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wish you were here
Apr. 17th, 2004 05:11 pmNew York doesn't have spring anymore, just summer and awful summer. Today is summer, and it's lovely. Aside from that, for reasons described in more detail below, I'd like to say that for the first time I feel like New York has recovered, and that we are, actually, really and truly, living in the 21st Century.
I got released from rehearsal early, being in only one scene in act 2, and went up to the drama bookshop to get casting dir. and agent mailing labels to get my postcards out.
Then I went down to the market at Union Square, where I bought sugarless oatmeal coconut cookies, sour dough rolls, cracked pepper goat cheese, a half gallon of cider, chocolate chip cookies from a woman with brilliant tattoos and mapple sugar candy. I looked a pheasant and turkey eggs, merino wool and jordan artichokes. Then I popped into Virgin and bought the AI DVD for ten dollars.
For most of the 80s and 90s, Union Square was under construction. It was constantly being dug up, drilled, hammered and fenced off. And while part of it was always open, part of it was always swatched in oange plastic, so you did your business there and kept moving. The truth is, no one ever really thought it would be finished.
And when it was, no one really knew what to do with it, other than the skateboard kids. It has a statue of Ghandi, and also years of the civil war carved into parts of the pavement. I first noticed those soon after I saw Gangs of New York. They were covered in snow, the numbers faint impressions and I cried.
Today, Union Square was the center of New York, in a way similar to, but entirely different from the way Washington Square Park has been seemingly forever. There was a group of college students doing warm up exercises before getting ready to go preach for god, and there was another random group having a bakesale for Kerry. Ther were groups protesting the treatment of the Palestinians in Israel and blaming Bush for 9/11. The LaRouchies were there too, but my main point is that everyone was happy, and laid back. We are living, not just in defiance of a terrible event, but in defiance of the misuse of our city and the lives it contains as a political and social symbol.
It should never have taken those buildings coming down for the rest of America to realize New Yorkers cared about their neighbors just like them. Nor should it have taken this misguided disaster of a war to make them forget it. I just watched hundreds of happy, politically aware people buy fresh food from small farmers and drink lemonade, so how is it that New York's link witht he rest of America is so tenuous -- both in our eyes and in theirs?
The Republican National Convention is coming here ths summer, and aside from protesting, and aside from protesting and building awareness of the things we believe and support here, as well as the way we live, the best thing we can really do, is be as remarkably present in the moment as the city seems today and content as best we can anyway.
Also, ran into![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sola on the way to work, and someone from Avenge! Additionally fell down some stairs at rehearsals, got saved from wacking my head by several cast members and have an utterly noxious bruise on my knee now.
I got released from rehearsal early, being in only one scene in act 2, and went up to the drama bookshop to get casting dir. and agent mailing labels to get my postcards out.
Then I went down to the market at Union Square, where I bought sugarless oatmeal coconut cookies, sour dough rolls, cracked pepper goat cheese, a half gallon of cider, chocolate chip cookies from a woman with brilliant tattoos and mapple sugar candy. I looked a pheasant and turkey eggs, merino wool and jordan artichokes. Then I popped into Virgin and bought the AI DVD for ten dollars.
For most of the 80s and 90s, Union Square was under construction. It was constantly being dug up, drilled, hammered and fenced off. And while part of it was always open, part of it was always swatched in oange plastic, so you did your business there and kept moving. The truth is, no one ever really thought it would be finished.
And when it was, no one really knew what to do with it, other than the skateboard kids. It has a statue of Ghandi, and also years of the civil war carved into parts of the pavement. I first noticed those soon after I saw Gangs of New York. They were covered in snow, the numbers faint impressions and I cried.
Today, Union Square was the center of New York, in a way similar to, but entirely different from the way Washington Square Park has been seemingly forever. There was a group of college students doing warm up exercises before getting ready to go preach for god, and there was another random group having a bakesale for Kerry. Ther were groups protesting the treatment of the Palestinians in Israel and blaming Bush for 9/11. The LaRouchies were there too, but my main point is that everyone was happy, and laid back. We are living, not just in defiance of a terrible event, but in defiance of the misuse of our city and the lives it contains as a political and social symbol.
It should never have taken those buildings coming down for the rest of America to realize New Yorkers cared about their neighbors just like them. Nor should it have taken this misguided disaster of a war to make them forget it. I just watched hundreds of happy, politically aware people buy fresh food from small farmers and drink lemonade, so how is it that New York's link witht he rest of America is so tenuous -- both in our eyes and in theirs?
The Republican National Convention is coming here ths summer, and aside from protesting, and aside from protesting and building awareness of the things we believe and support here, as well as the way we live, the best thing we can really do, is be as remarkably present in the moment as the city seems today and content as best we can anyway.
Also, ran into
sola on the way to work, and someone from Avenge! Additionally fell down some stairs at rehearsals, got saved from wacking my head by several cast members and have an utterly noxious bruise on my knee now.
