lovely but tiring day in NYC

This will be - by my standards - a short entry.  I spent the day seeing two friends, one who I've known for 30 years and another for 25.  This is Proustian time.  This is the joy of getting older, you get to have really old friends.  Not as in the friends are 'old' but the time spent together and knowing each other, witnessing each other's lives really racks up, and there is something really comforting about that for me - who comes from such a fractured past and has so much upheaval in my life right now.

I also met with a new/old colleague/friend who is a theater director.  I never met her at university, as far as I remember, though we probably did at least see each other wandering about the carpeted halls of the concrete bunker that was the Wesleyan Theater and Dance Department building (another brutalist architectural thing from the 1960s when everyone thought that was a good idea - until the recession of early 70s hit and managed to curtail some of the building, so we ended up with these almost great but somehow weirdly foreshortened facilities (e.g. fly space on one side of the stage but not the other).  But, the theater spaces were way better than anything I've directed in since - which is usually some version of box, store front or warehouse space....).  But even though we did not remember each other from then (she was a few years ahead of me), we had common references and could muse over old professors and then when discussing our work, we understood each other.  It was quite easy to communicate, and I got that she got what I was doing - in her own way, which is natural, but she got it.  That too was comforting.  With any luck I may finally have found a director who is (a) not me and  who is (b) willing and able to take on some of my texts.  Here's hoping.

I wonder why I have not taken photos here in NYC, and the only reason I can come up with is that (a) NYC is the most over-exposed and photographed city on the planet so who needs more and (b) I'm from here and would feel way too touristy carrying around a camera.  But we'll see if I change my mind tomorrow.

I also sat in two parks for extended periods of time today, which was great.  The first was Washington Square Park - a place I have walked through many times and met people in, but never sat by myself.  It was so great to do so and watch people go by, overhear conversations such as "And so she's dating her ex and - oh my God it's 6 o'clock" and watch the the usual parade of contented, wealthy, very poor, very directed, very distracted, very happy, very sad, muttering, singing, chatting, sighing, young, old, wheelchair bound with guitar on back - chess players - young ballerinas in leotards taking photos of each other doing leaps, recent college graduates with mortarboards and gowns and well-dressed families in tow, and see sun blazing on the central water-fountain and shady side benches, squirrels everywhere, small birds chasing each other, pigeons and the huge arch over which is written (something I never noticed before) a quote from George Washington - something I should have written down but didn't - about acting in a wise way and God controlling the event.  Do you know, only when I saw the quote did I realize it was called Washington Square Park after George Washington?  Something as obvious as the sky being blue that I just never even thought about.

I also thought - I never let myself have this time just sitting here when I lived here.

The next park was Union Square, where Christian - my friend since 1986 when we had just graduated university and latched onto each other for a year in San Francisco  (living a cozy female to gay male-ship like two playful kittens who huddled up to each other for warmth before we ventured out alone into the world) - and I demolished two crazy rich cupcakes and drank coffee even though it was 9pm at night.  We were solicited by two fellows wanting money - one with a series of pen on cardboard puns he tried to make a joke with but then just said finally, man, it's been a hard night, could you help me out? and another guy dressed in full purple suit, hat and cane who did a song and dance routine.  Christian gave them both money.  I just laughed.

We saw Christian evangelists trying to save some homeless people, who looked disinterested in being saved but interested in any food or whatever might be on offer so were nodding their heads obediently.  There was a slightly frenetic guy running back and forth, a young couple sitting across from us, a Jews for Jesus woman who tried to hand us a pamphlet, which asked anxiously if we thought Jesus got Stoned???? 

You can't sit for long at Union Square without someone wanting to talk with you.  Not so Washington Square Park.  Each place has its own personality and demands somehow.

There were the subway rides, too, with the mix of tourists from Europe, young actors talking craft and strategy, young women reading serious books, a probably homeless guy muttering about how we were all going to hell for sinning and laughing at the same time as muttering our damnation, an older black woman in an emerald green skirt suit who thanked someone very imperiously for letting her sit, people of every color, age and reading material ranging from crap to literature and in multiple languages, and now too the Kindle, the great destroyer of all beauty, flattening out the reading experience to a screen.  I know it's more convenient but I don't like it.  I love paper that is vulnerable, can rip and tear and smell like a book, that can be bound, fall apart, be loved and cherished, held and touched.  To me reading is a visceral experience.  I can't help it.

And of course here I am writing a blog, right?  And you are reading this off a screen so WTF am I saying?  Well, if it helps, know that I hope to somehow bring this writing into book form.  I'd prefer it to be a paper book, but at the same time this blog, this strange oddity, is the most consistent thing in my life right now.  I don't know a damn thing about my future, but I do know I am writing here every day.  So there you go, a massive contradiction.  If you plan to continue to read this blog, plan on such things.  This is a human story, not a tidy present wrapped in a bow.  I've yet to meet one person on planet earth not embodying massive contradictions.  I used to think I could avoid them - we have a word for that: pride verging on hubris.  It has taken me all these years to join the human race.  I don't think I have to go into all the reasons for that, by now it must be obvious...

Tomorrow I have another day of seeing old and new friends, and also my (ex)stepfather David (the writer).  I am quite tired so will end here though there is always more to say...

Don't you love my idea of 'short'?