walk in the park?

bubble tea self portrait (I'm such a cliche)
by Cathedral of Saint John the Divine

A note on how absentminded I can be:
After going to the lab (I’ve been going on the weekends to run myself in my experiment), I decided to go to Central Park to read Six Stories of the Jazz Age. I got off at 116 to walk around Columbia, bought some bubble tea and started walking towards the park.And While I noticed the area neighborhood around me getting poorer, and for quite a few blocks I had been, as usual, the only white person on the street, it only occurred to me that I was walking in the wrong direction when I got to 137^th. Part of the reason I noticed is because I saw a shop I recognized – 137th is the stop I get off every day to go to City College – perhaps otherwise it would have taken even longer.

The rest of the day went more smoothly; sat in the park until it started raining through the tree I was under and  finally got a bagel. Two months in NY, and I hadn’t had a single bagel! blasphemy!

Friday I went to Sabbath at Jenya’s house: I hadn’t realized that she close to Brighton Beach* . I stayed the night there and then came back to Manhattan to meet up with another girl. We went to the Cloisters and somehow that evening she convinced me to come to temple with her (I felt like an alien: I was an alien).

*for those who don’t know, Brighton Beach is a place where, walking by a restaurant, the hostess will say «здравствуйте», where the papers on the lamppost advertising computer help are in Russian and where there is cafe with my name - I've been told it's pretty bad.

1. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters  (without sound, on the bus from Boston)
2. 人情紙風船 (On Humanity and Paper Balloons, Japanese)
3. El Sur (The South, Spanish)

Alabaster Rainbow

Monday Kostya and I met up in Central Park for a free concert by the New York Philharmonic. We left early because it was hard to hear, got some burritos and ice-cream (Big Gay Ice Cream to be exact). 

(Kostya was also recently interviewed after revamping a song.)

Thursday I attempted to do something that felt useful but ended up eating fancy cheese and trying beer (for free, somewhere between China Town and SoHo) with Ben. I also finished reading The Master and Margarita (finally) but I brought no other books with me, so we went to shop for used books at Alabaster Bookshop and am now half way through Joyce's Dubliners. There's also a pizza place right next to it that sells pizza by weight. 

Saturday Megan came from Jersey and later Ben and Maggie joined us, but by that time the heat had gotten to me and was running a fever for the third day straight (boy did that make getting home at 3am enjoyable)

Green Light District

After Brooklyn I went to Jersey City. Louisa and Sasha were hosting a party at their apartment:

Gatsby believed in the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us; we believe in orgies.

Come dressed as your favorite literary character and we'll make the cocktail that best suits you. Dancing the night away required, flawed pursuit of the American dream available upon request. There will also be lots of Kanye on the playlist and Sasha will be dressed as the Mad Hatter, which is a fancy way of saying we're spiking all her tea.

I fell asleep at 5am. In the morning, after some not spiked tea, went back to Manhattan and met with Mama's friend Serge. We ate at the Olive Tree Cafe close to NYU, and then went for a walk, starting with Washington Park. We weaved across Houston street a few times, visiting West Village and East Village walked along St. Marks place, through Alphabet city, SoHo and up on the Highline Park before parting.

 

Spiegel und Caesar

Friday I went down to Bard and stayed over at Amanda's place. Five of us went to dance in Spiegeltent which goes up every summer. There was a live band, about 10% high schoolers, and the rest was split between middle aged couples and Bard students, some recently graduated. We shared the dance floor well, though it took me a little bit of time to adjust back to recognizing so many faces of people who's names I don't know. (Today I saw a graduated Bard student on the platform with me; NYC shrunk a little).
The next morning Amanda and I made goat cheese and caramelized onion omelets with panfried toast.

Then I went back to Manhattan, changed, and rushed off to Brooklyn to see a Smith Street Stage play with Essie: Julius Caesar in Carroll Park. When the actors started running around yelling "Caesar is dead! Caesar is dead!" some of the kids standing by the playground stood around looking confused for a bit. Then they started speeding about like little daemons, proclaiming "dead! dead! dead!". A dog whined worriedly when Antony gave his impassioned speeches. Caesar and a couple others were played by women, the set was the park, the costumes were business suites. Essie and I watched the lightening bugs flicker.

Baxter State Park 2013

Wednesday after my internship I went to Penn Station and took a bus home. The next day my family and I packed and drove up to Baxter State Park, as we have for years. Since we last went, both Sima and Yosef have grown quite a bit, so the tent is getting a bit tight. But the weather was warm and there were plenty of gnats to go round. We swam, hiked, canoed, and sat around the camp fire drinking tea and fishing mosquitoes out of the soup.

Sima kept telling me the following joke -What do vegetarian zombies say? -What? -GRAAAAAAAINS

Shakespeare in the Park

Sunday I woke up at seven and by nine I was waiting in line in Central Park. Almost four hours later, I had met the couple behind me (she was from the Philippines as of two years, he was from Israel as of thirteen) and had two free tickets to Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. Luisa and I met at eight, and were soon enjoying chips and lemonade as we watched a 1940s rendition at the Delacorte Theater.
                After that we headed to Amsterdam Ave, and wound up at Jake's Dilemma bar, reading excerpts from books in the back library (yes, this bar has a library – and beer pong). Louisa and I agreed we should meet up again; just as I’m starting to like this place, it seems like I’m about to leave. One month.

born to bell

Essie and I entered the party around ten, the space was an artist studio and we soon met one of its residents: a tattoo artist, whom I heard for the first time in my life use “I was born to [do body adornment]”. At age 26, he was quite covered in tattoos, including a bit of his forehead, and on his leg there was a tiger of his own doing, though he said his current work was much better.

Pretty soon, everyone was outside, listing to some band singing sorrow with a banjo and violin. After that came a performance art piece which nearly ended someone getting hit in the head with a large piece of wood, and then dancing to the Wig’s dj jams. The last performance was by The Bell Cycle, which was really quite good – a music duo, both sang, he was on drums, electronics and guitar; she was on upright bass and for the final piece switched to bass guitar.

After that Essie and I were hungry so we meandered over and found a Mexican food place. The young waitress fretted about whether or not to give the drunken men more beer, and the loud music did not drown out the hoots aimed at the strippers upstairs. We ate nachos as the Virgin Mary looked down upon us from the wall.

             In the subway, a man played guitar and sang, alternating between English and Spanish. A young man greeted him as he walked onto the subway - apparently on drunken night they had split a pizza, him feeding the musician by hand as he continued to strum the guitar. And this is how strangers talk to each other at 4am in The City.