event horizon

next time you're in or around madison square park, look up. british sculptor antony gormley has installed 31 identical, (methinks slightly larger than) life-sized sculptures on the ground and on various buildings in the area. once you start looking, they jump out at you from everywhere, peeking out at every plane and looking different from each angle. they are reassuring, watching over us from above. or, they are creepy, looking at first glance like monochrome metal men about to end it all.

most likely, i wouldn't have noticed these guys had someone not told me about them... after years of living here, it's hard not to block out most stimuli occurring that far above eye level. but every so often i'm reminded to pay attention, and it's usually worth the extra effort.

(check them out until august 15.)

rainy sundae.

walking down broadway in the pouring rain, i pass a woman eating ice cream out of a cup with a spoon. she's not walking fast, despite getting soaked. that kind of sucks, i think, to not have an umbrella in this weather.

as i wait for the light to cross 19th street she catches up with me, and as she scoops up the last spoonful and tosses the cup in the trash, i notice the umbrella under her arm. i realize that she had it all along, but had made a conscious decision to forgo staying dry in favor of a frozen treat on this dreary day, since after all a body only has so many hands.

we should all make more choices like that.

the highest line of sweet treats

...next on the list will have to be the people's pops, especially since i used to work with the proprietrix (yes i realize that's not a word, but it should be).

and lula's sweet apothecary on east 6th is just amazing. went with blurph for ice cream: soft-serve cake batter, nutty carrot cake, and rich peanut butter fudge swirl. they have baked goods too. all of their offerings are vegan, and many gluten-free options are available (but don't let this deter any of you righteous omnivores; it's as delicious as anything you could make with eggs and cream).

on the other side of town, the high line opened last week; you can walk along it from gansevoort to 20th streets so far. it supposedly contains mostly plant species that had been growing wild there, only now it's all been tidily landscaped. they integrated some of the old train tracks in the design, including a section upon which a row of wooden seats can roll a bit back and forth. there's a weird little amphitheater with a glass window looking down on 10th avenue, apparently for watching the traffic go by. there are wonderful views of a part of the city that's still sparse on skyscrapers, and of the hudson and jersey beyond. go there this summer! take your out of town friends there! but go on a weekday to avoid the crowds, at least now while it's still shiny and new.

price fixin' and trash pickin.'

it was such a beautiful friday night, we decided to go out to dinner without a reservation. we strolled up madison; people moved past us with purpose or without. a resourceful and lucky lady rifled through clear plastic bags of clothes by the trash can just outside dolce & gabbana.

later we encountered a haunting and beautiful procession at the synod of bishops russian orthodox church on 93rd street: a large group carrying candles, singing, chanting; some were rather more official looking than others. passersby stopped to listen and look... it all seemed a bit dreamlike, and it felt like a treat to have happened upon it. whatever it was.

...it's nice to see that despite the recession, it's still absurd to walk into any place at 8:30 on friday and expected to be seated right away. we settled somewhat randomly on sarabeth's, which is a perfect mesh of not small and not cool, and thus we were promptly seated on a comfy corner banquette. i think our new thing is going to (have to) be the prix fixe. sarabeth's has one for $30. i'm not sure if it was just what we ordered, but more than a few of their dishes showcase their jammy tendencies. that said, if you do love preserved fruits, each dish manages to balance out nicely, for example how the pleasantly bitter green beans and buttermilk scallion pancakes complement the apricot raisin compote atop the duck breast.

it seems i've gotten kind of used to fancy-pants service, and it was both unsettling and refreshing to enjoy our chocolate truffle cake with a backdrop of butter ramikin and dinner knives.

the park called us as we stepped back out onto the street. when we crossed west on 5th to find our reservoir view another couple was crossing east, looking a bit spooked, and soon we came upon why: a rather large raccoon, lurking by a tree. his masked mug took us in; he defied all attempts at cell phone photography as he began to skulk smoothly and silently uptown, presently disappearing in the shadows along the curb.

it's no surprise that such creatures can thrive on the upper east side. people do throw away some good stuff in this city.

the bus drivers are grumpier in philly.

today daisy and i encountered a bus driver who enjoys his job more than average. every stop brought on a little ditty. yeah, it sounds like it would get annoying but it didn't, somehow.

find this man. he was driving the M4 today, going south on 5th avenue at 66th street around 4pm...

discarded bouquet.

found two dozen roses, still in their clear plastic and white paper cone, resting neatly on top of a full trash can on third avenue, on the way back from the supermarket, just as it had started to rain.

took them home. they sure are pretty.

