2nd Full Day in the Splendid City

The weather here in New York is incredible: so warm! People are walking around in shirt sleeves.

Last night, after the Henry V play, self encountered mad taxi driver who drove rage-fully through Central Park, burning rubber all the way. Self imagined herself (briefly) trapped in a Jeffery Deaver novel.

This evening, she was at the ballet. It occurred to self that this was probably her first ballet in over a decade. The first piece was danced to the music of Schubert, the last to Poulenc. In between, there was a scary piece that featured a lot of twitching bodies, clad in sateen robes. Self thought: apocalypse. Self thought: the plague. Or “Twenty-Eight Days After.” Afterwards, when the crowd spilled out onto the street, Melissa A. flagged a taxi for self. The taxi driver seemed to find something irresistibly funny in the fact that there were suddenly so many people who’d spilled out on the sidewalk of W. 55th street. When he found out self was a Filipina, this led to further chuckling and pounding of the steering wheel. He said over and over, “Must have been a fantastic show, huh?” Yes, self assured him, it was a fantastic show. He ended up asking self many many questions about the Philippines, and Manila. Self in turn learned that he was from Bangladesh, had lived eighteen years in the United States, but this year was giving up and going home, having not fulfilled his dream of becoming rich in America.

Today, self was on the following New York City streets:

Mercer
W. Houston
Lafayette
Bleecker
Lexington Ave.
Park Ave.

(Why are there are so many young Asians in the village? Self saw almost as many as she’s used to seeing on the streets of San Francisco!)

She entered a Korean grocery on Lexington Ave. but did not buy anything. She had dinner with Melissa A. and Penny at La Bonne Souppe, which restaurant Penny told self had been around for at least 20 years.

She caught the # 6 train to the Brooklyn Bridge, then crossed over and headed back uptown. A young man with a boom box boarded on Canal. A young Asian woman sitting next to self groaned and said, “Oh, shut up,” under her breath. The young man did the most amazing acrobatics, twirling around the poles of the subway car in time to the music. He was so incredible that self’s jaw nearly dropped. But everyone else ignored him. Later, he passed the hat, saying, “I’ll be back on Monday, folks! I take Sundays off.” Self would have taken out her wallet, but no one around her did.

Early this morning, brother-in-law returned from a business trip to Brazil. Self saw him in the kitchen, preparing to cook dinner. He’d bought three bags of groceries. He looked significantly grayer since the last time self had seen him, but was still full of energy. He says he’ll cook lunch for her tomorrow, self’s last day.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

1st Full Day in The Splendid City

Self took the subway from Lexington and 57th to the Upper West Side. She discovered that the cost of a token is now $2. Also, when she got her Metro Pass ($7 gets you four rides), the change that came out were three bronze-y looking coins and self thought: What, they gave me my change in tokens??? The bronze coins were dollar coins — small, she’d never seen anything like.

Weather is warm!

Self can’t get over that everyone walks with the hems of their pants trailing in puddles or over grimy subway platforms. Yes, even the well-dressed people. Self was lifting her borrowed coat and jumping daintily over the puddles until she realized this was marking her as an out-of-towner. Then, she just let her coat and pants hems get as grimy as they pleased.

Self rode one taxi. That taxi had a TV. She was able to watch the news for approximately 15 minutes.

Self ate in a restaurant in the Upper West Side, called Le Pain Quotidien. The menu had calories listed next to the items. Self ordered an “all-vegetable quiche” — only 650 calories.

In the midst of lunch came an extraordinarily loud explosion. The whole restaurant stopped dead. Everyone faced the street. It was simply electric, dear blog readers. (Self’s friend, Penny, said that if this were in Tel Aviv, everyone would be under the tables). Even the cook came out of the kitchen! Turned out, much to the embarrassment of a young woman pushing a stroller, that one of the stroller wheels blew out. Self never knew what a stroller wheel blowing out sounds like. Now she knows.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

In the Splendid City

Self has arrived, dear blog readers!  And dear nephew was in the apartment to greet her (even though he had to leave after 10 minutes —  to watch a play, he said).

The weather is not that cold. Self saw the most amazing sunset — the sun was huge, and self means HUGE, hanging low across the East River.  (Why does she never see sunsets like this in California???)  Self was mad at herself for forgetting to get her camera from her luggage.  She watched the sun slide by.

She saw again the buildings:  miles and miles and canyons of buildings (San Francisco skyline puny by comparison), and she was able to spot her own personal favorite, the Wedge on 57th and Lex, where she worked for a year (on the very top floor, as the administrative assistant to the Chairman of Ernst & Whinney’s International Division; this was way before it morphed into Ernst & Young). She was just 23 years old.

Self was riding in a Super Shuttle with 10 other heavily bundled passengers, and the traffic was so horrible she actually fell asleep on the way in from JFK.  But she needed the nap, as she did not get to sleep until 2 a.m., and if hubby hadn’t awoken her at 6 (her flight was at 7:50 a.m.), she would have missed her flight!  As it was, she was pulled out of the security line for the extra-special security check, and at the conclusion of the examination, guard bent low and whispered to self,  “You have your dress on backwards.”

