Archive | City Matters

How Not to Make Friends

May 31, 2015 in Book Matters, City Matters

A One-Act Play.
Scene: Crowded New York City subway hurtling midtown.
Characters: Me, wearing dirty bun and caftan, reading Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. My seat mate, a female stranger roughly my age, clad in yoga gear and shiny blond hair.
Seatmate (looks down at my book, sniffs.) “I don’t like Carey Mulligan.”
Me (not looking up): “You’re in luck. She doesn’t star in the book.”
–fin–

The Church of High Priestess Mermaids

May 25, 2015 in Church Matters, City Matters, Weather Matters

My aging car Sadie has become permanently fritzy, so I decided to make these last three days a staycation. I’d have minded except the city is absolutely brilliant on holiday weekends, especially ones blessed with such agreeable weather. I wandered, alternately sola and accompanied, through park after park, festival after festival, barbecue after barbecue, reading on lawns, playing with others’ puppies, eavesdropping on benches, drinking wine in backyards, basking in early-morning movies. (3D Max Max in an empty theater; mimosa, bagels and lox smuggled in my purse.) I also got my laundry done, yessir. As I write this, my bedspread is strewn with treasures I collected from three of our five boroughs, and an awful lot of it is gold and lilac and purple and sky blue and turquoise and the deepest of blues. High priestess mermaid colors. Here’s to a really beautiful city summer, full of sirens of every sort.