Saturday, July 6, 2013
The New York Life
Suddenly after a long sleep I wake up to yelling in the front seat of our van, they are arguing for the next destination. Money is tight but nobody says it out loud. I drift back a day it's the after noon and I've just said goodbye to a girl. She is a teen, she looks at me with a flair in her eye, it's hard to notice the sadness in her eyes because she hides it in mischief, turning so quickly as a stranger would to say goodbye. My disappointment shows as she turns back to laugh, hug, then leave again just as quickly as we met. Brief but all that was needed. That was our goodbye, for however many years I'll be gone. The smile my sister left me was going to have to last till the next time. I bring my self back to the car, streaming through east coast towns we make great time. Yet they still argue our next stop and how to get there. I pretend to sleep keeping myself out of the fray surely If I say anything it won't help the mood. I just want the journey to begin. I guess in a way it has, I look up he catches my eye. A quick exchange of words and sure enough I'm getting out the car with the intention to get as far away from that car as possible. The goodbyes again were quick, sweet, almost rehearsed. There was a comfort to knowing they would stay the same. Turning away I struggle with the weight I have gained close to 50 pounds of gear. Turning my head up, where am I.. It takes a couple minuets to figure I'm in New Jersey. I find a park easy enough. A couple of choice pictures with the skyline and I get to work on my phone looking for a place to stay. The add looked nice enough a little hostel in the middle of Chinatown... I book a room and take a sub way, hiding all my belongings in my bag I should be ready for any surprises. 5 min and I'm climbing out of the subway dazed and directionally lost I head a mile in the wrong direction till I realize my mistake. Turning around my path takes me through many shades of neighborhoods straying from wide streets and outside dinners to busy streets through packed apartments down into dark empty business areas with trash bag lined sidewalks. And I fine my hotel... The Sun Bright.. I laugh and walk inside
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My day started early, 6 AM. Gathering Grace and all my photo gear I rushed down the 17 flights of stairs to the Gateway's Lobby. I found my small class of four and we piled onto our bus. They squished our tiny photo class in the last 3 rows of a bus packed full of Illustration kids. I wound up sitting next to my teacher, Jen and pretended to be interested as she showed me a map of New York. Our stif conversation shifted and we ended up talking about the guy I had shown her a picture of on my camera who was leaving me for a place called Europe. After the conversation died I found myself looking at this couple in a row to my side that where curled in towards each other using the same pillow. Seems like something we would do. The trip was over 4 hours and I woke up when the bus drove over a bridge that was in dire need of some patchwork repair. We where dropped off at MOMA (Museum of modern art?) which was a pretty cool place by museum standards. We had an overpriced fake Italian meal at the museum (never eat at a museum. Ever.) and showed our displeasure with the restaurant by drawing on the menus with pasta sauce and paying the bill with spare change a few dollars short of the actual cost. We made our way through the city to the next museum and I got my first real taste of New York. It was like they patch worked together all the most chaotic parts of Downtown LA and made them bigger. The streets had the same piss and grime as Broadway and each subway station was like the Blue Line station on 7th and Fig. New York did have more tall buildings than LA but you could only see them when you looked at the skyline. We went to the Guggenheim and just when I thought normal museums where hard to traverse this place comes along and makes the other museums look like plain hallways. I was able to travel up and down the entire 6 floors of the building for over an hour without running into a single piece of art. And when I did see the art I wasn't impressed. Not worth the $18 wasted to get in. When I met up with the rest of my class it seemed like they too had the same problem as I did to different degrees. One girl had a panic attack because she got so lost and another guy (who happens to be directionally challenged) got so frustrated he walked out after 20 minutes. We took a hurried trip back to the rendezvous spot and got to our bus. The couple was spooning this time. I was sitting with my arms pulled into my shirt for warmth (apparently -10 degrees is the appropriate temperature for a bus). We got back to the dorms at 11 and before sleep I decided to read my brother's blog. Night Brandon.
ReplyDelete3,500 mile drive. I'm grumpy. Let me argue. HeHe!
ReplyDeleteWhat amazed me most about trip to East Coast was how similar all American cities are to each other. Change the name, tuck the airports into a different corner, set up a chinatown, create monied 'havens', huddle the swarthy people around MLK Street and bingo; an American city. Oh and don't forget a hip 'revitalized' area with brick buildings, neon signs and artisan coffee houses.
I am the proudest of fathers. My children are grown now. Their deft, unsentimental descriptions of our nation's public spaces reveal their ideals and barely hidden plans to remake themselves and the cities they inhabit, by extension, into better places to visit and dwell.
Great visit Shani. Great launch and Bucket. Much courage, love and joy our your respective quests. --Daja