@@##!!!!

Now, self is just finishing her dinner, a “Certified Organic” Roast Chicken from D’Agostino’s.  She’s seated at the kitchen counter, and directly across from her, in the building next door, self can see a glowing white lamp, in the exact center of the window; everything else in the apartment is moody and dark.  Suddenly, she sees a shadow —  a person, self can’t tell whether it is a man or a woman, moves behind the light.  Self is reminded once again why the Splendid City so fascinates her.  The buildings, stacked end on end; the rooms, each with their lighted, glowing stories; the people all living and breathing in such close proximity to each other, but each one so different . . .  she’ll always have a deep part of her buried in this city.

When she was last here, in 2006, she was in a different bedroom of the apartment.  Every morning, she awoke to the sound of workmen’s voices, for the building opposite was having its windows cleaned.  Two workmen came everyday, suspended on one of those flimsy-looking wooden contraptions, many stories up from the street.  Each day, they moved a little bit to the left.  Self could see them, separated from herself by the narrow canyon of the street.  Their voices carried, but she couldn’t make out the words.

(Ooops!  Nephew came back —  ditched the play after having dinner with his friends.  Yay, for we get to have a nice chat!)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

February Is Almost Over!

Tomorrow is another Symphony Night: self and hubby have been anticipating this one for weeks, for the performer is violinist Anne Sophie Mutter (who self has heard was quite a bombshell — in addition to being a violin genius!) Last year, hubby and self watched a concert by a 30-year-old French pianist, thin as a reed, who also happened to have written a bestselling novel in France (!!@@) which fact had self, of course, gnashing her teeth in awe and envy.

The big decision is about where to eat: It’s our fourth concert of the season, and the previous places we’ve tried are

• a small kebab place, busy with young people and families, on Hayes.
• Citizen Cake
• Hayes Street Grill (which had, hands-down, the most fan-TAS-tic french fries self has ever tasted: after she finished one small bucket, self felt like asking for another one)

Self tried making a reservation for Absinthe: she was informed that the next opening would not be until April.

If the forecast wasn’t for rain, we’d try places further afield. Oh well!

Today, self has to submit her NEA application. She pretty much did an eensy-weensy-miny-mo selection of 30 pages to submit. She chose her two favorite stories, even though one of them is un-published (Self lives for danger).

In a few days, self is going to New York. Her brother-in-law is going to be in Brazil, but her youngest nephew, the one who is wait-listed at Georgetown, will be there. The last time self was in New York was summer of 2006, with son. This blog was one month old. She was teaching on-line at UCLA Extension. She would read student stories in the mornings, and in the afternoons go with son to museums or bookstores. One day, she and son lined up at TKTS and bought tickets to a Martin McDonagh play (the guy who directed “In Bruges,” which so far has been self’s favorite Colin Farrell movie), “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.” Son discovered the Strand and fell in love: he’d spend hours there, while self parked herself across the street, at Max Brenner, and stuffed herself with chocolate and peanut butter crepes!  Son lost his wallet, he couldn’t remember where, but a businessman picked it up on Park Avenue, saw the driver’s license, and had his wife mail it to us.  The wallet had tire tread marks and had no cash (of course), but the license and various photographs son had treasured were still there.  Son was so overjoyed that he asked self to mail the couple a box of See’s chocolates.  They responded.  If son had truly and for all time lost his wallet, that trip would not now have the aura of nostalgia self is at this very moment giving it.  Thank God for the kindness of strangers.

New York, Upper West Side, August 2006

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

Quotes of the Day: From “102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers”

“About five floors up from the top . . . you have about fifty people with their faces pressed against the window trying to breathe.”

— Yvonne Kelhetter, a helicopter pilot hovering off the North Tower, 9:30 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001 (The first plane had hit the North Tower at 8:46 a.m.).  There’s an unforgettable picture in the German magazine

Bild.

Here’s the

link

“I believe the building probably could sustain multiple impacts of jetliners because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door, this intense grid . . . And the jet plane is just a pencil puncturing the screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting.”

— Frank De Martini, whose job was to oversee World Trade Center renovations, in an interview on the History Channel, January 2001

Nostalgia for a Lost New York: The Economist Review of Richard Price’s LUSH LIFE

From The Economist of week March 22- 28 (Self still catching up on her reading, after all!)

The Lower East Side of New York has long been a gateway for sweaty, dreamy immigrants. Its narrow streets feature the residue of older struggles, its tenements and synagogues inhabited by earlier boatloads.

But the pickle shops and leather outlets now share space with fancy French bistros and sleek, glassy condominiums. Chinese immigrants crammed 20 to a room toil alongside young, white artists sporting ironic tattoos and writerly goatees. It is a “Candyland of a neighborhood,” writes Richard Price in Lush Life, his gripping eighth novel, a murder-mystery set in the area. With gritty, rhythmic prose, full of interrogating cops, wry bartenders and street-wise kids, Mr. Price captures the complex jumble of race and class in this “checkerboard of demolition and rehabilitation.”

