"well it's a big, big city and the lights are all out
but it's much as I can do you know to figure you out"
Bob Dylan and Central Park saved my life, while Upper East Side doormen tipped their hats and wished me good day and I gulped down cup after cup of the worst and best coffee I've ever had. Bob Dylan and Central Park saved my life, how cliché. But...it's true. A walk to Little Italy for San Gennaro, a love affair with Queens that I wasn't ready for. Thoughts of a lost boy obscured by my own dusty path home. But home nonetheless, closer than I've had and further away than....
...This is my New York phase 1. Fresh from Chicago crisis, green and hungry. Walk for miles each day and return back different than I was. Crazy with newness, homesick and silly, in love with in love at my new rented place.
"and it's 4 in the morning, and I'm walking along
beside the ghost of every drinker here who has ever done wrong"
The weather got cooler and the outside got darker. A quick jaunt east to a Brooklyn I'd read about, consciously adhering to its spot in history, a secret personal pride about my place in (though always outside of) it. While I constantly check to see who's checking me. But I'll never admit that. So. Shh. Thanksgiving centered around beef stew and store-bought cinnamon rolls and each bite sees a shift in expectation. Bob Dylan gives way to David Bowie who wrote a song for him and several for me. Little boy lost gets found and little girl trips and falls, and trips, and falls.
...This is my second New York phase which establishes me once and for all as a non-entity and which systematically destroys and makes bloated my self-confidence. I agree to tough it out but only because I'm embarassed by failure. Not because I want to and not because I believe that I'll survive.
"so if you're lonely why'd you say you're not lonely"
A winter that sees me stranded, god damn did the blizzard really need to stick me in Park Slope? Long commutes and boiling subways and for the first time I realize I'm happy to stay home at night. Bad delivery pizza and cheap wine from my plexi-glassed local sadden me but there is none more convenient. Lonesome becomes me and music? I don't remember music, but I remember snow and I remember indoors.
...I don't know much of me in winter. I think that I was tired and I quit a job in Queens (I'm very sorry, darling) and I watched a lot of flamenco and must have celebrated some holidays and somewhere I got myself another year older. That can't be all but? Maybe that's the point.
"and I must confess, my hearts all broke in pieces
and my head's a mess"
Tom Waits, scream me a lullaby while I drink my coffee water (ice melted long ago) at a coffeeshop in this scorching city, oh, has all of the wind died? And, oh, where have all the PC's gone? Away, certainly, from this nutjob town where efficiency trumps all and Trump trumps none. Tom Waits, give way to Elvis (well, hello) singing Christmas songs out of season while the crumbs of my almond croissant scatter themselves across the table, butter pastry defenseless against a ceiling fan with an agenda. An agenda of which I have none after two months of nothing but.
...New York phase well, I forget. A rare second of respite at least. I've recently traveled from East to Midwest, back East again and a four-hour turnaround then to Washington DC, itself a confused jumble of architecture and status symbols different from any I've ever seen. Grateful to be back because, my dears, a surprise: I've fallen in love again.
"well it's a big big city and it's always the same"
Home to heat up leftover Indian food, into my room for a documentary when I smell food and smoke, open my door to two new friends who invite me to sit down, eat, play a game of cards. Then settle onto my (our) couch, look at my (our) table and...our...bookshelves and talk 'til it's light. And into bed to hold a hand and smile to sleep. Is this forever, as my eyes close, forever is awful long. But forever, also, is a thing I've never thought and here I am.
(That was yesterday.)
And then was today, when I danced in the rain.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
On taking time off
-Perhaps I'm lonesome sometimes I think and look at my Modelo, the last of the night, taken with the herbal sleeping pills, one of the most thoughtful gifts from a man, ever, the other being a trilogy of books about killing god and teenage sex
-I dressed up in what could only be described as "cocktail business casual" and flirted my way to a job but have been wearing a long t-shirt, my dad's, since I got home at 4
-Broken Flowers I finally got around to watching, thinking I had seen it years ago and then I spent an hour researching "road movie" which is actually a genre borne of tales like The Odyssey and drafting my own hero's quest though hitting myself on my forehead with my palm because I actually expect to learn something
-I stare at all of my new furniture which is familiar enough to make me sad for what I don't know how to build
-Reflections on a cancelled promise which is familiar enough to make me sad for what I never tried to build
-The guy across the way looks in and I realize I'm pantsless and man we really need to get some curtains
-The air conditioner wakes me up just as things are getting good
-I'm very angry at grammar. Again.
-I've been here for a year now and still get drunk and ramble on the magic, the serendipity, the parched filthy glamour that is this asshole of a city: Romance that sticks me in the guts when I need a reminder or when I'm feeling complacent. Oldest train I've ever seen creaking me reliably between burroughs. Exhaustion that's become fundamental to my being and my being here, makes it possible to function in such a way which is the only way. French restaurant that I return to because it really is the best. Vaulting ambition full 'o the milk of human kindness...where else but here, and I mean it, where else but here.
