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I’ve got to get this blog finished so I’m going to stop going into so much detail and outline the rest of my trip.

Thursday: My mom came to NYC so that she could take me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It has been in the process of renovation for several years and recently moved back to its premises in Manhattan from its temporary digs in Brooklyn. Mom had wanted the whole family to come, but Nicole and Dad vetoed that idea in favour of a family vacation to Montreal. So it was jut Mom and I. Mom wanted to reminisce about her university days praying to the big statue of Balzac and seeing her favourite modern art. We wandered around the museum for a couple of hours, then left to visit the BUST headquarters. BUST is the mag that lip was inspired by and I was hoping to meet its editor, but she was already away for the long 4th of July weekend. The office was a very cool, wood-floored loft space with lots of Hello Kitty paraphernalia and comfy couches. After visiting BUST, Mom and I went back to the museum for about an hour.

I think I may have got my days messed up in the previous couple of blogs because I’m sure I went to dinner with Aunt Kathy, Kevin and Mom on Wednesday night. We ate at this teeny fancy Mexican place: gourmet Mexican, but truly yummy and different.

After MoMA, Mom and I met Solita and Val (Solita’s best friend from high school) for a quick dinner and then Solita and I went to see Shakespeare in the Park: As You Like It. The play was so boring we left after the first act. Very sparse and no famous actors…hmm, it was better with heaps of skipping people in bright colours dancing around and famous actors. After Shakespeare, Solita and I met up with Louisa for a couple of drinks.

Friday was the wedding – the whole reason I went to NY in the first place! Lucia pulled off a perfect wedding. Well, the Catholic wedding part was irritating as fuck, but the reception was awesome. She had a gorgeous dress, her sisters (bridesmaids) had great dresses, Jason learned two ballroom routines with her, there was so much food it was unbelievable, an open bar, a good dj who played 80s dance, salsa and some current dance music and it all overlooked the Long Island Sound. Solita came with me to the wedding and we sat next to a friend of Lucia’s from college and her friend. Solita’s cousin Albert also sat at our table. He went to high school with us and was thrilled to see Solita and me after all these years. He was great fun. It was just the kind of wedding I like: lots of dancing, a bride smiling from ear to ear, a relaxed groom, free-flowing alcohol, but no one getting annoyingly drunk. I’m so glad I went.

Saturday Mom and I drove to Pennsylvania. We stopped off at a cousin’s high school graduation party and I was able to see a good cross-section of my big extended family there – which was awesome. I hadn’t expected to get to see all those relatives, but it just worked out great. Following the party we continued onto Aunt Lorraine and Father’s house, though we got lost and didn’t show up until after midnight. Father (he’s a priest) is dying of prostate cancer, which is why I made sure I got to Pittsburgh this trip home, and Aunt Lorraine is getting a bit out of it and driving the family nuts. I was so dreading this part of the trip, especially after the family went on and on about how bad she is. Last time I visited I wanted to commit suicide rather than stay around that house with nothing to do. But it was really okay. Aunt Lorraine, to me, can’t concentrate long enough on one topic anymore to be annoying, and as long as no one is trying to discuss Father or dying or her future with her, then she’s fine. I saw Kirsten, a family friend who is an artist, on 4th of July and we saw the Pittsburgh fireworks together, then walked, and walked, and walked, mostly on highway ramps because there was no other way to get across town.

After a few days in PA, enjoying Aunt Lorraine’s new kitty and the lovely home nurses helping father out, Mom and I drove back home to upstate New York. Nicole (my sister) came home from grad school and the whole family was together again for the first time in a long time. Nicole was lovely—we had a nice time together—despite being stressed out about grad school. On Saturday, the family drove to Montreal. We got a bit lost finding the hotel (I definitely inherited my poor sense of direction!!!) and didn’t get in until after 4.00. That evening we ate dinner in the hotel, tried to catch a movie that turned out not to have English subtitles even though the paper said it would and then walked along the main road the hotel was on, which was just full of crap shops. The next day we spent a few hours at the Montreal botanic gardens and then walked around Old Town for an hour or so. Mom and I were really disappointed we didn’t stay for dinner, especially as Mom complains all the time how there’s no decent restaurants in upstate NY. I had thought the whole point of going to Montreal was too eat! But Dad wasn’t hungry and wanted to get home and Nicole was too hot to be hungry. Mom and I were ready to eat, of course. Instead we at this truly crap Chinese restaurant. For some reason my parents love the buffet: I think they’ve forgotten what good Chinese food tastes like. On Monday, Mom, Nicole and I drove to Manchester, VT, where I met Linda, an old work colleague. It was great to be able to catch up with Linda, who is an editor as well, is lefty and interesting to chat with.