(there must be a good story behind how they got there.)

community supported...?

so last week i'm at [neighborhood watering hole on east 14th street] to visit a friend who recently started working there. the crowd is predictably awful (beer pong is actually involved) and it's too loud for conversation and the teevee is blocked by various unattractive heads so i can't even rilly see the game (since when do i care?) and i go to the bathroom, which has only one stall. some drunk chick comes in right after me making a phone call to someone who seems to have no idea who she is ("it's cat... cat... cat! hi, it's cat... catherine?") and presently there is a loud crash, distinctly ceramic in timbre. drunk chick: "oh, nothing. i'll call you back." she scoots; i leave the stall to find the sink completely cracked in two, the bowl part resting on the wet, paper-strewn floor at an artful angle against the pedestal base, which now supports nothing but a jagged top edge.

i just wish i had seen exactly what happened there.

. . .

yesterday was the first delivery from the csa that my mom signed up for this year. in case you are unfamiliar with the awesomeness known as "community supported agriculture," it's a program wherein people in urban areas can support local farms and eat more naturally and sustainably. the season is from june through november, and each week mom and a co-worker are splitting a seasonal selection of fruits and vegetables (from windflower farm) and eggs (from elihu farm) in upstate new york (you can get flowers, too)... hopefully we'll be spending many a tuesday cooking up some deliciousness. and then eating it.

the first installment included radishes and romaine lettuce, bok choy, russian red kale, garlic scapes, strawberries, and chicken eggs. garlic scapes are my new favorite thing; they look like long green beans or flower stems, but they grow in a spiral shape and they have a lovely garlic flavor. you can just cut them into small pieces and saute them; if you are a big onion-slash-garlic fan they even good raw, if you mince them up. the kale was so fresh even the stems were edible before cooking -- firm but not too stringy, with a nice bitterness. daisy tossed the bok choy and the kale in a wok with some scallions and scapes. the radishes and lettuce only needed some oil, vinegar and lime juice. we tossed the radish tops right in with the rest of the salad. mom made savory crepes with smoked salmon, scallions and creme fraiche for some protein and we had the greens with tricolor couscous. yummers.

smell my feet!

ahh, halloween in new york city... need i say more? well, i will anyway. the restaurant was slow, but we did have a table of asian 20-somethings in crowns, antennae, horns and other head-gear, and at one point a cuadrilla of chanting tacos marched past the door. rice krispies treats had been prepared for the trick-or-treaters, and one youngster rolled in with a spattered shirt and a hoody and politely averred "actually, i'm a murderer." later, the manager's hubby strolled in clad as bob's big boy, complete with fat suit and pompadour, oversized "sandwich" and rosy cheeks.

after work we twisted a hooter in the usual place, and gave the clip to a posse which included a fortune teller brandishing a magic 8 ball. on the way to our next destination we encountered the joker, catwoman and the penguin; the ghostbusters; a sloth of care bears, and captain crunch, among other savory characters.

at von we picked up a cowboy who corralled us over to max fish, which was predictably packed with freaks. donald and daisy duck were notable in their rentables (i can only imagine how many people must have fondled donald's fuzzy tail without his knowledge). there was a kissing booth (she was only charging a dollar!) and lots of gals with fairy wings that smacked people in the face as they maneuvered through the crowded bar. by far the best naked card was played by a skinny chick who must have been over six feet tall, "dressed" as a cheetah (a leopard?) in nothing but four-inch heels, a furry black sumo-style tail-thong, and black spots painted all over her bare skin. when she entered the room she was like moses parting the red sea, and everyone's eyes were hers. any other day of the year she might just have been arrested. another scanty standout was a mermaid, with shiny pasties only slightly covering her boobs, which i must say trumped leopard girl's by a long shot.

afterwards we went for pizza and saw the whitest mr. t ever, and some dude at one of the tables was wearing black contacts that were scarier than any other spectacle that evening. i'd had enough of long lines for one night, so i scooted up the block for the much less popular street hot dog option. the lady (!) at the cart seriously tried to charge me THREE DOLLARS. we ended up compromising at $2, which is highway robbery anyway but everyone's gotta squeeze out a living somehow, and jacking up prices for drunk people on holidays is like, a tradition or something.

as the night wore on i found it increasingly difficult to tell who was dressed up and who just dressed like that all the time. needless to say there were lots of pigs about.

i do so love to stick a knife into a pumpkin whose guts have been scooped out, and i carved one at work and one at home this year. pictures are (will be) included but can only hint at their glowing orange awesomeness, much as one girl's summary can never fully capture the insanity of this annual event in our fair city. a good jack o' lantern, like a good get-up, is always better seen in person. of course you can't keep the magic around for too long; them things start rotting within a couple days of being carved up. but take heart: pumpkins come and go, but halloween festers forever.

asanas sin gafas.

