Stop #1 on the OMG Look At The Blessings tour was reached yesterday after travel that begged to be a metaphor in this entry but was probably just travel. I had to check my beautifully packed carry-on bag because there was no room left in the overheads (because no one wants to pay for checking their bags and IT'S LIKE THE GODDAMN GRAPES OF WRATH...um, anyway). We started late in bad weather, enjoying turbulence all the way from IAH to PHI that halted beverage service and made it impossible to read. I massaged my thumb and tried to stay with the discomfort. We landed late, 15 minutes before my connecting flight, which was in a turboprop, which I hate, and I ran all the way there. However! The short hop to LGA featured a spectacular sunset through the calming yet still dramatic clouds. There were Germans sitting next to me and we had a fun, shouty (hello, turboprop) Unterhaltung. And at the airport, there was my bag!
On to the Astoria apartment of TR, Cookbook editor and webgoddess. TR sang in the first opera I ever played. Arizona State, the Reagan years: she was a talented undergraduate and I was accidentally playing rehearsals out of a need for cash. I had to learn Cosi fan tutte in some crazy short amount of time, and after locking myself in a small room to be ravished by Wolfgang and Lorenzo, I was forever changed. TR and I lost touch with each other after school, but life in NY brought us back together (like it does). We have a great serendipitous/random/surprising web of connecting artist friends (like you do), and we checked up on most of them as I devoured a plate of her signature roast lamb with a salt potato, perfect salad, and a cucumber soup shooter. Extra bonus surprise friend MS was there too, as was TR's superhero husband when he came home late from his cool job making bad television. That, my friends, is a bona fide travel day.
Six hours of dead sleep later, I was wide awake on my Aerobed, wishing for more shuteye but knowing there'd be none since, oh, I'm flying to Austria today. So I'm up drinking TR's heavenly coffee and writing out at another serendipitous/random/surprising web of connecting friends. Good morning/Gruess' Gott. It's a beautiful sunny morning in Astoria, and it was beautiful to see the Manhattan skyline come into view last night, and it is heart-opening to sit in my friend's living room surrounded by all the parts of a New York life.
time isn't holding us
time isn't after us
same as it ever was
same as it ever was
dkz
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