After leaving Manchester, Mom drove us to the airport, where Nicole caught a flight home and I caught a bus back to NYC. I met Albert at Grand Central and we wandered around the East Village, looking for Mexican or Hispanic food, which I really wanted for my last meal in NYC. All we found was a fancy Cuban place. It was pretty good, but not any better (though different) than non-gourmet Cuban food, heaps more expensive and heaps less food. But I had a good time chatting away with Albert, learning about what he’s done with the past 10 years of his life. We went to Veniero’s for one last attempt to see my cousin Eva, who still wasn’t working that night (if she still works there at all) and then I had to go to Queens to Aunt Kathy and Kevin’s place. Kevin drove me to the airport in the morning and that was the end of my trip.

It was smart to do the NYC stuff first, because I wouldn’t have wanted to leave all that awesome social activity. After Pittsburgh and upstate NY I was ready to come home to Australia. And please don’t take that to mean I don’t like my family. I love my family – I had a good time with my parents and sister, but upstate NY does nothing for me. Despite the fact that it is pretty in a cows and rolling farmland sort of way, it makes me bored and morose. I spent a lot of my time at my parents’ fighting with the internet, trying to get my lip grant application done. And one time when Nicole and I tried to go for a decent walk, we had to abort the attempt due to severe bug biting. So, yeah, despite the fact that I was leaving summer behind me, I was ready…

I’m still not quite back into the whole swing of things. But at this point I don’t have any excuse anymore!

I still haven’t gotten my other 3 rolls of photos developed. As soon as I do, I’ll post some!

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Hey all,

Just thought I’d blog on the Tour de France. I love it! And am sad it is over for the year.

I’m so not a sports player or watcher, but the Tour’s got me hooked! I used to love the Olympics - that was the only sports I ever watched and I watched everything they showed: equestrian, softball - if it was an Olympic game, I was up for it. And I didn’t really care who won, either; I certainly wasn’t rooting for the Americans. Since I’ve come to Australia I’ve stopped watching the Olympics. I suppose it’s a combo of not having time and the fact you don’t really show the winter Olympics here - which was my fave: all that ice-skating!

But since my man, Allan, is a cyclist, he is a dedicated Tour de France watcher. I got hooked because of the lovely Jan Ullrich. Talk about a sexy man! He can’t keep it together to win, but that’s what I like about him (aside from the fact that he’s not a skinny runt - the announcers call him “big Jan” ’cause he’s very large for a Tour rider - he has a great smile, beautifully sculpted face and the earring that just gives him that little bit of alternative edge, though lots of the riders have earrings). Lance Armstrong, he’s just predictable: an incredible machine that will get the job done. Ullrich, well, Ullrich’s kinda like a character in a Greek tragedy - with a fatal flaw - and you’ll never know how he’ll go. He just doesn’t want it bad enough, I guess. Which is understandable; one needs to have a life too. I can totally relate to the not quite believing you can do it and succumbing to the stress and pressure and fucking up - and being second, not the best - I can relate to that. But hey, he’s still a champ: he came in second place in the Tour at only 22 years old, his first time in it, and then 1st the next year (before Lance started winning) and he’s never finished less than 4th place. Even Lance can’t say that! Last year was the fourth place fuck-up. He pulled himself into third this year. So maybe next year it’ll be back to first. Don’t know though: Lance thinks Ivan Basso is the future of the Tour.

I can’t wait until next year’s Tour. Without Armstrong there it’ll be so much more exciting! I was panicking a little before the Tour started this year that Ullrich might just lose it altogether and then I might not like the Tour anymore because my heart’s with Janny-boy and being emotionally involved is what makes the Tour so good. But Jan’s still going strong and even when he’s not anymore, there’s plenty more cute boys where he came from, I guess. But I guess, I will admit, the Tour is more than just Jan. Certain bits of certain stages are truly exciting and these men, shit, they are fucking lunatics - riding for 24 days with a shitload of huge mountains thrown in. It’s totally nuts! I don’t know why anyone in their right mind would put themselves through that. But, hats off… Oh, yeah, and the French scenery is a bonus too… I’ll be there in person one day, hopefully when Jan is still riding, but doubt it…

I await next year.

Rachel

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photos: poorer NY, uptown a block or so over from Riverside Drive; wealthier NY, Broadway around 115th street or thereabouts

Wednesday in New York… This was my Coney Island day, which I ended up doing on my own. Solita had an interview (not that her interviewee showed up or anything…) in the afternoon so couldn’t come. I caught the Q train out to the beach. My first stop was at Nathan’s, home of the famous NY hotdog. Of course I didn’t get a hotdog, being a vegetarian, but they have wonderful cheese fries –which are like ridged potato chips, except they are hot chips, nice and thick and brown, with lots of goopy fake cheese (love that stuff!). I took pictures of them, but they aren’t developed yet.

