workers hail from the Land of the Saints).

While home for Passover a couple of weeks ago, I had to go through my old room and strip it of some of my personal effects. Parting ways with old possessions is never an easy task for me but I resolved to be ruthless in my endeavor. The old playboys were an easy toss out, old trophies and ribbons from my days of athletic dominance were a bit tougher, as were VHS tapes of classics such as Face Off (John Travolta undergoes a medical procedure in which he will have his face removed and replaced with villain Nicholas Cage’s face in order to go under cover. But a faceless Cage wakes up, steals Travolta’s face, and for the rest of the movie the two will Face Off against each other, and thus against themselves…brilliant) and then I came upon a brown paper bag bursting with cards and letters, some of them probably from some of yous, that were given to me when I was 16 after I was diagnosed with Leukemia and promptly removed from the Bank School. I hesitated to rid of these letters, especially after reading through some of them, but I felt I had to toss them, if only as a symbolic demonstration to myself, that while I have endless gratitude for all the support that I was given by my parents, brothers, extended family, and friends, I am fortunate enough not to need it anymore. But as I made the trip out to the recycling bin with the bag of cards, two pieces of artwork fell out.

It didn’t take a genius to decipher that these had to be the works of a single artist: The repeated use of off-white colored construction paper, and the employment of pastels, which from the grinds left behind I surmised, must have been gripped and pressed against the paper with a severe intensity. I examined the first one—Rabbi On The Horizon—which I have posted above; a most curious piece of work for its at-once intimate familiarity with the rabbinical figure, and yet there is a simultaneous infusion of subtle undertones of cynicism and mockery. I had only an inkling of who the author could have been, until I flipped over the second piece, when at-first glance any doubt of which maniacal friend of mine could have been behind these works, dissipated. And I must say, I am beyond impressed by the way this artistic work managed to be hilarious, personable, honest, expressive, deeply disturbing, and all the while, still conveying the message that I, the sick one, was missed. It is too wonderful of a memento not to keep. Thank you.

Caballo Blanco

Scroll down to next post for part 1, or click here....I pronounced my diagnosis to Shula.
"Babe, I'm having a heart attack."
She nodded and smiled.
"You know this is my second one today, and third one this week."
Half nod, half smile.
"You know I'm only 27."

I woke the next morning still breathing but now coughing. I went to go find Keith, the owner of Entres Amigos, the name of our lodgings in Urique, and what I gather is the only reliable outfit for the caucasian tourist visiting the area—and quite an outfit it is. 30 years ago Keith came to Urique "on an adventure," and bought the land when the town was half the size; a block of houses with a church. Here, he would build an eden. A knowledgeable organic gardner and builder, Keith has constructed what amounts to a small campus on the very edge of the town. On a small slope, with wonderful views of the surrounding mountains and rock formations, grapefruit, orange, mango, lemon, papaya, and guava trees shade a library, dormitory, a couple private rooms, and two kitchens (one with a hand made ping pong table). Tall cartoon-like cacti protrude from the rest of the flora, among which are rows of planted green onions, green beans, swiss chard, zucchini, coffee beans, radishes, various herbs, and more.





I spotted Keith in the garden watering his plants and approached him timidly clutching my chest.
"How'd you sleep?" He asked.
"Well to be honest I had a rough night..." I told him my symptoms, and my new diagnosis, possible pneumonia, and waited for his reply. Being that I was in a town with one internet connection, Keith's (the Mexican military at one point knocked on Keith's gate asking to use his internet), one phone in the town center, and a nine hour train and three hour bus from the nearest sizable city, I am not sure what I was expecting Keith's response to be, but it certainly wasn't:

"Well, you could go to the free clinic there in town. They're pretty good. Matter-of-fact now's probably a good time to go." I didn't need any more convincing and took my translator with me.
This would be the second time I visited a health clinic in a foreign country. The first time was a few years ago, also with Shula, in a small mountain town in Japan called Takayama. I had some kind of awful case of conjunctivitis and could barely see out of one eye. From the time I set foot in the clinic until the moment I walked out the door with a diagnosis, remedy, and the confidence that I was on the road to recovery, about 15 minutes had elapsed. And aside from 1,000 yen for the eye drops (about $10 USD) the visit was free. Tough to beat, but the Urique clinic came in clutch, shedding a full five minutes off Takayama's treatment time, and 150 pesos off the cost (about $10 USD). Not only was the care free, but so was the Amoxicillin, though in Spanish of course they had to add an 'a' and called it Amoxicillina; I understood that one, and took it for my temperatura. Yeah, socialized medicine, what a horror.

