review

The British pub Cock & Bull called upon us, and so we heeded its cry and imbibed. That was Monday. The beer and the cup of coffee were perfect. The area where I’m living current is a bit less strictly residential than where I was for my internship, so that there are shops and restaurants close by. It’s also not summer, my least favorite season, and I’m living in a room that doesn’t look out straight onto the exterior of another building, but onto the street, so there's proper light. I like Luisa and Sasha much more than the woman I found on craigslist. Overall, NYC is less overwhelming. I can pick out individuals and see humans rather than an impossible swarm.

Tuesday I went up against the chill of winter to meet Bianca and her friends in midtown for a good-bye Korean dinner before she leaves for Vienna. While wandering around Penn Station later (waiting for someone) a lady came up to me. She started unwinding a long story, but first “is your English fluent?” “yes” “oh, thank God”. I think she misinterpreted my little smile because she asked a couple questions and then again “are you really fluent?” trying to appeal to my xenophobia. She smelled homeless and she started telling me a story about her daughter being airlifted out of NYC to a hospital in another city “and the security guard told me to get to go to…Grand Central and take metro north” she said, pausing at the name of one of the most famous stations in the world as if she had forgotten, opening up a piece of paper with neatly written out instructions, the folds softened and browning with numerous unfolding and refolding.

Yesterday Hannah and I went to Bischoff’s concert at Saint Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, primarily because contemporaneous was playing, so we knew some of the people on stage. Contemporaneous started as a group the year before I started college, and by now they are playing concerts in NYC, and this concert got a positive review in the Times.