I ate the fries while walking along the boardwalk, checking out the dilapidated buildings and Mexican families playing along the beach. I walked back up the beach, letting the waves lap my feet. When I got back to the site of the amusement park, I decided that it was time to go on the Cyclone, the very famous, very old, Coney Island roller coaster. I had thought this closed down so I was totally psyched to be able to get on it. I love the old wooden coasters that revolve around a couple big drops. The Cyclone was indeed a good coaster and well worth my $4.00. I walked around the amusement parks (there are two small ones) without checking out any more rides, pondering about how kind of gross the place is. To be fair I was there during the afternoon and amusement parks look their best at night when all the lights are on, but there is something just a bit sad about Coney Island, with its garbage and dilapidation. I walked around more, looking for the freak show and was more and more struck by my ambivalence about the place. On the one hand it is gross – there’s a market that was really just a few trailers on a rocky, broken bitumen lot, with a couple families eating around plastic tables, and a couple food and drink vendors and many bits and pieces lying about, bags, old furniture, etc. – but on the other the seediness is a style in a way, a very concrete atmosphere. Perhaps the market comes alive on the weekends. I found myself wanting the place to be redone, cleaned up, brightened up. But then, I wonder, if it were to become nice would that mean rich people would come and displace the people who are there now? Maybe it’s better to have a dirty, unkempt place where poorer people can still have fun and swim and be at home than to have another gleaming place for rich people to play? Oh, and you Australians would be horrified at the beach. It is totally flat, with rough dark sand, heaps of vehicle tracks and lots of bits of black rock – which doesn’t make for a pretty sandscape. And that’s not taking into consideration all the garbage. But given it was a weekday, there were still plenty of people splashing in the waves and baking out in the sun.

I finally found the freak show. I was so excited because Coney Island is one of the last places left that still has a freak show. There were no bearded ladies or otherwise deformed people, but alternative types who still kept up with some of the traditional tricks. The MC was a young, geeky, theatrical guy who also hammered huge metal implements all the way up through his nose. There were two girls, one with a highly tattooed face - as if she came from the Pacific Islands. The other girl got in a box that was then stuck through with huge blades and contorted her body around the blades. She also swallowed swords of various lengths. The tattooed girl walked up a ladder of swords and ate fire. There was a highly tattooed older man who lay on a bed of nails, with another bed of nails on top of his belly, with two audience members standing on top of that. There were a couple other tricks, but I’ll leave some for surprise in case you ever decide to go! It was a good show, but I had to wonder about the safety of swallowing kerosene and whether the swords were sterilized.

When I got back to Manhattan after Coney Island I decided to catch a Broadway show. I kind of wanted to see Pillowmen (a violent show about torture) because it had Jeff Goldblum and Billy Crudup in it, but they were selling standing room tickets for $25.00. Doubt, which won the Tony, was offering balcony seats for $27.50, so I decided to sit. After getting my ticket I found a vegetarian Japanese restaraunt. I had a hard time figuring out what to choose off the excellent menu of fancy veggie fare, so ended up with an appetiser platter of fried and cold rolls and other delectables. A nice dinner.

I can’t say I was impressed with Doubt. It’s about a nun who thinks a priest is sexually abusing a boy and there was really nothing interesting about the whole doubt, intuition, proof, faith thing. There was one interesting scene where the boy’s mother gets angry at the nun for trying to accuse the priest of molestation because her son, the first black boy in the school, is finally on his way to college with the help and kindness of this priest - and besides her kid is gay anyway. That was an unexpected reaction. The rest of the scenes were theatre dialogue. The acting was decent but they all put on these super-heavy Italian NY accents which were really irritating and sometimes hard to understand. Anyway, it was a disappointment that there was no one I love to watch act on Broadway at the time and that the show wasn’t very good. At least I didn’t pay that much. I wonder if Pillowmen would have been better…

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Hi all,

I’m spending my last day upstate tomorrow - meeting Linda, editor of Alfred Hitchock’s Mystery Magazine, in Manchester, VT tomorrow and then bussing it to NYC. I will visit with Albert, Lucia’s cousin and an old high-school acquaintance, stay with my cousins and then fly home for a long, long, long time on Wed, Thurs, Fri!

I’ve got more blogging to do: Shakespeare in the Park, Coney Island, Doubt on Broadway, MoMA with my mom, Montreal, THE WEDDING, etc. (not in that order). However, this computer screen is wavering so I will go crazy if I try to blog for any length of time right now.

I’ll be home on Friday morning. See some of you soon!

