| dewy decimal |
2003-06-11 - 7:47 p.m.
While waiting for our flight, Mom, Dad, Karina and I played Rich Man Poor Man, and Pipito in the gaudy airport cafeteria. Mom said the cafeteria reminded her of Miami Vice. I said it reminded me of the Golden Girls. Flamingo pink walls, pastel renditions of the orchid. It felt like a place for people to die in with its sacrose-colored-optimism.
We hovered beyond the pacific ocean, the Americas, indifferent to the insane speed outside our rounded rectangular windows.
My dad�s only sibling, Harold, and his partner Alan met us at Newark airport. It was 53 degrees and wet. Alan is a lawyer and had to leave on a business trip for SF immediately after greeting us. Harold drove us in their Mercedes station wagon to their country house in Pawling. Pawling was the first area to emancipate the slaves within the U.S. Remarkably beautiful. The rain pulled the greens out from the plants, the grass, and the green glowed and glowed throughout the expansive drive. The land was vast and manicured in their elite area of Pawling. Country Living feature spreads expanded around us. Their home itself was an impressive luxury library. Books in piles, on shelves. Books as architecture. Time and information stacked neatly on sophisticated furniture, bound in cloth and in turn wrapped in gloss.
The outskirts of Manhattan were magical. Foliage and crawling graffitti erupted along the walls that contained Manhattan. A pattern of nature and culture juxtaposed in a rhythmic order yet simultaneously erratic. A gift wrapped city. From the outside Manhattan looked like God�s festering castle and I could'nt wait to penetrate the heart. Puncture the main artery. Invade the system and be included in the mystery, the phenomena.
Once inside, my initial reaction was surprise. I remembered Manhattan as being a dark, and somber grid. Instead it felt enormous and spectacular. Inside I experience a reverence for space, I begged for permission to exist. In that moment I was grateful. On the map it was only a sausage.
When the sun started sinking beneath the skyline, the cities shadows emerged and yawned over our toes, fell upon our faces.
Our hotel on the upper east side was charming. Karina and I shared a non smoking room. We shut the bathroom door and sealed it with a rolled towel at its base. Sticking our heads out of the tiny window, we blew our smoke out and into the cold alley down below.
The subways were wonderful and horrific. Criminal looking muthafuckas, hipsters, and aristocrats held their poles, stared at nothing, listened to the juh juh juh of the subway. Nations co-exist in the subway. Peace treaties silently reach their understandings here. Juh juh juh.
I wanted to stare at everyone but thought better of it. The experience of Manhattan was like talking to someone cultured, smart and wanting to learn. To mimic. To belong. But at the same time just being intimidated by your own utter ignorance and then suddenly and miraculously you acquire the audacity. You learn. It was like talking to Uncle Harold. I felt so incredibly young, so alive.
