Category — CMcCarthy

Yesterday, I took a stroll around the Lower East Side. Well, rather, I walked out of the dorms and got myself lost. But in getting lost, I found a lot more than I had expected.

I was on the lookout for E Houston St, and instead found Chinatown and Fuji-town, a few solemn synagogues, a few empty lots and a lot of ghosts. I took Richard Price’s advice, and looked up at all the history. Right now, if I look out my window, I see high-rise tenements with “For Sale” signs in Chinese, English, and who knows what. I see advertisements for leases, coca-cola and others amid weather-beaten bricks.

So naturally, my mind raced back to the reading. Richard Price’s quirky, sarcastic face popped up right in to my consciousness. His head floated around in my head as he pointed out all those little things I had never seen before, and soon I saw myself pointing them out to the friend I was with as well.

His face and advice are unforgettable to me. Not just because his hilarious story resonates so close to home, but for other reasons. The tone of his voice and his overall demeanor fascinated me. He seemed so familiar to me: a coach, a dad, a neighbor. Something about him was so odd to me; maybe it was how alike he was to my own father (in a complete opposite universe where my dad is a millionaire writer. I wish), and some of my friends as well.

It was apparent that Richard Price had a strong sense of community and that old-style Brooklyn (in his case, Bronx) sense of a close-knit neighborhood. I could see the subtle sadness in his eyes as he answered the questions about LES, and how this communal closeness has gone right out the window.

Tis a shame, but I still love LES just the same.

Call me old fashioned, call me weird, but the feel of a beautiful theater makes me tingle to my bones. There is just something about a well-respected stage that feels regal and intimidating – and Lincoln Center is the holy grail of soul-tingling theaters.

Even the word “theater” seems so inadequate. In no way can what I saw last Thursday night be called simply a “theater.” As I walked up Lincoln Center’s slippery stairs in my soaked, slippery shoes all else floated away. Conversation didn’t matter, the fact that I was severely underdressed didn’t matter, and the fact that I was drenched to the core didn’t matter. I set my eyes on the fountain, romantically lit by the large, elegant buildings surrounding the square. People were everywhere, almost gliding around in their suits and heels. I felt like I should have been hand in hand with Daddy Warbucks.

As I ran inside to keep my hair somewhat dry, I stopped dead in my tracks. I don’t think I’ve been so stupefied in my life – everything was so lovely. The huge marble staircases wrapped around the entrance, engulfing me and all the other opera-goers that night. Once I took my head out of the clouds, I was sitting down, people-watching. At that point I didn’t need to see the opera. What was more interesting, to me at least, were the people. Excited families sneaking pictures, old couples quietly waiting, Macaulay students chatting to each other. Pure human interaction and excitement.

I sat on the edge of my seat like a little kid at their first baseball game. As I watched for the chandeliers to rise (as a very knowledgable opera-goer I know pointed out would happen), I could not contain myself. I watched, transfixed, as the lights dimmed (the most exciting part!). The curtains opened, and I almost jumped in my seat I was so happy.

Call me weird, I love going to shows. There is something about those mysterious curtains, and the nervous chattering, and the lights dimming, that I just just can’t wait to see what’s in store. It probably has something to do with the feeling I get when I’m on the opposite side of the curtain.

The view from my side of the curtain, Thursday, was phenomenal. It was a blur of huge costumes and insane voices. I may have been more excited about the experience than I was the actual performance, but there is no harm in that. The performance was so alien to what I am used to on the stage that it was intriguing – the set up was so totally separate from the theater I know. But in it’s novelty, it became all the more fun.

I only dozed off once, and I am proud of that.

When having trouble describing a neighborhood, I look around. I do the Cha-Cha Slide: a slide to the left, then the right, then back. A mental tap-dance on the New York City map is all I need to get me in the right direction.

So when I needed to find a Rite Aid close by the dorm, I shimmied around the Lower East Side until I found it. A few taps to the right is Chinatown, to the left are some projects, with some hip little restaurants and dives in between.

As it turns out, the only Rite Aid on my dance floor was a jive to the left. The art galleries and boutiques gave way to factories and large housing projects. While marching down the blocks I saw a sad little book lying on its side, wet and worn-down, its title face-up for the world to mock.

“The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama” sighed the dog-eared pages of this melancholy little novel. The sight of the lonely block littered with nothing – no people, or stores – but this book, left a sour taste in my mouth. It made me chuckle at its irony, but overall was a pretty bitter image. I shook my head, took a snapshot, and reluctantly rumba’d on my way.

“The North side uses more butter, the South side actually uses more oil.”

Wait, what? I looked up from my computer up at my friend Frankie, cooking pan in hand.

“Oh, Italy?” Well, duh. I wasn’t exactly on my A-game, at midnight with a four page paper due in the morning. I dipped my finger absentmindedly in the jar of Nutella I had conveniently moved away from the cook.

“Yeah. Most people think that oil is the biggest ingredient in all Italian foods, but it’s totally not. In the North side, they actually only use butter. I don’t know, it’s something to do with the seasons. But crepes are French, so I don’t even know why it matters.”

I had no idea where they were from, or what they were made of, or why we were really even eating them. By the bottom of the Nutella jar, I had lost an hour and gained only one introductory paragraph to my essay. But, I learned something new. I looked around the kitchen from my white, food stained counter throne, and smiled to myself. And what did I spy but an Irish girl from Brooklyn who knows diddly-squat about cooking; a Russian girl from everywhere whose experience with Italian food stops at spaghetti; an Italian-Puerto Rican girl from the-middle-of-nowhere, Upstate whose cooking preference is primarily easy mac; and an Italian from Staten Island with cooking pan in hand and an endless stream of cooking remedies and anecdotes. All assembled for the common goal: procrastination. And on our path to procrastination, we actually found something interesting.

Also, we found out how FANTASTIC crepes are at one in the morning.

“Who are you?” wheezes the caterpillar, high on his mushroom pedestal. He blows smoke rings that engulf me completely, twisting and swirling their foggy tentacles around my thoughts.

The summer going into junior year of high school, I took up my first job so I could make that cash money flow. Except, the job wasn’t as glamorous as I had imagined. I somehow got a job as a “councelor” at an all-Asian Educational Camp. Or rather, Chinese summer school, starring the one and only non-Asian counselor, ME. I did not speak the language(s), I did not look like anyone they had ever seen before, and I was chosen to govern over a sea of 30-odd six-year-old kids took kindly to me.

Weaving and dodging through my classes, teaching English (and Spanish, that was interesting), Math and Science, I picked up on quite a few cultural differences. I forgot completely about this summer until reading The Bitter Sea, which instantly threw me back in the first paragraph.

Also, it helped me better understand where my students had been coming from, and their home life. I never really understood the strong ties between the family members, and how incredibly different the priorities are in Asian culture than in western.

Despite choppy narrative which may be excused by the author’s foreign nature, the book had a lot to teach me. It was difficult to get through, but I am very glad that I did.