Armed with antibiotics, an organic garden, a kitchen, and a bed, I was pretty sure there was nothing to worry about. When I started to turn around Shula remarked how long my recovery time would have been had I been home and hospitalized, compared to the two days it took me to get better in Urique. The last respiratory infection I had was almost three years ago. I was in the hospital for a week and it took me an additional three weeks before I made a full recovery. After a handful of days of doing little else but reading, eating, whining to Shula, and napping, I was hiking up mountains, and being sick became just a minor footnote on my visit to this major canyon-land; a canyon deeper and more vast than the Grand Canyon of Arizona.

A few weeks before we came here I read Christopher McDougall's New York Times Best Seller, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, an immersion journalistic work about ultra-marathon runners. At the beginning of the book, McDougall is an injury-prone mess, barely able to go five miles without ending up in a doctor's office where he is warned repeatedly to stop running. 'The human body is not meant for running,' he is told, even getting second opinions on the wording. But after hanging out and training with some of the biggest names in ultra-marathon running—runners who compete in 50 to 100-mile races, or do it for fun—and a handful of the Tarahumara Mexican Indians, an indigenous people who have been running up mountains on rubber sandals evading extinction for generations, McDougall becomes a true distance runner, discovering that he was indeed, born to run. In fact, we were all born to run, he alleges, and backs this hypothesis up with reporting that suggests running is what allowed humans to survive and evolve into the world-dominating species that we have become.

Captivated by the book's protagonist, Micah True, AKA Caballo Blanco (the White Horse), I read the book without putting it down and found myself promptly doing the same thing I did after reading Krakaur's Into the Wild, blabbering to anyone with an ear about what an inspiring read it is. However, the two non-fiction books have one major difference: Into the Wild is a Shakespearean tragedy in which protagonist Christopher McCandless, AKA Alexander Supertramp, falls fatally in love with the wild; whereas Born to Run ends with a descriptive scene of Caballo Blanco alive and well, departing his shack at the bottom of the Copper Canyons for one of his daily marathon runs through the desert mountains—a living and breathing myth. And one I would find sitting right next to me.

He was ten feet tall and could shoot fireballs from his ass. Actually, I was happy to find that he looked like me, plus twenty years; tall, thin, bald, slightly dark complexion, slight hunch in the shoulders, and insanely handsome. I never payed much attention to the names of cities and villages when reading Born to Run, but when I brought up the book with Keith he told me he met the writer and that the major annual 50-mile race that now occurs in the canyons with international participants as well as Tarahumara Indians every March, begins and ends in Urique.

"Matter-of-fact, Micah will be staying here in a couple days." I almost leapt from my chair.

The morning before his arrival I woke Shula up with the sound of opening and closing of zippers and exasperated noises.

"What's going on?" Her words were raspy.

"Have you seen my los lapices? One of them is missing."

"Huh?"

"My lapice, it's missing." Later, when Shula had fully awakened, she asked me,

"What is it you were saying about your pencils?"

"What pencils? I can't find one of my sandals."
Keith told us where we could buy a replacement.

"Ventura is the best leather-maker in town. Go into town and ask for Ventura and tell him you want a pair of guarachis."

This was one of many wild goose chases Shula and I went on in Urique. In each case we walked to the middle of town and asked someone for the item we were looking for. Eventually a name would be shouted and a house pointed to, and inevitably that person would point to someone else. Ventura made my sandals, Elena sold us the Tezweeno, the Tarahumara's corn alcohol (Shula quickly became a Tezwine-o), Lupe hooked us up with the Pinole, the Tarahumara's energy food, and Roseanna was the town baker with the freshest tortillas. Ventura did a fitting with me and we picked up the sandals that afternoon. They had rubber souls cut from a tire with a leather pad on top, and three wholes punctured through both surfaces. Binding it all together were leather straps that had a specific tying procedure. They are like tefillin for the feet.

When Shula and I returned to our quarters at Entres Amigo with sandals in hand Caballo Blanco and Keith were seated at Keith's kitchen table having a beer together. I showed my new guarachis, the sandals that the Tarahumara wear to run up mountains, to the experts to evaluate them. Keith took them from my hands and began a close examination of the straps and the rubber.

"Yeah, Ventura is really the best. These are a great cut. The rubber is nice and thin, very light, and the tire treads are deep."

He handed them off to Caballo.

"Well, the rubber could be a bit thinner. And the leather straps are too thick," Caballo countered.

"No, that's the perfect width," Keith objected.

"It's very important that as soon as you start to feel pain in between your toes, take them off. You're feet will need to get used to them," Caballo cautioned.

"Yeah, you blister there, that could set you back a few days."

"Not days, weeks. Really, as soon as you feel any sign of pain on the side of your big toe, yank them off. Also you'll want to buy more leather, the straps wear out," Caballo said.

"Yeah, it's not uncommon with those to get a llanta ponchada," Keith added.

"A what?" I asked, getting a word in.

"A flat tire."

Over his couple days there Caballo and I had talked briefly about the book. I caught Caballo on his way out to guide a Swiss couple on an overnight hike from Urique to Batopilas, where Caballo lives. Before he left I had some words for him.

