cosmopolitan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vorgefuhl/sets/72157603921870920/

I don't think it would have been possible to do more on that trip than I did. I musta met two dozen new people, got picked up on while sitting in the time warner center, partied with grad students in boston, saw jon stewart with a slightly bewildered but very enthusiastic japanese friend, saw the jack kerouac scroll, sort of got thrown out of a bar (I think - it's a strange but not terribly interesting story). not to mention all the museums, coffee shops, parks, homeless people, striking writers, cranky subway passengers, cigarettes, powerhouse wallstreet businessmen, snow and pastries and people!

it's like shit, I fucking LOVE that city so much.

jodie and I were sort of wandering around 42nd street-ish area, looking for rockefeller center (still don't know where the hell that is, despite the fact that the subway supposedly gets off right there) and we suddenly came upon the library, and jack kerouac's "on the road" scroll was inside, so we rushed in! so now I have made the pilgrimage (and yes, I have the t-shirt)!

and well, first my sister and then jodie were supposed to see the daily show with me, but they couldn't make it so I took someone who was staying in the hostel with me. we stood in line - it snowed the whole time - and talked about the difference between japanese and american politics. suffice to say, the daily show would never ever exist in japan.

I did not get a chance to propose to jon (next time), but I did eagle-eye him for the hour we sat in his studio (which is situated in a really weird part of manhattan, by the way). he was interviewing an insufferably stupid conservative commentator, and I couldn't understand why the guy even agrees to go on the show until I gathered my faculties and realized that I was in a TV studio, which meant that I was watching TV being made, which meant that it was not real. and that was my big revelation: the daily show is not real. I still love you, jon, but my eyes have been opened. it's all entertainment, except the five seconds a day when it isn't; when you asked the buffoon, for example, "what do you think about torture" and he couldn't give a clear position and afterward you said, moments like that make me realize that everyone is human and we might all be okay afterward.

I have other overtures to write, about how sublime and necessary it is to have a giant park in the center of a city, and about self-important bankers who whirl past you on escalators, and airplanes and rivers. basically I need everything I did there to last me the next two months, the last I will ever work at my current job.

there is nothing more jarring, also, than going from a very fast and cramped city to a slow and spacious town. I swear my heartrate even slowed. not to mention that I had been sloshing through rain and snow, and I return to california to find it's apparently the middle of may.