Rainy days are for books

It is cold and raining and I am without an umbrella, having left mine at Lolita Bar after the Columbia Journal's launch party there last week.

This morning, braving the elements, I donned rain boots and a hooded sweatshirt and trudged to the public library, where I reluctantly paid $4.75 in fines to the Mulberry St. branch catchpole.

Freed from debt, I headed to the smallish fiction section in the basement to begin stockpiling novels for blissful summer reading. I selected:

• Candace Bushnell's One Fifth Avenue, because I had a hankering for something junky and far-removed from my own life;
• Henry James's Washington Square, for the 19th-century equivalent of the above;
• Grendel (John Gardner), because it's been on my list for years.

I read at the Think on Mercer for a while, cozy with a mug of Earl Grey and a mediocre parmesan and sun-dried tomato scone, before heading to one of the abandoned upstairs study rooms at Bobst library. During the semester it's impossible to get a seat there, but now that it's summer, I was able to snag a big table near the windows overlooking Washington Square.

Before heading home, I walked through the drizzle to meet Ian for a slice of pizza. He threatened to come home early today, having gone in early yesterday. We're to make something with spinach.

I'm now about a third of the way through One Fifth Avenue, snug in the mouse house, listening to Django Reinhardt and to the wind outside. We should ditch the spinach and eat something with gravy.

St. Paul's Catchpole

When my poor cousin Michael came to visit the week after I'd moved into our little mouse house, he had to sleep on a makeshift pallet of blankets atop the hardwood floor, between half-unpacked boxes and piles of books. This past weekend, we had our first houseguests since then-- our dear friends Dane and Debby down from New Haven-- and with an air mattress and a coffee table, we felt a little more civilized. The piles of books, of course, are here to stay. (Michael, you must come back! I'll cook something appealing and serve it on real dishes; no more leftover vegetarian glop out of aluminum tins.)

It was a lovely weekend from start to finish. Our guests arrived bearing gifts-- a box of whimsical, tiny frosted donuts from Tastease in Hartford-- on which we merrily munched before heading to brunch around the corner at the Mission Cafe, a friendly place where you can get a great Mexican-style brunch for just $9.99-- plus $2 for mimosa or sangria. After a week of terrible weather, it was gorgeous outside, and it was nice to sit inside with the breeze coming in through the open doors.

 Connecticut donuts

Next we headed up to the Met; Dane had read a review of the Mourners exhibit we saw last week and was eager to see it. (Great minds think alike!) While we were there we also checked out the Byzantine religious art; giggled our way through the fantastic luxury of the Wrightsman Galleries' period rooms; and made an arduous pilgrimage to the Temple of Dendur, which is on display in a spectacular glass room alongside Central Park. 

  Just like our living room

When everyone was thoroughly exhausted and sore, I led a forced march back through the maze of art and up the elevator to the roof garden where, once again, no overpriced cocktails were purchased.

After a crowded but scenic bus ride back downtown, I threw together a dinner involving spinach pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, roasted asparagus, and feta cheese, and we got to show off our adorable folding table from Ikea. It's advertised as a table for two, but we fit three easily, and might even have been able to squeeze in a fourth if we actually had four chairs. (Ian had to sit on the couch.)

Finding room for four to sleep proved a bit more of a challenge; we moved the coffee table so that it was blocking the front door, and even then the air mattress filled the living room completely, with one edge touching the couch and the other edge touching the endless row of books along the opposite wall. 

Endless Row of Books, abridged

It felt like a grand sleepover for grown-ups. At one point the four of us ended up clustered around the kitchen sink with mouths full of toothpaste, fighting over who would get to spit next. We had all begun brushing our teeth at once, and hadn't considered the consequences.

