NYC - In retrospect

If there's a doctor for every malady (as some presume there's a solution even if its simply that non-sequitur "time") then the conversation and comraderie of old friends and new with a large helping of good food was my personal physician.

I started saturday with a trip to the WTC sight. I didn't know what to expect but I had an idea of it. I wondered, as I rode the train, how would Simonides immortalize those two titans? I couldn't help to think that I would only see it as a big hole in the ground, a construction site that was yet to be finished, or even begun for that matter. Unlike the post 9-11 state of mind where everyone became a New Yorker, the twins were never a part of the landscape of my imagination. I remember the photos I took in 99 that caught them like stalagtites in the background. The last image was taken from the back of a cab heading to JFK and you couldn't imagine the skyline without them there. The site is fenced off and people come to see it. I wondered what they were feeling, how the language that all the various individuals spoke helped them make sense of something that was probably removed from their day to day lives. I wondered if the memorial would be sufficient and how thick the mythology would be twisting both the language it uses to be remembered and the manifesto of terms we are now inundated with.

From there it was a trip to St. Mark's Bookstore in the village where I had coffee at the Cloister cafe, overgrown with vines and then it was off to the empire state to climb babel. I bought the express ticket as I was running out of time and was bound to be heading back to Brooklyn sooner than later, for our trip to Brighton Beach. Yes, its a terrible waste of money, but it felt great to walk to the front of every single line and choose the pace of my viewing experience instead of waiting in the snaking lines of humanity. When I reached the top I suddenly remembered that this was now, as it was over 30 years ago, the tallest point in the city (if I'm not mistaken) and sitauted there in the center, king to the heavens. How did G-d find this shinning emblem of art deco(dance)? Was there further confusion to be had in our restless and unending search for the principium individuationis? Who knows, but there was an incredible peace with 25 miles of visibility on an absolutely wonderful wind swept september afternoon that even with the bustling throng 86 stories above reality, it was clear and thick, calm, humbling and just a little jaw dropping.

that ornate antenna

south toward downtown & the statue in the bay

north toward central park & uptown

self portrait looking north photographing south

The Q runs out to Coney Island and somewhere along that bumpy trip that exposed more and more of the stations track before and after to light, and the amassed trash, we found our stop: Brighton Beach (little odessa, or as the signs say, little russia by the sea.) I can't say I love it, but I was amused by the absolute saturation. This is a neighborhood that has been taken over and morphed into something that is now a collective mockery of a place so vastly distant and different that I'm not sure either exists except as a subjective mirror representation of historical gentrification. I've heard that the neighborhood was very poor and run down, not sure about this but I'm sure I'll find out once I do a bit more research. Its an odd place. I can hear my mother tongue here and there, the images of Russian mobsters seem to exist and hang on the very footfalls of every slick haired russkie going to and fro. People stroll the streets as I had sen them do in the nieghborhood of Sokol in Moscow. We walked the three or four blocks to the end of the strip where Cafe Kashkar, small, unassuming, demure even. What lurks in that kitchen is nothing short of Zorba's "God-Devil", the one that makes you made and lifts you up at the same time. I think M- summed it up best at 2 in the morning "I want more, that stuff is addictive!" The food hit the spot, we had a feast of Lagman, Shurpa, Samsa, Eggplant Salad, Glass Noodle Salad, 3 Different kinds of meat in the form of Shashlik, several pots of tea, 3/4 of a liter of vodka, four Baltikas and a leposhka. Yeah, we ate, we stuffed ourselves with onion and lamb and all rocked to the rhythm of Tajik music that seemed fit for belly dancing. It was a pleasure I hadn't had since St. Petersburg and Caravan Saray. I'm ready to go down to LA and see if Uzbekistania on Sunset is any good. Damn, I want more too.

Sated, full of food and drink we sauntered down the street stopping at the gastronoms to fill M-'s backpack and giggle our drunken heads off. This was both the end and the beginning of the night as it found us dancing to Beck, drinking a liter of wine and then a pitcher of beer as we wandered through Park Slope grapsing at the receeding tatters of the night that weighed down by both night and our day to day jobs, makes keeping up the pace of our super human efforts in Russia a near impossibility. Still, it was excellent and I feel richer for the experience despite the hangover the next morning as I rode to JFK.

Thank you NYC and friends...

Tom, Masha, Kristen
post Uzbeki bliss
(waiting for the Q)