city livin

first of all, why is this coffee shop called Esperanto? And why is the hot chocolate twice as expensive as the coffee? If this place wasn't littered with great couches and hot guys, it'd be over. As it is, it's the only place open late in New York that I can use a computer and not feel like a twit, so...

New York is great, of course. It's been a good week here. Everything is always moving moving all around me. I was alone for maybe 30 minutes today, taking a shower in my brother's apartment, and I come out again onto the street in Little Italy and it hits me all of a sudden that everyone outside was still going going going while I was taking it slow. Iowa, Ojai, and, yeah, Seattle, I go outside and I feel like I'm the only person awake, maybe.

What to say about what I've been doing? Wandering, mostly, just looking and people and soaking up smells and places and all this texture before I head back to Iowa's sloped earth and flat buildings. I've done the hit list of museums (Whitney Biennial, Guggenheim, the Met, Brooklyn Museum to see Judy Chicago's piece, MOMA) and found a place that sells 50 dumplings for $12. Monday night I got drunk with friends in a Brooklyn Heights mansion, then played both boccee ball and Big Boggle at a bar. Tuesday was - what the hell did I do? - oh, a friend from school and I took the L train the hip part of Brooklyn, just sat watching people walk by and tried to identify what the hot trends are these days. NYC Stylewatch 2008! We decided: vests, giant sunglasses, funny patterened hoodies. When we felt overwhelmed by our uncoolness, we decided to find people less hip than we are so we walked over to the Hassidic Jewish neighborhood and ate Purim cookies on their street instead. Then I spent the night at a different friend's apartment, met her roommate who's a sailor on a tugboat and through the thin wall next to me, their elderly neighbor died in his sleep while I dreamed on the futon. We woke up to EMTs and went out to a diner that gave us cookies and oranges before our meal.

That's what New York feels like to me: interesting, incongruous occurrences strung together day in, day out. I'll be happy to get back to school, where life has more narrative to it.

Everyone hates this coffee shop - Jesus H. Christ, they don't do refills of hot water for tea and the barista looks at me in a way that makes me want to run to the Hassidics again. This town seriously needs some more places that let you sit on their sofas.

Here is the conversation a man is, honest to god, shouting into his cell phone right now next to me:

"(chortle) So did you smack her around? Haha ... no seriously, does she have any bruises she can prove? ... do you need a criminal lawyer? ... uh huh, so it's being done the New York way? I highly approve."

...

I'm moving to Portland 100 percent. I don't think I really do the New York way.