New York has long lived in self’s imagination as her own personal mecca. Was it those pictures of Dearest Mum at 14, playing in Carnegie Hall? Or Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” which self saw three times?

But self no longer loves New York. She thinks she stopped loving the City (which isn’t even referred to as “The Big Apple” any longer — or, if it is, only by those who are too old to be considered “cool”) when she saw her first Starbucks in the upper East Side. She had called an aunt who played the piano for American Ballet Theatre. Imagine her consternation when aunt suggested meeting at Starbucks, just around the corner from her brother-in-law’s Park Avenue apartment. (Why on earth would self want to meet her New York aunt in Starbucks? There are no less than three Starbucks within a mile of self’s abode in California!)

Self thinks one of the reasons she loved Tel Aviv so much was that there was not a single Starbucks anywhere in the city. AND there was great, great coffee everywhere, even in chain bakery/coffee shops like Rolodin.

Last summer, when self was spending a sultry August in the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and getting to know so many fascinating East Coast artists, a number of whom were from New York City, she overheard them discussing at breakfast the opening of a — Heaven Forbid! — KMart in, of all places, her beloved Astor Place on the Lower East Side. That was when self knew that, without a doubt, Manhattan was no longer the Manhattan of her dreams.

And, for heaven’s sake, there is a Whole Foods on 14th street which beggars the Whole Foods in Palo Alto. And self’s brother-in-law was so gaga over Whole Foods when it first opened that he could not stop talking about it.

And, furthermore, Madison Avenue now looks like the Stanford Shopping Center, for two of the biggest stores are these:

Banana Republic
Williams Sonoma

And the old FAO Schwarz store on Fifth Avenue is now an Apple Store.

Self is just waiting for the first Jamba Juice to open.

(And, oops, dear blog reader: Self just did a google search and found that the aforementioned KMart had opened, but not, thankfully in Astor Place: on One Pennsylvania Plaza).

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

Urban Memories: New York City, Early Eighties

OK, bear with me. It’s Christmas, I can be forgiven for indulging in a bit of nostalgia.

And, this gloomy afternoon, my thoughts are tending– naturally— to a me of some twenty-five years ago.

Think of that, people! A me existed 25 years ago. I’ve been here sooo long.

I remember, for instance:

Kathy Acker, hearing about her

Philip Glass, actually attending a concert of his in the old New York MOMA, in the sculpture garden. Amazingly, hubby was with me (and we were not yet married). The harpists did not play on the harps. Rather, they beat their instruments with soft rubber mallets. A sort of non-musical concert.

I lived in New York City. It was a different city from today. It was dirty, I’ll never forget the assault on my nerves of standing on a platform and watching the subway cars roar into a station, sides screaming with graffiti. (I took many pictures of those subways, I don’t know why.  The pictures were on black-and-white film, so that looking at them today, there is an eerie, ghostly quality to all those shots of people trying not to look at the camera, or sleeping). I was a secretary, but on weekends I toted my camera. I knew I wasn’t an artist. The camera made me feel better.

The camera I used was the smallest single-lens reflex of the time: an Olympus OM-1. A thing of beauty, purchased in Akihabara when I was in Tokyo on an exchange program with Sophia University.

There were rapes all the time, I saw the headlines every day in the tabloids.

I was just beginning to read newspaper articles about something called AIDS.

I went for a job interview at The Nation, I was accosted just past 14th street. The man who stopped me was a tall African-American. I looked at his shoes, not at his face. I thought, this is it. But, something made him step aside. I saw his feet move sideways– one, two. I continued walking, not looking back.

I saw a play called “Tracers”, in the Astor Place Theatre. The music was by Springsteen, Huey Lewis, and Laurie Anderson. I had never heard of Laurie Anderson before. Afterwards, I was crazy about her music, especially her songs “O Superman” and “Born, Never Asked”.

Tama Janowitz became hot a couple of years later. I watched a TV interview with her where she said she was so poor she learned how to survive (before she wrote Slaves of New York) on a diet of hard-boiled eggs. I thought I knew that feeling.

I didn’t go back to New York for years and years, in fact not until after 9/11. The Lower East Side (actually, Eighth Street at First Avenue), where I used to live, now had a Gap, a Starbuck’s, a store called Anthropologie. There were no longer any youths with green and orange hair and metal spikes in their lips and noses. The subway cars were clean, pristine things, sliding smoothly into stations and disgorging hordes of people in suits.

It was safe, now. My son, who had never been to New York, felt comfortable walking everywhere.

At a residency in the Djerassi Arts Program, one summer in the 1990s, I met a couple of artists from New York who complained about Giuliani. One, an African American dancer, had once jumped a turnstile and then found himself held in a chokehold by two cops. The prevailing sentiment seemed to be that the police had turned into Nazis and even minor infractions were dealt with by the use of excessive force. I couldn’t imagine it. But when I went back to the city a few years ago, I saw what Giuliani had done.

I think my son would not have been comfortable in the city I used to know. In that city, danger was ever-present. There was no MTV, there was no Virgin Mega-store, Times Square was a place for hookers. I was scared almost all the time. Maybe it was a little like Rome before the sack by the Visigoths. It was a bizarre city. I miss it.