Breaking the Balance

Monday I went out for lunch with Jenya. She introduced me to Essie, another Bostonian, who does theater production and writing. Tonight I am going to some mysterious party in Brooklyn that Essie sent me the link to. The link led me to an RSVP site: I had to put down my e-mail address so that they could send me the location and directions. Here is the poster I got in the e-mail:

Brooklyn here I come.

I also went to a Cleopatra's Needle with Kostya on Tuesday night. It's a jazz cafe, and Kostya wanted to see a jam session, with playing piano at one in mind. Wednesday night I escaped the city and visited Hannah across the bridge in New Jersey: it felt good to be in a home; we made spinach cake, and peach, apricot & blackberry cobbler.

head full of dominoes

Central Park is packed on the weekends, and I bumped into Lenya and Anya on the day of their wedding anniversary. They were going to listen to Wagner in the evening.
They helped me cross the park, I may have been a bit overheated and felt like the sentences coming out of my mouth were heavy like lead.
Amanda stayed the night. Outside my building, teenage boys stood by a car pumping music.  Men of various ages played dominoes, as they do on many nights. On the way over, Amanda counted the numerous barber shops, all packed at 9pm on a Saturday night.

Last night I had a dream in which I lost my mothers ring. It was made out of a black pearl, carved out, and then this man found it. His first wife had been a circus act, but had passed away. He had two kids. The boy had one large eye in the middle of his face, the girl crawled on all fours in a bridge. Somehow in giving it to me the ring, it was a proposal for marriage, to have a child. And I said I'd think about it, and his kids clung to me, I guess they needed a mother. He was kind and handsome but not very intelligent. Time felt like it was leaving me, I had to decide; if I said no, there was no guarantee there would be someone else, but I didn't know if I would be happy if I said yes. I wanted a child more than a husband. I also went to a ball at Dean's house. It was snowing out, and to get there we had to climb up in our fancy dressed, move some bricks and squeeze through a tiny window into a Gothic looking home.

other recent dreams I remember less distinctly; I was bisexual, but this was exhibited by the fact that I was a witch, and my parents wanted to murder me for it. I tried evading them by drinking champagne and wine with strangers in a fancy hidden cafe. In another one, a mad scientist serial killer was getting away, sometimes the dream would be like an animation rather than real life. The house I lived in was large but not finished, and one of the two walls holding in my room had a broken pipe from which water was leaking everywhere. Walking past human remains with flies buzzing over them was disturbing, even though it was in Miyazaki's style.
movies

1. Moonrise Kingdom
2. Возвращение (The Return 2003)
3. Harold and Maude

roasted

Wednesday Hannah and I ate roasted nuts as we walked down Broadway, and stopped to buy gifts for her trip to France.  
Thursday Kelsey came from Ohio. The next day she got lost in a book on the subway and ended up going all the way to Queens, and at midnight the fire alarm went off and I called 911 for the first time in my life. Right now she’s on a plane for her first ever international trip: to China.
At the lab, Jalmer told me about his Thursday night experience speed dating, and debated with Reza (Iran) about the best way to make a screen flicker in matlab (which is the bit I’m supposed to be programming, and now know four ways of doing).

While still at Bard, I had a dream in which there were women that were so poor, they were falling apart. Their mouths had holes where teeth should be and their ashen skin wrinkled even though they were still young. Blue eye shadow caked on their eyelids, cigarette in long-nailed hand. They sat in front of screens prostituting through the internet, and when they scratched their legs, their hamstring muscles would tear off in strings.

The One Train and Sloatsburg

On a Wednesday, Genya and I went to the restaurant Somovar: for me after work, for her between patients.

A week ago, on Friday, I took the subway to Kostya’s place. A person was standing, muttering. This is not unusual for New York, at least as far as I have seen it, I was almost surprised that it made people nervous. One eyebrow was plastered over (stitched up?).  She (looked like a he, but she) kept muttering, getting more and more agitated. There was an advertisement on the wall across from me that said “SCHIZOPHRENIA” recruiting people for a new antipsychotic trial. Finally, yelling angrily, she punched the lady sitting next to her.  One man called the police and started berating her, saying that “Lady, you’re going to jail, have fun”.  The doors opened and she slipped off, looking terrified, grabbing her big black trash bags. The police man was more considerate, trying not to scare her away. She stayed in the neighboring wagon and we waited for the police to come. Somehow I don’t think that’s what Woody Allan was thinking about when he wrote the introduction to Manhattan.

Eventually, after being held up in the subway for a while and listening to people gossip, I got to Kostya’s place. His friend Simon was down from Montreal, and the three of us went out; first to eat, then to drink Brooklyn lager at The Thirsty Scholar. We wandered around and went to a second place, called Anyway Café, which turned out to be Russian owned and run, and which had live music and a nice atmosphere. They lit two of the three drinks on fire; the absinth, and the Valentina Tereshkova (which also had absinth in it). Then we went to a Bulgarian club called Mehanata- the music alternated between Indian/Turkish, Russian and Latino, so it was great for actual dancing, and people to dance with.
The next day we spent walking around the island and eating in Chinatown before heading to Sasha’s birthday party. Russians, drinking, music and watching the sky as it brightened into morning.

The next morning I got driven back to Manhattan, NoizeMC was playing in the car and Katya talked about a trance rave she had gone to by a bridge as we drove by it -- where the traffic had drowned out the music to the outside world, and where they had paid the hoboes to stand guard for the police. Once we got there Vova and I walked 90 or so blocks, eating frozen yogurt.

On the subway back from hanging out with Kostya and Simon that evening, the subway was under construction and I noticed that another girl was looking for the same one train on the express track as I was. She’s from Wisconsin and lives at the same stop as I do and gave me her number in case I need anything. In a city full of people, I met a person.

a week in Manhattan

I’m staying in Washington Heights on 186th, subletting for Geenie– I spent this morning talking to her mother. She would speak to me in Spanish, and I would try to communicate how much of it I understood. She made me an omelet with a side of yucca and boiled plantains. They are, like most of the people in this area, from the Dominican Republic. In one way, it is not so different from being in Berlin; when I go to a store, I understand only a small fraction of what is being said.
The day I arrived I visited Kostya (I had forgotten my cellphone at home and he happened to be going from Boston to New York later that day, my luck) and we had cake. He came uptown later in the week to visit and ate at El Pollo Dorado.

The first five days of lab work has consisted of participating in experiments, reading, and trying to learn matlab. The lab studies adaptation, motor learning, some sister labs look at bpd and other things. I am supposed to be shadowing two grad students: Tim (USA) and Jalmer (Holland). The more I learn the more questions I have – of course, that’s how it always goes.
On Wednesday, some graduating people and Jay (the professor in charge of me) went to a Croatian place in Astoria. The entrance said “Rudar’s United Miners Soccer Club” so we wouldn’t have known it was a restaurant if we hadn’t been told, and I haven’t seen most of those people since.  

Yesterday Hannah came across the bridge from New Jersey. We went to the Strand and walked around Washington Sq Park. There was some sort of festival celebrating India there, but also randomly really impressive male step dancing and a tattooed man played classical piano – not entirely sure how a piano ended up outside. We got Turkish food (7 spices), window shopped and eventually parted ways.

in Washington Square Park

Two dreams: one in which I was escaping from zombies, but sometimes they could pretend to be human if they had only recently gotten bitten. I was also trying not to starve, food was limited. I had to trust someone, because wherever there was food, there were people, and they only shared if you where friendly. But wherever there was food, there were also half-zombies. The second one someone had gotten murdered and I was trying to figure out who did it without getting killed or becoming a suspect.