In the morning, over tea and bagels, Dane mused aloud about what to call a new committee tasked with being friendly to newcomers at the church where he works. He wanted something with more oomph than "welcoming committee," thought anything involving "community" sounded euphemistic and empty, and disliked the connotations of "ambassadors." I searched the thesaurus for "ambassador" synonyms and came up with two delightfully inappropriate solutions:

• plenipotentiary- a person, esp. a diplomatic agent, invested with full power or authority to transact business on behalf of another. 
• catchpole- a petty officer of justice, esp. one arresting persons for debt.

The meaning of "catchpole" is almost the exact opposite of what he's looking for, and yet it has such a great ring to it: "The St. Paul's Catchpole" (always singular, never plural, in my view). I picture a group of jolly, cackling spinsters roaming the church, jingling coin purses, ready to pounce on any hapless visitor has the misfortune to wander in.

They owe us no debt, of course, but I hope we'll get to go visit Dane and Debby in New Haven before the summer is over. Those two are so much fun, and I am eager to have my impressions of New Haven as a blighted post-industrial wasteland dispelled. (For the origins of said impressions, read the first chapter of William Finnegan's Cold New World.) Until then, I pledge to use (and misuse) the word "catchpole" as much as possible. 

Oh, Alan Gilbert

Check out this very strange (and wonderful) e-mail marketing campaign from the New York Philharmonic:

Subject: Alan Gilbert Flirts with Death

SIGHTINGS: Alan Gilbert and a tall, dark character sharing ice cream on the pier. http://www.youtube.com/breughelland

hair

Some people get fashionable haircuts every few months. I travel to an Aveda Institute every year or so to be shorn, like a sheep.

Yesterday was the day for my annual shearing: here is the "before" photo.

  
I walked to the Aveda in Soho in the rain, the humidity did wonders to make my mane even larger than usual, and the girl assigned to me did a poor job of concealing her terror. Everything turned out fine in the end: the irony, I think, is that my hair is actually hard to mess up. I just have them cut it to a single length-- no layers or anything fancy-- and if it were to come out hopelessly crooked, who would ever know?

After:

Most people will never even notice that it's been cut at all.

Still, I was glad this girl had plenty of instruction. She was sweet, but not the brightest of lights. Over the course of the two hours that it takes to get a haircut there, she:
-Asked her instructor if it was alright to use the same comb for curly-haired people as for straight-haired people;
-Cut one side of my hair significantly shorter than the other, and looked perplexed when her instructor pointed out and then corrected the error;
-Had to be repeatedly reminded, first by her instructor and later by me, that the end of the hairdryer is hot, so it is best not to rest it directly on someone's scalp.

I'm not sure why all of this fills me with such glee. I even dutifully bought some "product" on the way out.

My annual Aveda pilgrimage feels like a good deed: once these poor fledgling hairdressers have conquered my hair, nothing will be able to scare them down the road.

Oh, and another thing: they've started serving a strange fennel-tasting tea in little paper cups. I'll have to come back for a "trim" and investigate further.

Logic

Last night, at Crocodile Lounge: a bunch of drunk people announced that Ian looks like Eli Manning, remarked that I do not look like Eli Manning's wife, concluded that I must therefore be his mistress, and then made a joke about Tiger Woods.

I love Crocodile Lounge (free pizza!), but if I were Eli Manning's mistress, I'd expect to be taken somewhere a little fancier. Maybe even someplace without a skee ball machine. 

Classical Gaga: better with bassoon

Australian group Aston's classical cover of Lady Gaga's "Telephone" is probably old news by now, but last week Eastman's Breaking Winds bassoon quartet gave the world something even better.

Check out their Lady Gaga Saga for a medley featuring "Telephone," "Poker Face," and "Bad Romance," complete with costumes and choreography. Everything is funnier with bassoon, and these girls can really play.

I'm proud to say that I know the Gaga on the far left: Erin Bauer and I both studied with Mark Sforzini in high school. To think we once played an opera together...

The Cloisters

Ian and I went up to The Cloisters yesterday. I'd been itching to leave the city, and the threat of thunderstorms caused us to rethink our plan to go hiking near Cold Spring. But taking the A train up to 190th St. was just as good as leaving the city; we ended up 187 blocks from our apartment but might as well have been on another planet-- we found the world's most peaceful spot, not to mention the best museum in New York.

