brooklyn diary 5 & 6

5

this was a funny old day, as m'colleague gemma used to say. woke up and it was raining and i didn't want to go anywhere at all but i went for a walk into cobble hill. had a conversation with a lady in by brooklyn, my first one in days. wanted to get coffee and make zine somewhere but couldn't find anywhere i enjoyed so i got the train like 2 stops to park slope and sat in kos kaffe for a couple hours. went to century 21 in bay ridge lol and bought a coat. felt like giving up on life. was super drained from doing nothing at all. had dumplings and a pork bun for dinner, this cost me all of $2.25 whaaat. the lady seemed perplexed when i told her i wanted to eat in the restaurant. came back to 3b and found this book called the 50 best places to find peace & quiet in new york. read that cover to cover and found things to do the next day. had a cuppa. had a conversation with the girl from texas who was staying in the dorm too. nice gal. she used "ya'll" in a singular sense which amused me. more talking. talking feels strange because most of the time i'm alone. but also in the dorm at the moment is a nice italian girl. so we talk about what things we have done each day.

later that evening spencer madsen called me. we arranged to hang out and walked through miserable weather to a pizza place first, then a cool ramshackle bookstore then had a drink at some bar i don't remember the name of and then we went to the brooklyn inn which was super cool. spencer is a nice chap. real good tizzimes. um then i came home and went to bread.

6


another weird day, as i did not feel like doing anything. but i decided i would trust the guide to finding peace & quiet and went to this place called 'poet house'. prior to going in, i had a sit by the hudson river in this nice park, writing some stuff. in poet house they have an extensive library of poetry anthologies, independent chapbooks, literary study books, general interest poetry, poet biographies.. so much goodness. there were heaps of couches and cushy chairs. when i entered the guy was like 'you gotta sign in, oh i like your ring' and i felt happy and he said there was an 'amazing exhibition about emily dickinson' and guess what, he wasn't lying, it was so cool. a bunch of letters she wrote. real things that she touched.. apparently emily d loved to press flowers, and in another book i learnt that there's only one 'authorised' photograph of her. so reclusive.. i read a book about poets/writers and their houses. nice work, poet house.

after this i was hungry and i didn't know what i should do for lunch so i dithered, looked in my guidebooks but they failed me so i just went to the wholefoods cafe as there happened to be one nearby. go wholefoods. i considered doing some other weird activities but ended up going uptown to central park to suss out strawberry fields, which is the john lennon memorial. when i got there, i saw a huge crowd and heard singing. turns out a whole bunch of people just congregate there and sing beatles songs there. i'm sure it happens daily. they are all huddled right on top of the mosaic that says 'imagine', which is slightly inconsiderate i think but i guess beatles fans probably appreciate it. lots of people were singing along with the people who had brought their guitars. it brought a true smile to my face but i couldn't stand it for long and left promptly. my other central park thing i wanted to see was the statue dedicated to alice in wonderland. people kept climbing onto the mushrooms of the statue to get cute pictures with her. i wandered back down to the subway and got a train to soho, where i wanted to check out another thing from my peace & quiet book, a walter de maria sculpture in a gallery in soho. the sculpture is called the broken kilometer, and is essentially hundreds of brass cylinders lying on the ground in this giant ass room, but it really takes you away from the bustly streets of soho. nice.

i went downtown to meet jacob steinberg at the world trade center memorial. we had made plans to do this when i stayed with him at thanksgiving. the site where the towers used to be has been made into this plaza with trees and two giant square fountains set into the ground. these are lined with names of people who died on september 11, corresponding to the appropriate tower - the fountains represent each tower. it was pretty striking at night, as in addition to the fountains being lit, they are building 3 new towers to surround this plaza and one of them is half built and is the brightest tower on the manhattan skyline. and everybody likes a good water feature. jacob and went to the holiday market at union square to have a look round then to wholefoods to grab some dinner. it was nice seeing him again, felt like i had a proper frand. we walked around some streets near nyu and then i came home.