Artists

Big huge hallelujah: we've got internet at home! Oddly, much as much of our relocation has been interesting with wrenches thrown here and there, as happened our internet installation experience, which found me sitting confused on the couch with cable blazing on the big screen but still no internet. The technicians left with the assurance that our internet would be up in several hours. After wandering around with cable still blazing and a few blank stares at the blinking modem, I phoned the company and inquired. They fixed it within heartbeats! Hurrah!*Basically, since I was unable to sit down without interruption today and rattle off various vignettes of my time here in New York thus far, I don't have much time tonight to do so. This is because my friend Lauren is performing at a Piano Lounge tonight! This will be my first time seeing her live as a musician since we parted ways in college. Not only any of this, but additionally her boyfriend plays drums for her! Anyway, I wanted to shout a quick tribute to her, a quick tribute to Dylan, whose wax figure I had the pleasure to stand near at Madame Tussaud's a weekend ago or so (and whose 60's apartment was a stop on a walking tour Craig and I took ourselves on a bit ago, too), a quick tribute to the many amazing authors (see rest of post below copied here from yesterday's attempt to blog) and to the dancers (my friend's fiance Lynn) and the painters (my friend Eric) and the thinkers and the builders (my wonderful boyfriend, who executes his very own kind of art as his job) who make this world, in particular this city, one of the most enigmatically fabulous places in the universe! And now, I run off to my bitty kitchen to warm vodka sauce and linguini for us before we head out to see Lauren wow us with her vocal and piano talent. From yesterday, a post that would have been titled Degrees*...I'm still participating as a satellite member of book club, at least for the time being. The selection for the month is Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. I read on the 7 every morning, all the way from Manhattan to Flushing, Queens, but somehow I've only covered the ground of about six chapters. Nevertheless, the writing is beautiful, sophisticated in parts, rudimentary in other parts (but this is coming from a girl who can't write a story to save her life, so pardon the harsh criticism, Ms. Kingsolver!) I'm more and more intrigued by the moth comparisons, while exhausted by and dragging through the coyote den drama. Part of my reading brain is highly distracted by the fact I'm more interested in completing the book to begin Joan Didion's memoir than anything else (my mom read Joan's book recently and mailed it to me and not only will I completely love the writing, and the tale of love's losses and life's grinding halts, but...the book itself, pardon the naive interest therein, is positively wonderful to hold: hardback, but not too cumbersome in size or weight!) What's interesting of loving to read is the association one makes with books later, long after the book has been shelved. For instance, Krista Madsen's book will forever remind me of the sticky humid bowels of Grand Central Station before 8 a.m. in June, and Kingsolver's novel will eternally represent my first experiences commuting clear to Queens from Manhattan. I wonder where Joan's book and I will find ourselves spending time together?*New York City is glowing with heat, like a red hot ember. I feel the rise of it up my pant legs as I stride, usually quickly, from apartment door to subway station to work and back through the cycle in the opposite direction in the evening. My hair is growing out again, so it sticks in thick wet strands to my soaked neck. But this is what it is all about, experiencing the city as a city dweller, as an urban soldier, to borrow my friend Lauren's apt description! She also made me laugh by reminding me not to let the cardboard boxes see the fear in my eyes, that I am its biological superior. She's right. At the present, the remaining unpacked cardboard boxes can sense my intimidation. I must not back down.*Sorry to be brief, awkward and hasty, yet again...more sorry to myself, than anything. Recording life here in New York requires much more time than I have at the present - but! Internet tomorrow! Unless the power goes down in the city and everything breaks down. I am about to head home and hope that the window A/C unit hasn't succumbed to failure. My, is it a dirty, disgusting summer. Beautiful, all the same.*