November 9, 2015 – Playing Catch Up
It’s time to stop being so busy, busy, busy so I can catch
up with my writing. This seems like the
right moment: a drizzly fall afternoon,
while Elliott naps. Wrapped in a cozy
sweater, I’m sipping my cup of vanilla almond tea and watching the gray sky
darken. Sometimes, it’s just good to be
home. I haven’t had that opportunity
very often these past few weeks.
Shortly after Elliott and I returned from our road trip to
Orange, VA (which I wrote about in my previous post), I packed up for a 4-day
trip to New York. As usual, I had a
whirlwind of activities planned. First
stop, Brooklyn, for some fun time with Elisa and Sylvie. (Sorry, it was a workday for Christian.) Activities included reading books, giving
Sylvie a bath, and taking a walk in the neighborhood. My granddaughter is bigger, more active, more
alert and communicative, and, if possible, even cuter than before!
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| with Sylvie (3 1/2 months) |
It was hard to tear myself away but my next stop was
Manhattan for a long-awaited reunion with two dear friends from my school days
on Long Island. I re-connected with
Sherry, who was visiting from California, and Hilary, who still lives in the
New York area, through Facebook. We had
a lot to talk about after more than 46 years, and I must say that the three of
us looked great! We’ll definitely plan
another get-together in the coming year.
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| with Hilary (left) and Sherry (center) |
Next stop was Greenwich Village, where I checked into the
Washington Square hotel and met up with my longtime friend Gale, who relocated
to Florida after she retired from teaching in Alexandria, Virginia. Thanks to Gale’s research, we had made our
reservations well in advance to coincide with the famed Greenwich Village
Halloween parade on Saturday night. We
may not have been the oldest spectators lining 6th Avenue, but members
of our generation were certainly not in the majority. It was fun to watch the colorful, noisy spectacle
making its way north, although the crowd was so dense that it was hard to see
many of the participants. After an hour
standing in one spot and craning our necks to get a glimpse of the parade, Gale
and I meandered back toward Washington Square and Eighth Street, admiring the
costumes of the revelers.
In addition to joining the Halloween festivities, we found
time to see two Broadway shows over the weekend.
The first,
Something Rotten, is a wildly clever, witty and high-energy musical
set in Shakespearean London.
The
outrageous storyline centers on a not-so-successful playwright who’s looking
for a way to compete with the Bard.
He
consults a soothsayer who tells him that in the future, plays will feature
characters bursting into song and dance.
There are numerous references to past musicals, and if you’re a fan of
the musical theater like I am, you’ll find this show extremely
entertaining.
The second show we saw was the Tony-Award winning musical,
Fun Home.
This was a beautifully constructed, staged
and performed show that is based on the graphic memoir of Alison Bechdel.
Although it’s a musical and has its funny
moments,
Fun Home is primarily a
serious piece of theater about growing up in a dysfunctional family and dealing
with gender identification issues.
Of course, there was time for eating.
Before the Friday evening show, we had a very
tasty Greek dinner (lots of
mezze) at
Dafni Taverna in the theater district.
And since it was unseasonably warm, some frozen custard from Shake Shack
was
de rigueur on our way to the
theater.
After the show, Gale had her
obligatory slice of Junior’s cheesecake while I munched on my customary evening
chocolate.
(I never travel without a bar
of Trader Joe’s 85% dark.)
On Saturday morning, we took a quick subway ride up to
MOMA
to see the Picasso sculpture show (and to shop at the gift shop).
The exhibit showcased Picasso’s range and
development as a sculptor over more than 7 decades.
Some of my favorite pieces were the
assemblages he did in the 1950s while living in the South of France.
By the way, we had very good quick lunch in
the museum’s café.
I spent my last morning taking a leisurely walk through the
Village right after breakfast.