-And this, because it comforted me on the first cool day and I hear it's fall
Boozy Onion Soup
This stuff is warm, it's thick, it's resplendent with onions. And if you're feeling particularly bad for yourself, it's very helpful as it contains both wine and beer, which I'd recommend drinking while waiting for the onions to brown, and afterwards, and well into the night.
2-3 servings
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
2 onions, cut in half and sliced very thin
7 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
A whole mess of thyme leaves (2 tbsp at least)
1/2 cup dark beer (I used Abita Turbodog 'cause I had it)
1 cup red wine
2 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
Salt
Slice of bread per person (I used pita because it was all I could get)
1/2 cup swiss cheese, shredded (gruyere is dandy but just try to find it at my local supermarket...)
Handful of parmesan
Melt butter and olive oil in a large pot over low - medium heat. Add onions and thyme and season with salt, then stir every few minutes until the onions caramelize (this will take awhile and you can step away for a few minutes at the beginning, but once they turn very soft -- after about 15 minutes -- make sure to stir constantly and watch closely. You want them a deep, dark brown but not burnt). Add garlic and stir for about two more minutes, then pour in beer. Let beer evaporate almost completely (you'll be left with a gorgeous, concentrated taste) and add wine and more salt if needed. Let wine come to the boil for about one minute, then add stock and reduce heat to low. Let simmer for about 10 minutes and prepare cheese toasts:
(Butter each slice of bread on both sides. Warm a skillet over medium heat and brown each side slowly. After you've flipped the bread for the first time, sprinkle with equal amounts cheese, reduce the heat to low and cover with lid just until cheese is melted. You could also do this under the broiler or in the oven, but I like it in a pan)
Taste soup for seasoning, ladle into bowls and top with a cheese toast. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and serve immediately.
-I dressed up in what could only be described as "cocktail business casual" and flirted my way to a job but have been wearing a long t-shirt, my dad's, since I got home at 4
-Broken Flowers I finally got around to watching, thinking I had seen it years ago and then I spent an hour researching "road movie" which is actually a genre borne of tales like The Odyssey and drafting my own hero's quest though hitting myself on my forehead with my palm because I actually expect to learn something
-I stare at all of my new furniture which is familiar enough to make me sad for what I don't know how to build
-Reflections on a cancelled promise which is familiar enough to make me sad for what I never tried to build
-The guy across the way looks in and I realize I'm pantsless and man we really need to get some curtains
-The air conditioner wakes me up just as things are getting good
-I'm very angry at grammar. Again.
-I've been here for a year now and still get drunk and ramble on the magic, the serendipity, the parched filthy glamour that is this asshole of a city: Romance that sticks me in the guts when I need a reminder or when I'm feeling complacent. Oldest train I've ever seen creaking me reliably between burroughs. Exhaustion that's become fundamental to my being and my being here, makes it possible to function in such a way which is the only way. French restaurant that I return to because it really is the best. Vaulting ambition full 'o the milk of human kindness...where else but here, and I mean it, where else but here.
-And this, because it comforted me on the first cool day and I hear it's fall
Boozy Onion Soup
This stuff is warm, it's thick, it's resplendent with onions. And if you're feeling particularly bad for yourself, it's very helpful as it contains both wine and beer, which I'd recommend drinking while waiting for the onions to brown, and afterwards, and well into the night.
2-3 servings
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
2 onions, cut in half and sliced very thin
7 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
A whole mess of thyme leaves (2 tbsp at least)
1/2 cup dark beer (I used Abita Turbodog 'cause I had it)
1 cup red wine
2 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
Salt
Slice of bread per person (I used pita because it was all I could get)
1/2 cup swiss cheese, shredded (gruyere is dandy but just try to find it at my local supermarket...)
Handful of parmesan
Melt butter and olive oil in a large pot over low - medium heat. Add onions and thyme and season with salt, then stir every few minutes until the onions caramelize (this will take awhile and you can step away for a few minutes at the beginning, but once they turn very soft -- after about 15 minutes -- make sure to stir constantly and watch closely. You want them a deep, dark brown but not burnt). Add garlic and stir for about two more minutes, then pour in beer. Let beer evaporate almost completely (you'll be left with a gorgeous, concentrated taste) and add wine and more salt if needed. Let wine come to the boil for about one minute, then add stock and reduce heat to low. Let simmer for about 10 minutes and prepare cheese toasts:
(Butter each slice of bread on both sides. Warm a skillet over medium heat and brown each side slowly. After you've flipped the bread for the first time, sprinkle with equal amounts cheese, reduce the heat to low and cover with lid just until cheese is melted. You could also do this under the broiler or in the oven, but I like it in a pan)
Taste soup for seasoning, ladle into bowls and top with a cheese toast. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and serve immediately.
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