"For what it's worth, I found your story, at least your story according to McDougall, to be really inspiring. It was a great read for me." Caballo's concern was that the book would ultimately do nothing to help the Tarahumara, the very people he is hoping to help protect. The 2011 race is quickly approaching. The event has been growing in numbers especially since the book's publication—in 2010 there were 250 international competitors and about the same in Tarahumara runners. Various companies have contacted Caballo looking for a way to profit from the race but nobody has put forth any money to help put the race together. Last year, Keith told me, Caballo didn't sleep the entire week leading up to the marathon, but come race-time still ran the 50 mile loop through Urique and up the mountainsides. Caballo left Entre Amigos, heading down the gravel path along the river, his little beige mutt trailing behind him.

Another interesting facet of Urique was how hard this little town parties. Not only was New Years Eve quite a scene to behold, but the whole week leading up to it, there were parties until 3 a.m. Every male in town plays guitar and believes they can sing, and does so until the early morning. Walking through town we met one very notable and very large Mexican guy who stopped his conversation when he saw us gringos walking by.

"Hey, you guys speak English?"

"Yeah. We didn't know anyone else here did. Where did you learn your English?"

"Ten years in American prison," he said, his chest bulging into the air..

I smiled thinking he was being sarcastic, but when I realized he was dead serious, I thought sarcasm was the only way to lighten the mood.

"Well, at least something good came of it, you learned English." Thank god he laughed.

In one week Urique healed me of more than just pneumonia. After an 8 day stay, I felt rejuvenated and ready to move west. But first-things-first, when you're at the bottom of a canyon, you must go up, placing your life in the hands of yet another driver. In this case we were to be taking what must be one of the hardest and most dangerous bus routes in the world. I hoped he had his morning coffee and tried not to look back, but the scene was too beautiful to resist.

Mexico 2011

In seventh grade, my day school, Solomon Schechter, began teaching us Spanish. On the first day of class we picked Spanish names. I was Julio. When 8th grade came around and we got deeper into the language, Julio could no longer cope, and removed himself from the class. In its stead he went back to being Nathan, and was placed in the class for kids with learning disabilities. In this class we learned practical lessons such as how to keep organized, but also in this class there was a couch, which I quickly learned was ideal for napping. And so it was that I never learned Spanish, and never learned to be organized, and am therefore a useless traveling companion in Mexico.

Nevertheless, Shula still agreed to accompany me here. The rest of the Newton Ehrlich family was going to Baja. The plan was to fly to the Northwest city of Chihuahua, and hop a train heading west deep into the Barrancas Del Cobres, the Copper Canyons, a series of Canyons that are deeper and more vast than the Grand Canyon. Eventually we would emerge in Los Mochis and ferry across the Sea of Cortez on the Western coast to the Baja Peninsula.

An illuminated cross looms above the city of Chihuahua

Before our departure I was warned not to come to Mexico because the narco-trafficontes, Mexican drug lords, were terrorizing the country. The warnings were enough to give me a few goosebumps but not sufficient to deter me from taking the trip. We arrived in Chihuahua on Christmas day which added some extra excitement to our trip: we couldn't change our American dollars to pesos and the streets were dead quiet adding an extra eeriness to the vigil of candles we witnessed to commemortate victims who were caught in crossfire. Also adding some spice, was that not a soul in the city, including the tourist office, could tell us, or Shula rather, any information on where the train station was and what time the next morning the second class train departed.


Fortunately we met a nice hotel employee named Erick who became our de-facto municipal guide. I was drawn to him right away due to his near-impeccable English. He grew up mostly in Texas but after getting into a fight at age 17, had his citizenship revoked and was promptly deported. He has not seen his mother now in 10 years he told me. Can you imagine the bliss?

Erick made some phone calls and found a few friends in need of American cash who traded their money with us and walked us out at night to show us some night life. We asked him about the hoopla over the safety of his city. He said someone was gunned down yesterday outside his house, but that as long as youre not in the drug business and not walking down quiet streets alone at night your ok. Sounded pretty on par with some of the shadier neighborhoods of Brooklyn, not quite comforting, but we would be in Chihuahua only one night.

One night became two nights when I came down with a fever. I survived on drugs, mostly tylenol, and the invigoration of the awe inspiring train ride through the beautiful mountains. It was a nine hour train ride to Barahuchivo, where we would hop a 3 hour mini school-bus, a similar design as the dangerous bus my underbudget start-up high school used to transport its sports teams, which would take us through a single lane unpaved road down a giant mountainside.

The switch from train to bus was stressful. The line formed quickly as people fought over the few seats a small bus built for little kids affords. As we pulled away we soon could see the town of Urique, lingering in a valley thousands of feet below us. The path ahead was ominous, and my fever was now accompanied by a cough and chest pain. So I did what I learned to do best long ago in grade school, I took a nap....