There’s no smoke…
DC thanksgiving can be cold when you’re unwittingly on your porch in your pajamas.
I decided that, as a foreigner, there was no need for me to celebrate thanksgiving. This scrooge spirit lasted until 2pm on Friday (around the time that I finally woke up) when it subsequently evolved into a martyr-ish feeling. So I rummaged in the cupboards, peeled all the not so rotten root vegetables, diced some onions, semi stole (texted after the fact) some chicken from my flatmates and cooked myself a fairly impressive thanksgiving meal. Just before sitting down to eat I decided to light a fire to make the mood more festive (cable tv doesn’t give the same glow).
Apparently a wise fire maker is aware that there is a vent in the chimney that needs to be opened.
Speaking of weak mental processes, read a ny times article about hypnosis being able to suppress certain functions in the brain so that there is no longer conflict with sensory inputs (eg when someone asks you to name the colour when shown the word red coloured in green) brought this up as a sign of my sophistication as a small talker at a dinner yesterday and was subsequently informed that you can ‘hypnotise’ a chicken by putting its head under its wing. Which cued the desire to start a stage show where a chicken is hypnotized on stage and then told that on the count of three it will come round and behave like a chicken. Flawless.
Polaroids
5pm walking up Broadway in New York, chilled to the bone trying to find a cinema showing Harry Potter that didn’t display "sold out until 11pm" on its banners. Passing under some scaffolding, by a well wrapped, well dressed guy clutching a cardboard container with one hand, who was frantically rifling through it with the other, a look of concentration and annoyance on his face, the motto on the container: "the box with everything you love inside"…
…bouncing through a contemporary art exhibition, (held by a group of 20 something British and American galleries on 60th), with Rupert Clifford playing a guessing game that involved deciphering physical interpretations of famous artist’s styles, him correctly guessing my rendition of dali. Peering from a distance of 0.01cm at a red red red painting, "some painting by Bottico" cried Rupert "let’s buy it", looking at the label: "Rothko 3.5 million dollars". Passing another sign "Please do not bring any artwork into the exhibition" and leaving behind a mouse made out of a flyer with Rupert’s bloody mary straw tied in knots to make the eyes…
…Later that night, seven of us in a metre square karaoke booth somewhere on 17th at 2am singing with big grins on our faces, convinced we were harmonising, microphone in one hand, mobile in the other. My brother in England, (7am), being the person on the other end of the line. Him hanging up halfway through the lyrics "It’s the terror of knowing what the world is about… watching some good friends scream "LET ME OUT""…
….Sat 9pm Wandering through midtown with a fellow brit trying to fulfill a craving for tea, having followed a group of affluent thirty somethings through the streets (reasoning they might know where a tea house was), instead coming across a collection of homeless and chess fanatics congregated on the metal seats and tables surrounded by closed and empty, yet fully lighted, food shops in the central atrium of the Sony building…
…Later, sitting on a traffic island in the middle of Park and 54th ringing everyone we knew in ny asking if they lived nearby and had tea, looking at the rows of empty lighted offices in the skyscrapers and trying to work out what the city would look like with no lights on. Concluded it would be ecologically sensible and atmospherically depressing…
…1am in Hiro while watching two girls gyrate and wrap themselves in white sheets while suspended from the ceiling, hearing the chat up line "What are you drinking?"…"A sidecar"…"Whatever it is, it has made you gorgeous"….
….Deciding with Jed at brunch on Sunday, hungover and having waited an hour and a half for our drinks and food to arrive, gazing wistfully at the plants beside us, that we should open a restaurant where all the food would be things that could be planted in flower boxes. We would thus corner the market in people who don’t want to wait and have the urge to graze and make moo-ing noises….
… with Rupert again, outside the New York public library, giving directions to an American lady who had introduced herself and her friend with the opening line "Do you have Japanese tourists in Britain? I ask because she is Japanese." Rupert’s directions: (playing up a plummy English accent) "Ah yes I know the place well. If I recollect correctly, if you proceed in an orderly manner in that direction and take a sharp and timely right you will find the place that you are seeking" the American lady muttering that maybe a taxi was in order. Then stating, in the spirit of friendliness as she was taking her leave, to Rupert, "you remind me of that bean chap… and King Charles" Rupert: "Madam, are you trying to imply that I look like a spaniel?"
