New York City. July. Summer. Hot.
I’m still walking on the left, crossing wrong, horns honking, people moving as one and a sea of bodies, grid lock, body lock, couldn’t move, waited for the flow to move me away, away from them, walking walking, walking, familiar sites, Empire State Building, Broadway, (The Color Purple is now a musical), Madison Square, Times Square, heat so heavy and hot you can see it, vapor rises and is stuck above my head, pushing on my shoulders. I craved something in nature. I made my way to Central Park, walked over thirty blocks in my cowboy boots, feet throbbing, I hit the grass, laid down on my back, head on backpack and inhaled deeply, nothing more sweet then grass when you haven’t touched it in a week.
The day I arrived in New York, TV broadcast the 'Sex and the City' episode I was in, so friends say, ‘hey, I just saw you in.... I was thinking of you because I saw you in... ‘ It’s such a small part I’m flattered people knew it was me so with confidence I headed off to an agent who called me, ‘Come in so we can get a look at ya.’ He gave me a full minute of his time, but I may be exaggerating by ten seconds; he sized me up in three seconds and said, ‘you’re a redhead, your resume says blonde, you should change it.’ I thanked him profusely while he eyed his lunch waiting for me to split. Back on the street I bought a cotton dress for $10. This is the New York I remember, street vendors including those selling hot dogs in a vat of boiling water with a smell like old sox on every other corner. I miss Thelma and Louise, my two islands from my sea view who appeared with the tide out my window in NZ. And no fantails in New York City follow me, eyeing me with curiosity. But we do have birds here. I heard them in the park.
I went to a party and saw friends I haven't seen in so long, they didn't even know I was gone. This summer there is Hamlet in the Parking Lot, a Lower East Side annual summer event. A theatrical group performs Shakespeare every summer. If you are lucky you might see a local drunk who will walk right onto the pavement, into the performance space, stop and watch, then the audience begins to laugh, he (or she) will look at the audience, smile and continue watching, sometimes walk away, oblivious, sometimes not.
I'm staying in Olivia's apartment on Canal Street in Chinatown, part of the new Lower East Side. New and improved. Average rent two to three thousand a month. There are two bars below me, both with enthusiastic patrons. The building shakes from the subway, not unlike the soft earthquakes I felt in my cottage in Plimmerton. The sounds of helicopters are now part of my sound landscape along with the garbage trucks that arrive promptly at 4 a.m. at the moment when I’m about to fall asleep. Jet lag is a drag.