 

From the train station we strolled through Fort Tryon Park, a revolutionary war outpost turned enchanting grassy knoll with spectacular views of the Hudson. Everything was green and dewy-wet after the rain, and as we walked up to The Cloisters, there were no sounds except for chirping birds.

 

"Museum" doesn't really do the place justice; it is a convincing recreation of a medieval monastery that actually incorporates bits of architecture (doorways, ceilings, columns, arches) from historical sites. It feels less like you're looking at art carefully preserved for centuries and more like you've stepped into a time machine.

 

I neglected to bring my camera, and taking pictures in a medieval monastery would have seemed wrong, anyway. But here's my impression of the place, expertly rendered using Microsoft's Paint.

 

 

The Unicorn Tapestries are, for the record, magnificent, but they are by no means the only things to see. I was charmed by a bunch of statues that feature the Virgin Mary standing with baby Jesus on her left hip. Both mother and child look cheerful, alert, and ready for anything. I don't know what art historians label these, but I'm calling them relics from Mary's Sassy Period, and I like them a lot. Here's one example from the Met website-- I looked for but couldn't find a postcard.

 

After wandering through the galleries on our own and marveling at such treasures as St. Michael trouncing a particularly gnarly-looking devil, we took a guided tour of the museum's many gardens. Carol, our delightful docent, not only described the function and layout of monastery gardens, but also lectured to us about the representation of plants in medieval art. Best of all, she quoted medieval gardeners' practical advice on a variety of subjects, including: planting shade trees (not too close together or spiders will weave webs between them); flowering meadows (nice to lie about in on spring afternoons); and pomegranates (lots of seeds, good for fertility treatments).

 

After a garden-side sandwich lunch at the museum's Trie Cafe, we headed back out to Fort Tryon Park. It had turned out to be a beautifully sunny (but windy!) day, and Ian snapped an iPhone photo of me in one of the park's gardens.

 

Because The Cloisters is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, buying a ticket to one gets you free admission to the other. We decided to get our money's worth and took a long, sleepy bus ride down to the Met (open until 9 PM on Saturdays!) where we visited a few of the special, temporary exhibitions. In keeping with our medieval theme, we headed first to The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy, an arresting collection of thirty-seven foot-high marble statues depicting a funeral procession. As we wandered around and glanced at the other medieval art, we realized that we'd become experts: I spotted several other pieces from Mary's Sassy Period, and Ian was able to identify St. James the Greater by sight.

 

Next we headed up to the rooftop garden, where there is currently a strange bamboo sculpture. Despite the lovely breeze and the beautiful view, we refrained from buying $8 bottles of Brooklyn Summer Ale. Here is Ian among the bamboo stalks:

 

 

On our way out we walked through American Woman:  Fashioning a National Identity, because fashion is always fun, and the newly re-opened hall of musical instruments, mostly because I wanted to gawk at the funny old bassoons. Summary: Stradivari violins, says Ian, are probably more fun to play than they are to look at; also, there have been some pretty crazy-looking instruments over the years.

 

Back at home, we had the distinct feeling that maybe the Middle Ages weren't as bad as the history books say. We ate bread and cheese by candlelight, listening to the wind roaring outside. Oh, and to the Decemberists playing on my laptop.

 

It was a good day, all around.

Hey, y'all!

I've done it: I've started a blog. I'm stepping into the 21st century with one hesitating foot. (Last week I learned how to use Skype. The horror, the horror!)

I've just finished a particularly grueling semester in NYU's Cultural Reporting and Criticism program, I've realized that my mouse-sized East Village apartment is on the PERFECT block, and I've become a regular at a well-stocked cheese shop with scandalously low prices.

In short, it's spring in New York, and life is good. I've suddenly got the urge to document my adventures.

But first, some tea.