(If you were expecting to hear from me by email, I haven’t had much patience for fighting with the internet connection here, so be patient and I’ll respond to everything when I’m home. I’m going to have soooo much work when I get back…. Good thing I don’t have to go to work on Monday!)

Bye!

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Photos: the view across the resevoir in Central Park and a shot of Broadway, somewhere around 110/115th St.

Well, I still don’t remember what happened on Monday. So, I’ll just move on to Tuesday. On Tuesday, Solita and I went to the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art). We may also have gone to breakfast, or perhaps that was one of Monday’s activities. Either way, she took me to a very sweet, homey café that was decorated on one side like an old-fashioned ice-cream parlor or something small-towny, with cherry-patterned plastic covering the stools and a green and white flowery theme going on. The main dining room did not have the cherry theme but the tables were old doors or windows (can’t remember exactly now) and there were huge metal sunflowers on the wall. We shared a big breakfast of eggs, home-fried potatoes and blueberry pancakes. There was no room for the yummy-looking homestyle desserts.

At the Met, Solita and I walked through the crowded but small Chanel exhibition (Karl Lagerfield just isn’t Coco Chanel – every time I liked something it was Chanel and when I didn’t like something it was Lagerfield) and then through an exhibition of Matisse and his fabric paintings. I liked that very much. I love the bold colours and sketchy watercolour style of Matisse. I love how you look at a woman’s face in one of his paintings and a square around her eye isn’t painted and you have no idea why that bit of face is left white, but just that it works and you want to stare at it for ages.

Solita had to go to work that afternoon, but I hung around the Met some more and walked through a huge Max Ernst retrospective. He was a dadaist and surrealist (a founder of the movement) – before Dali. I loved most of his work and his many different styles through the years. So much of it was not particularly comprehensible to me, but fascinating to look at. It did strike me as quite feminist though, as there seemed to me to be a theme of paintings about women bound up or trapped – in a social commentary sort of way, not in a misogynistic kind of way. I also saw a photography exhibit I didn’t like very much. You can check out some of the work in the exhibitions here: http://www.metmuseum.org

I think what came next was that I got off at the wrong subway stop and had a long trek home across Central and Morningside parks. I stopped in a Latin American restaurant for rice, red beans and yucca (why oh why are there no black beans!???) and ate the whole dinner, stuffing myself silly with carbs. Not sure what Solita and I did that night – maybe another night of wine, fruit and chocolate out on the verandah?

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Well, you haven’t heard from me in a week because Solita’s computer wouldn’t start up and the techie didn’t know how to fix it. Then I was in Pittsburgh visiting my aunt. She doesn’t own a computer. Finally I am at my parents’ house in upstate New York, with a slow computer and slow Internet. It is a total bummer to have to remember so much of my trip now that it has passed but I will slowly but surely get it down here.

Two things I forgot to mention were:

1. NY has outlawed smoking in bars. Though I don’t actually agree with this law, bar-hopping has been wonderful!!! It’s so nice to be able to hang out in a bar without getting teary eyes and having trouble breathing, let alone coming home with fresh-smelling clothes.

2. Hillary Clinton did not appear to be part of the Gay Pride parade. NY’s other senator had a contingent marching for him and Mayor Bloomberg marched, but no Hillary banner – unless her contingent started the parade off, as we missed the very beginning. I’m losing faith in her…

Back to the holiday detalis. Louisa cancelled her birthday dinner in Brooklyn after getting caught in a rainstorm. Instead Solita and I made dinner (stuffed portobellos) and watched The Station Agent on DVD, as she had never seen it. For the life of me I can’t remember what I did on Monday. Perhaps when I develop photos it’ll jog my memory (if I took any…). I think I maybe took it easy that day, reading in the park, eating more rice and beans.

More to come, but now I will get washed and dressed, as it is 4.30 in the afternoon. (I didn’t wake up until 1.12 this afternoon – but I was up until 4.00am working on the grant application).

I leave you with some images of Riverside Park.

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I don’t usually get up this early for ANYONE, but this morning I was up before the neighbour’s rooster (who has a rooster in the suburbs???) so I could attend one of those business networking breakfast events - because the guest speaker was Ita Buttrose, and I figured that a woman with all that experience in the publishing industry was definitely worth listening to (and getting up early for). She’s an inspirational woman - and funny - and I have been kicking myself all day because I couldn’t stay for the whole event and try to meet her afterwards. I had to sneak out early to go to a training course. I didn’t even get to hear her finish up.

But Vania did (can you sense a challenge here?). Hopefully Vania will regale you with all the pearls of wisdom she gained this morning - and maybe managed to send a copy of lip Ita’s way???

One little pearl I did sneak out with me this morning though is:

“Other people don’t dream your dreams.”

Only you dream your own dreams, and only you can make them happen.

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