I Heart New York

I was debating summarising my last two months using only photographs. Then I remembered a piece I wrote many years ago. In the story, a rustling across my face woke me from a sound sleep. I opened my eyes to find a 4 inch long cockroach on my pillow. We both went into break up mode which for him meant running away and for me meant crying. (some girls never learn)

I eventually tracked him down to the bathroom and proceeded to create a crime scene of destruction. Magazine holder toppled, bathmat askew, biggest boot i own atop mister mister.

I couldn't remove said boot immediately so I left my flat (this was in Philly) and went for a walk. When I returned, the bathroom looked so comical that I took a photo and then cleaned up. When I wrote this incident up as part of a writing exercise for school, I included the photo at the end, as an end. My professor, the (spectacular) (sexy) Mr. Shurin asked me why I had resorted to laziness after such a winning beginning ("He's looking straight at me, Mister Cockroach is.")

I had no response because he was right. I have even less excuse now, despite having 23,845 more photos than before. So sorry, gentle reader. You get the mostly text version of my time in the land of the free in 2009.

So, I spent the last two months reading books by people I know personally (and they were really damn good). First up, Sheba Karim's Skunk Girl, which she wrote about 15 years too late to serve my hairy teenage angst needs, but I'll take it. Especially since she's one of my best friends and so beautiful I can't stop looking at her ever and throws the best parties (see photos from her launch by clicking on her photo above) and has started two kickass websites (cheaptoboot.com and gradinsider.com) and is going to India on a Fulbright to research a historical novel (score for creative Fulbrights!). And Skunk Girl rocks. It's funny and breezy and real. Get yourself and your niece a copy.

Jack Murnighan's Classic Nasty was perfect reading for the subway (or
the beach). My work commute from the Upper West Side to Midtown takes about 20 minutes, enough time to read one nasty classic excerpt and more urgently, Jack's warm sexy forward editorials. So very close to his warm sexy forward self. I'd walk into work all hot and ready. To proofread alongside my cutie gay boy coworkers. Life isn't easy.

Ok it is. Sometimes. I scored a fabulous Manhattan flat within days of my arrival. I moved in on a chilly Tuesday evening, went dancing, and brought back my red light kiss later that night. Who says twenty nothing year olds aren't worthy? This one made me birthday breakfast and even better, washed the dishes after.

So I had a birthday. It rocked. My (6+ months pregnant at the time) sister Simi AND my dancy brother Maher AND my pretty parents were in attendance, as well as a host of beautiful boys and girls who danced me into my 36th year. Maher - do I ever get the photos?

Spring in New York isn't warm enough. There were enough cold rainy days to remind me why I left the East Coast so happily and so often. But if you have to spend your life indoors, then there might not be a better place to be.

The hands down highlight was getting to watch one of my favourite singer/songwriters in the world perform his razorblade music: the inimitable Leonard Cohen. In Radio City Hall no less. Mr. Cohen went through an unbelievable 3 hour set singing every single song I wanted him to. Thank you LC. You're my tea and oranges, my prophet and pall bearer, my beauty and my burning violin.

IMHO, getting around in NYC is almost as much fun as getting there. I cannot say enough about the subway system. Sure it might take you an hour or more to get from one burrough to another, but it's POSSIBLE. and CHEAP. and UBIQUITOUS. and 24 HOURS A DAY. Can any other city in the world say this? Not any I've been to anyway, and I've been to a few. I could spend the entire day on the subway people watching. It's the great equaliser. From the 7 figure salary to the indigent, from the white boy to the black girl (and every gender and sex (those are different) and colour in between).

For the scarce sunny days, there's picnics in the park or the fabulous botanical gardens in Brooklyn and the Bronx. And when it gets really cold, for $490 roundtrip, you can go to Kauai (thank you cutie cattiho for getting married on a Pacific island).

Pasha Malla's The Withdrawal Method was also riveting subway reading (I'm a rabid fan of short stories now). I met Mr. Malla when he read at a cute bookshop called Word in Williamsburg (where incidentally Sheba will be reading as part of a young adult lecture series on July 30 - come! I'll be doing the Q&A (argh)). I met Pasha again on Sharlene's last night bartending in Park Slope with the everkissable Radhika.

Speaking of Sharlene, my vibrant friend now has her own (eponymous) bar (pictured to the left) which was reviewed in the New York freaking Times here and again here. Now if I can just score a bar-backing gig at hers, I might not go hungry (or thirsty) this summer.

I should also thank New York for my share of corybantic nights. Happy Endings figured in more than once along with Desilicious, Sonar NYC, and god knows from where else I stumbled home. I got kissed in taxis, parlours, elevators, bars, on dance floors, street corners, subway cars, beds. Gotham could give Rio a sexed up run for its money.

I'm about a week away from wrapping up a wildly productive month at Saltonstall Arts Colony spanning May and June in Ithaca, NY. I'm almost done rewriting my memoir so by June end, when I get back to the Big Apple, I'll be ready to rock (ie finally face the agent music).

My month in the woods has been so isolated and beautiful and lux (room and board and weekly maid service incl.) My fellow artists are talented and chill and sweet: Rose Desiano is a photographer who layers sculpture and architecture into her work. Christine Elfman is a painter who also works with photography and mixed media. Rachael Wren is a painter (and a web designer on the side). And my favourite is Cecily Parks, the poet (after all, poetry is my first love) who's currently writing a series of poems about a girl in a ginger ale dress doing mischief in the woods.

I spend most of my days writing, and most of my evenings organising my photographs, submitting work to literary magazines, applying to other residencies, and thinking about how to fund my next pipe dream (getting to Nigeria). In between, I run in the woods, do yoga in my room, go for long hikes through waterfall dripping gorges, eat, and sleep. This is what happens when you're hundreds of miles from anyone you know, your cell phone doesn't get reception, and you don't have a car. The only drawback is the WiFi, but I've managed to limit myself to a few hours of internetting a day. Could be better, but, as any addict knows, it could be worse:)

Saltonstall is having an open house on Sunday, June 14, 2009 from 2-4pm. The poet and I will be doing readings while the painters and photographer will have their studios open. I think I'll read about my mother growing orange roses in Nigeria. Come listen.