new york, new york

last entry i guess....this is being written half in the morning still at graham's and half in the airport, reminiscing.

so yesterday i made it to MOMA in carol-time (which has backslid into half an hour behind normal time...used to be only about fifteen minutes....i am either getting better at being myself or getting worse). michael was with her, they were spending the weekend together before michael had some work thing early tuesday and my mom had to go back to work on monday. it was actually quite pleasant. i felt very independent and superbly superfluous, but it was all right. i think i may have had the most delicious salad of my life while in the restaurant: bacon-wrapped goat cheese and balsamic dressing. oh my god. fucking excellent.

the museum was great, all these fantastic picassos and warhols and cezannes...they had this one by gustav klimt that made me think i'd finally gotten a picture of what heaven should look like. it was this tree, and all you could see were the leaves and below them, in maybe the bottom three inches of the 3 square foot canvas, the sunlight peeked through the trunks and the grass was short and bright. it was amazing. and if you looked close up these gorgeous blue-green leaves had colors like yellow and pink and white that you just didn't see from far away. it was like seurat but graceful. there was a lot of scultpure that i didn't like, and this great photography exhibition by this guy (thomas demand) who creates sort of models of rooms or situations out of construction paper, photographs them, and then destroys the models. convincingly real and strangely artificial, kind of like this modern world. he had this one....he constructed an entire forest out of green construction paper--actually it looked very similar to the klimt--he must have made like 200,000 leaves. and it looked so real. it was cool.

i actually spent most of the time sitting on a bench and looking at the sculpture garden. very calming. i did a lot of thinking about things i've needed to think about and haven't had the time to. that's pretty much what this whole journey has been about.

after the museum i walked around rockefeller center and got stopped by a guy trying to find models for a contest. it was flattering but probably a lie. he gave me his card but i think i lost it. as if i could ever be a model anything. the whole afternoon was bright and warm and i almost went into H&M and bought a floaty dress but i had promised myself i wouldn't shop at all. but of course i did go into the Gap...just to look! i swear. and this guy goes, hey, how are you, welcome blah blah and i'm like, hi. and he goes, oh you're definitely not from new york, the way you say hi. he's like, are you from the midwest? (do i have an accent or don't i?) and i go, yes. and then he starts talking about this conga band he started in detroit and how many african people there are there and how he feels a real kinship with that city being african and all and i was like, yeah. detroit is cool. and we smiled understandingly and parted ways. i miss detroit, i realized, and walked out of the store.

new york can be so ridiculous, like you're on a movie set and everyone is an extra but they think the next corner they walk around someone is going to say, ok, we're shooting the big action scene and we need a blond, you're perfect, let's go! everyone is just, like, exploding with potential. it's all about believing in yourself, no matter how delusional. on the subway there i listened to the first lcd soundsystem cd (plus yr. city's a sucker) and on the way back i listened to beck's new album. that record gets pretty thoughtful towards the end. when i got back to the apartment andrew and graham had tried to fix the window and poor graham had this deep cut across the bridge of his nose from andrew trying to "help". we ordered chinese food and finished off the last of the pie on the roof, and i saw the sun set over the manhattan skyline from the rooftop of a brooklyn apartment. andrew and graham were their usual charming host-selves, pointing out things and cracking jokes. i spit from the roof and hit a trash can spot on. we went back dowstairs and watched the good parts of willy wonka (the parts with gene wilder) and fiddled with music for a while (get OurTunes now, you will not regret it) and made a beer run and played The Game (with tarot cards) all night. it was so much fun! "when is a bicycle not like a bicycle?" "when...graham." andrew tried to convince me to move in when jim moves out. i wish. if i could ever be lucky enough to be in close contact with people like graham and andrew i would be one lucky girl.

bedtime came after three pale ales and a conversation with max, and i was dead to the world for nine hours. mmm. finally started packing half an hour before i had to leave, after i made one final brooklyn mix for my iPod (oh god i am such a metrosexual), and caught a cab to the airport.

graham, it was one of the best weekends of my life, thank you. i can never thank you enough. you are magnificent.

so long, new york. for a weekend i was a part of it. yr city's a sucker, my city's a creep. i'm out.