There is a French word I dearly relish for its ability to express the sensation one has when feeling outside your home, your country, yourself. The word is “depayser” and literally speaking it translates as “to be outside one’s country”, experiencing a new state of mind and body, which has certainly been a part of my year of discovery here in New York City. I am constantly reminded of my often parochial attitude toward unfamiliar territory when I allow myself to discover a new place or community here in my own town.
So once again, I am in a position of awe, this time as I stand surrounded by a giddy flock of seagulls on the City Island Waterfront at the north –eastern most tip of the Bronx. The air is, sadly enough, unseasonably warm (an expression I have come to fear). Bronx native and Abecedarium media artist George Kuchar encouraged Susan and I to drive to this far most finger of the metropolitan area in pursuit of the quintessential pelagic experience. I stare long and hard at the horizon, at the waters of the Pelham Bay, the Long Island Sound and the Eastchester Bay, utterly transported by a sensation of openness. I am here and there all at once. One of my favorite scenes in Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn occurs when Francie, the 11 year old heroine, is taken by her father to the shore to ride in a small fishing boat, smell the salt, gaze at the gulls. For the first time in her life, she has a pelagic sensation of the sea.