Barricades still lined many of the streets. In Washington Square Park, most of the
evidence of the previous night’s events had been cleaned up. The only people out at this early hour seemed
to be runners, dog walkers, and a few neighborhood children with their
parents.
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| Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village |
My thoughts traveled back in time to the late 1960s when
Greenwich Village was my escape from suburbia. In those days, a wave of excitement would
sweep over me as soon as I exited the subway at West 4th
Street. On sunny afternoons, I’d sit on
the ledge of the fountain in Washington Square Park, talking to strangers
(don’t tell my parents!) and listening to scruffy boys playing guitars. The sweet smell of marijuana would fill the
air. Picture a girl 17 or 18 years old, dressed in
bell bottoms and a flowing Indian print top, with long brown hair rippling down
her back. That was me. Now, on this grayish morning, the once familiar streets – 8th
Street, Bleeker, Macdougal – conjure up memories, but they don’t hold the magic
they once did. I’m not a teenager
anymore, but it seems impossible that I’m 65 years old. Somehow, when I’m in Greenwich Village, I
always feel young and free.
Even though I had a wonderful time in New York, I looked
forward to getting back to all the good things that awaited me at home. Also, I was eager to show Elliott my photos
and to tell him all about my trip. I was
disappointed, but not surprised, when Elliott welcomed me with a harsh statement
about "abandoning" him (his words). It turned out that
he had a couple of problems while I was away.
The first problem, with the remote control for the TV, took me only a
second to fix. The lack of heat in the
house, however, was a challenge I couldn’t overcome. It took a visit from the heating repair
person to pinpoint the cause of the problem:
a bat had gotten into the heating system. Once he had extracted the bat (fortunately,
deceased), our heating system worked perfectly once again. And Elliott gave up his grumpiness, too. Good news – he can hear much better now,
thanks to new hearing aids. Bad news –
he dropped his lower dentures on the floor and they broke in half.
After my New York getaway, I plunged right back into my
regular round of activities (exercise, concerts and lectures, Elliott’s medical
appointments, classes, etc.). I even did
a couple of days of subbing last week, which left me exhausted. Over at George Mason, in my jazz class, we’re
learning about bebop, and in art history, we’re studying minimalism. The reading for art history isn’t getting any
easier to understand. Here’s an example
from an article by artist Robert Morris, written in the 1960s: “The trouble with painting is not its
inescapable illusionism per se. But this inherent illusionism brings with it
a non-actual elusiveness or indeterminate allusiveness.” Got it?
Want to hear about gestalt, the known constant and experienced variable,
phenomenology and embodied perception, relational composition and
serialization? No, I didn’t think so.
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| A three-dimensional piece by Robert Morris |
At least I’m having a great time with my fused glass. I wish I had more time to spend at the glass
studio but I’m pretty much limited to one day a week for the time being. However, I’m sketching out lots of ideas and
experimenting with materials and techniques.
And at the Mantua Made Market last Saturday, I sold quite a few
pieces.
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| My table at the recent Mantua Made Market |
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| Some of these pieces are still available. |
Somehow, I’ve been able to find time for reading and have
enjoyed two excellent books. Night in Shanghai by Nicole Mones is a
novel set in Shanghai in the 1930s, Shanghai’s Jazz Age. It has an international cast of characters,
including an African-American musician as the main character. It’s a very atmospheric novel, full of music,
nightlife, organized crime, and political strife (Nationalists fighting the
Communists) at the same time Japan is taking over China city by city and
establishing its brutal rule. There’s an
interesting subplot that features Jewish refugees who have found a safe haven
from the Nazis. Next, The
Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman is a work of fiction based on the
life of Impressionist artist Camille Pissaro, in his birthplace, St. Thomas,
and later in Paris. It provides fascinating
insights into the small Jewish community on this Caribbean island in the 19th
century.
That’s all for now. As
I wrote this post, I realized how these recent days and evenings have been too
full of scheduled activities, and I will try to reserve time for reflecting
and writing more often.
