Oh Lord. New York.

Ah New York. It really only takes one visit there for me to realize that no matter which cities I go to--New Orleans for the next five months, Boston for the next four years--none of them will be as enchanting and close to me as New York is.

I suppose a lot of a Blog is essentially just literary masturbation. I talk about all the stuff that's going on in my life, even if it's trivial in the grand scheme of things, and i'm talking about it just for the sake of talking about it. So this may not be that interesting for those reading it, but nonetheless, here is my day in New York.

The last few days before I start my road trip down to New Orleans have been busy, balancing the time between being with my family, being with my friends, and reserving a little time just to reflect personally. But I decided to go to New York today to see my oh-so-wonderful friend Dena Yago. The train to New York was funny. It was crowded so I stood at the end of the train, near the door of the vestibule between cars, holding my ticket and scanning for empty seats. I didn't have to look long, however, before a woman asked me if I would like to sit with her and her two daughters. They picked seats that were facing each other. They were on one side, and I had an isle to myself. The mom was very New Jersey. She was loud and bubbly and loved to drink and was going in to New York to do the touristy things: see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, then see the Thanksgiving day parade the next day. The mother talked the entire time and occasionally pulled the kids into the conversation. One was a sophmore at an art school somewhere in Ohio and was mortified by everything her mother had to say. She rolled her eyes a lot. The other daughter was in a nationally ranked (ranked first, actually) High School marching band in South Jersey. She had recently gone to the Marching Band finals in Annapolis and won. So it goes.

And then New York. Everybody is moving in that city. Places to go. There's very little eye contact. You aren't aware of everyone you pass. And there's something about that that I love. I went up to Isabelle Delouvrier's house next. This charming girl happens to have a five story house in the Upper East side and it is amaaazing. We got food and watched stupid game shows and sat and talked and gossiped and I felt like i was at Lawrenceville again. Isabelle still is at Lawrenceville. She's still stuck in the system. And listening to her talk about all these Lawrenceville kids--and me knowing exactly who they are--made me think about when the time will come where I won't know exactly who they are, and who they dated, and what their stories were. In other words, it made me think about when I'll be done thinking about Lawrenceville. Not yet anyway.

I left Isabelle's and then went up to Columbia to see Dena. Now, I could write pages about how ridiculously wonderful this girl is. But I can't, so i'll say this: she's absolutely brilliant, utterly charming, and exhaustingly beautiful. That about does the trick. She has seen every good movie, read every book that goes good movies are based on, and on top of all that has a fantastic amount of knowledge about good, alternative music.

We ate Fallafel and we talked. I hadn't seen her in about a month. I'm preparing to go to New Orleans, so this is my farewell meeting. We then meet up with her friends, who are all smart and wearing tight jeans and hip, and decide to see a movie that is only suited for such people: Darren Aranofski's The Fountain. This is a beautiful movie to look at, and (amazingly) has no CGI. It's filled with these ethereal images of what looks like Nebula's exploding and such, but it's actually all this microscoping photography of, like, yeast growing. Excellent. Narratively, though, the film was weak, and waay to over indulgent and pseudo-philosophical. I decided that the person that thought The Fountain is their favorite movie is the person that I will hate most in life.

The movie ended and I had to go but we both decided that this was not nearly a climactic enough goodbye. So, I'll be going in on Sunday.

Anyway, I need to be going now. But i'm so frustrated with not getting this post finished that I'm going to post it anyway. It's not done, but i'll be finishing it later. Consider this a to be continued...



walking around and going to Rockefeller center
people watching in Penn station (drunk people0
Maya
train ride (lights off, people smoking up)