so i went to yoga with my mom this evening, at a community center on the lower east side/alphabet city. it's really only the second time i've ever gone to a yoga class, and like the few other remotely athletic activities in which i've deigned to partake during my life thus far, i tend to vaguely dread it on my way there, but once i'm actually doing it, i'm glad i got off my ass and did it.

it was only 7 bucks for a two hour practice. the pace was really slow (by the end i was almost falling asleep in the resting pose) but this was perfect for me as i pretty much have no idea what i'm doing, and i had to take off my glasses and i don't wear contacts, so i really needed that extra time to figure out what was going on in each pose. at one point the instructor said, "if your vision gets a little blurred while doing this pose, that's normal." well, that was a relief.

i took off my glasses before even entering the room so i had no clue what the teacher or anyone else really looked like. the instructor was much hotter when i couldn't see him that well. just saying. some things are like that; they look better out of the corner of your eye, and once you focus on them too much they start to suck. (i suppose that's not a very positive, post-yoga view of the world. whaddya gonna do about it?)

(as an aside, i am fully aware that i am way behind on this yoga thing and that all the kids are doing it. i mean, any activity where you can hang about in pajamas and fart in public is going to develop a following, right? these days you can buy yoga mats at the supermarket and yoga bags at the bookstore and yoga pants made by bambu. indeed, the company that makes rolling papers also sells comfy yoga pants bearing their logo. i found that rather weird, until i took off my glasses and turned my head a little to the side so i could only see it in my peripheral vision. then it just started to seem normal.)

during the meditation bit towards the end, when i closed my eyes and focused "on a point between [my] eyebrows and on [my] heart," my eyes suddenly filled with tears. i'm not sure why. i think my heart and i really need to have a sit-down.

at the end of the session the yogi said that with more and more practice, "we can become able to sit for as long as we want." how peculiar to think of sitting as such an achievement, but it really is. the hardest part of that stuff, for me, is the breathing and the sitting still -- two things i theoretically mastered as an infant, but then i somehow forgot how to do them correctly... now i really have to focus to get them right. in time, maybe they'll become second nature... again.

walking back to the train, we saw a black cat fall out of a window and land on the sidewalk, on one of those metal hatches. at first he just looked like a bag of trash, a heavy bag of trash that thudded when someone carelessly threw it out of the window... but then a tail and a leg twitched slightly, and went still. people stopped, people gathered; my mom and i crossed the street to get away. hours later, i still can't stop thinking about that poor kitty's last plummet: the rattle and bang of his body on the metal, his contorted final position, the small crowd that surrounded him but kept their distance... the thought of someone coming up the block, someone who loves him, and seeing him lying there... or going up to the apartment and calling to him when he doesn't appear at the door... the panic, the grief, the guilt for not closing the window... if only it had happened five minutes later, if only we'd taken 7th street instead of 6th... i would have missed the sad scene entirely.

i'm aware that there is pain in the world, but i'd much prefer not to witness too much of it. or at least be able to take off my glasses first, so as not to stare it full in the face.

(...so i'm a coward. whaddya gonna do about it?)

the long languid arm of the law.

so i'm on the roof of the building the other day... re-reading a battered old rex stout mystery, hoping the door doesn't slam shut and lock me out since i'm not allowed to be up there in the first place. and yes, i am clad only in a bikini, because although i know the sun is going to give me cancer and wrinkles i still feel as if the summer has been a waste if my boobs aren't framed by pale triangles by the end of the season.

...so anyway there're these two cops on the roof of the projects across the street... with binoculars. they're a number of stories higher than i am (and you know, we all need to look up more); i wouldn't even have noticed them if one hadn't been laughing so loudly. but now they are both laughing, at something going on down on the street several blocks away (judging from the angle at which cop #1 is holding the binoculars). i imagine the fate of whoever just got busted for whatever and i feel sympathy for the perpetrator. no doubt he was just trying to flip some beat weed to an unsuspecting consumer. or maybe it was more innocent; maybe the kids had had enough of the heat wave and opened up a fire hydrant to create a refreshing street sprinkler.

the next time i look up, the cop who had possession of the binoculars is handing them to the other cop, and now they are checking me out. i look up and wave, slowly, and they both wave back, eagerly. i suppose they wanted me to flash them...? sorry, guys.

meanwhile, several floors below the birdwatchers in blue, a backpack dangles mysteriously out of a window. what could be in the backpack? lots of drugs, no doubt. a pretty clever contingency plan, i must say -- if there's a raid, just let the evidence drop. you might even be able to retrieve it later! certainly more efficient than trying to flush it.

i wonder what the pigs were looking for, up there on the roof with their binoculars...? and all the while there was contraband several stories under their very noses.

...just thought you might like to know where some of your tax dollars are going.