Why I Love New York, Reasons #849 - #854

Because you get to wake up in a Polish neighborhood in Brooklyn that's a throwback to 1978 Krakow, but with better shoe stores.  On the carpet in front of you are the two biggest, fattest, laziest cats to greet you with a blank morning stare, which uncannily matches their blank afternoon stare and their blank evening stare.  One of them (the female) has woken you up at some ungodly morning hour by trying to pounce on your head, but you've found the spiritual space in which to forgive her.

You then shuttle your way into the city with a coffee of Stumptown in your hand from the Variety Café on Graham, and arrive early enough at your first meeting point to breakfast alone with your book--a brioche and a cup of coffee, both the approximate size and heft of one of those aforementioned cats.

About an hour later, some absolutely lovely woman, who has taken a chunk out of her busy day to talk with you, sits across from you, orders some food and beverage and we then proceed to have the most wonderful conversation, gabbing like we chicks do.  That interview, with Cactus Three's Julie Goldman, will be posted here soon, so that's something to look forward to.  I learned a lot; I hope you will, too.

Then on to visit some of my favorite peeps in New York and get my bag filled with DVDs to view--the good, the bad, the ugly.  Again, I learn lots.  And sometimes, I'm lucky enough to see an entire film, finished by the grace of whomever,  a year after my last viewing of said film when it was just a few minutes long, dubbed a "work-in-progress," but, nonetheless, wrenched my sensibility around pretty good about my naïve relationship with history and the repercussions of what that naïveté might entail.  I'm obsessed with history right now for some reason and have luckily been asked to expound upon those thoughts for some articles--I'll keep you posted on that.  But suffice to say, that this imperative of nonfiction filmmakers today seems to be, not unsubtly stated, that we must take over where the world's corporate media stops short.  And it's stopping shorter and shorter lately, have you noticed that?

Then I met up with a filmmaker with whom I'm working who makes it possible for me to have a living, breathing model of what a graceful creature a human being can be.  That's a good thing to aspire to, I think; especially when I'm twisted up like a pretzel in all kinds of ways about my life right now.  It'll all be okay; we'll get through this.  Sentiments not spoken out loud, but expressed in the ways that she trusts you and has confidence in you and sees the worth that's hiding under a bushel.  I'll stop here 'cause I'm welling up.

Suffice to say that I did the pretentious, incomprehensible art opening bullshit and then went to have a lovely meal in a French outdoor bistro (where actual French people eat) with two of the most interesting people I've met in awhile, most interesting because they're so open and so enigmatic, simultaneously.  If the company you keep is any indication of your view of yourself, then things are looking kind of okay.