proteanme

I keep thinking I’ll get my thoughts in better order and post something more insightful and better organized about the experiences I’m having on this trip, but when I sit down at the computer I can’t seem to order my thinking. I don’t want to forget the things that are happening though, so I’m going to post random stuff for now.

The night before last, around midnight, loud honking came blaring through our window. Sounded like it was coming from the corner right below our apartment. Three or four long blasts in a row and then a guy started yelling “You fucking asshole. I hope you get fucked in the ass you asshole. Right in the fucking ass.” Last night was much less colorful with just a handful of hoarse sounding “god damn you’s” floating up from down the block, mixed in with short and intermittent trumpets of car horns and the occasional rumbling of the bus.

Friday this older dude walked by Rachel briskly and said “I love you” to her in the same tone of voice he might have said “you dropped your scarf back there.” It’s like he was passing data to her in the most efficient way he could and it was quite the contrast to the guy who told me he thought I was beautiful. We passed that guy on Thursday, walking by Roosevelt Park, and he slowed way down as he passed us, smiled and almost tipped his hat at me.

Last night a guy in a van yelled out his window at me. RU, D and I had gone to dinner and everyone got decked out. Me in a tie and RU and D in hot black dresses. Afterwards we were walking to Bluestockings bookstore and the guy in the van yelled, “That’s no fair, you got two hot ladies. Not just one, but a lady on each arm.”

RU and I have seen a handful of famous people since we’ve been in NYC, most of them at the memorial for Peter Orlovsky, which included an amazing collaboration between Phillip Glass playing the piano and Patti Smith chanting Allen Ginsburg’s poem On the Cremation of Chögyam Trungpa, Vidyadhara. The event was held at St. Mark’s church, an East Village counter-cultural landmark and kind of the ground zero for poetry performance in the lower east side. The main room was packed with a pretty broad range of people, fans, friends, ex-lovers, as well as some St Marks regulars looking for a couple hours respite. RU and I ended up sitting in front of a guy who was a writer friend of Ginsburg’s, and I couldn’t help overhearing his conversation with who ever was sitting next to him. They talked about Ginsberg’s memorial, which the writer friend had spoken at, the sad state of writer biographies, the choices they’d have made about collecting art had they known their friend’s would have become so famous, and which is how I found out Robert Frank was also in attendance at the memorial, who I’d noticed when he walked in because Frank’s hair was standing up like my Dad’s did, and the bumblebee t-shirt and old dickies Frank was wearing reminded me of something my dad would have worn.

RU and I also saw Uma Thurman the other day in the lobby of my friend’s building. RU and I tried to act casual, like we stand right next to people like Uma every day.