Anger Management
One of the Financial Times headers this week: "Residents point to rage behind riots"
Speaking of stating the obvious, DC drivers are, I think, among the worst in the world. And this, mind you, is coming from someone who learnt how to drive in Dili where the two speeds are 10 mph and 120mph (depending on whether or not you are affiliated to the UN).
Today when cycling with Amy away from work (which always means faster than usual) I noticed a huge SUV run a red light and slip into an illegal parking spot ahead of me outside one of the trendier clubs on Connecticut. "Old chap must be desperate to hit the town" I thought blithely as I zipped past feeling proud of both my speed and the dashing cut of my twenties style bike. It was at this point I suddenly experienced that rather strange sensation of continuing to travel at the same speed as before only without my bike and at a tangent to my original direction. There was a brief moment, just before I hit the tarmac where I wondered what I had done wrong. Did I hit the brakes unwittingly? Had an anomaly occurred in the space time dimension taking my bike back 10 seconds thus leaving me in a different timeline? No, in fact it was quite simple. The same chronically mentally challenged SUV owner (are the adjectives and noun separable?) that had just parked 0.002 seconds before, had with the same sense of speed, intellect, and care for fellow man swung open his door without looking, catching my bike and knocking me an impressive 5 feet through the air.
I am currently lying in bed trying to find a portion of my body that isn’t bruised to lie on and am running over all the things I could have said to him other than "ow, fucking hell, ow…. I mean… fucking hell…. ow". The only two consolations are that Amy says my fall was simultaneously spectacular and graceful (I’m taking her at her word no matter how much she was trying to make me feel better) and that my bike left the mother of all scratches on his door. I am hoping, though I know it’s unlikely, that it costs him an arm and a leg to fix. More accurately a rather bruised right arm and slightly strained calf in the left leg.
A Pariah on the Day of the Dead
Halloween in the US is a strange affair, in the London of my youth halloween was about looking as hideous as possible. (All the better to frighten evil spirits with). In the US it seems to be about wish fulfillment. Which was why Saturday night at a party hosted by a gay friend of a gay friend was slightly surreal. Myself and Carlotta (the friend I dragged along) were the only two natural born females in a room populated by perfect facsimiles of all the most famous and desirable of females, Miss Piggy being the most resplendent of all. Balancing out the mass of female hormones was the gay porn projected above the bar area where two muscular youths battled naked on a bridge with a man in a lizard costume and then proceeded to sword fight. (Literally not metaphorically.) In the midst of bulging cleavages, sweeping ball gowns, and undulating curves we felt utterly unfeminine and completely out of place. Consequently we felt the only real solution, and admittedly this is a worrying credo, was to get utterly plastered on half a bottle of tequila each. Mummy would be proud.
Some way into the bottle we discovered a karaoke machine in the downstairs basement. The machine gave us scores of 90 out of 100 which would have been ego boosting had it not been for the fact that fairly soon after we started singing someone shut us into the basement.
My only other halloween experience was also spent feeling out of place due to a causal sequence of events involving bad logic. First: I decided to try fasting (mainly out of curiosity) for Ramadan for three days. Second: The evening I was supposed to be dressing up for the big halloween party of the week, while delirious with hunger, I decided to break my fast with a packet of cookie dough. Which was the reason why I ended up passing out on our flat sofa and wasn’t heard of until the next morning. Third: Again delirious with hunger the next evening, I decided to accept my flatmate’s offer of a cocktail (it’s her mission to up my limit from half a shot to a whole one) thus weakening my already tenuous grasp on common sense. Fourth: I then decided that despite the fact that we were heading out to a non-Halloween flat party I would dress up (logic being I’d missed out the night before). Fifth: I let Damon apply my face paint. Which he did by pinning me down with one knee and attacking me with crayons.
All of which decisions led to me arriving at a party where the girls were beautiful and stylish, the guys were all in designer gear, the lighting was low, the music trendy, and I was dressed up as Chewbacca with a huge furry coat, furry slippers, and a face covered in brown and black stripes.
