Dream Interpretation Alert!

Worked at home today. How is this bold? Well, it's way too handy to take a nap, which I did do (I sometimes "close my eyes a minute" in my serious grownup office as well, but somehow that feels less risky.)

Daytime naps are notorious for producing weird dreams and this one threw me into a drama that felt portentous. As follows:

I was in a house where a spider more than a foot in diameter kept appearing and re-appearing. It was both very disturbing and a little interesting; each heavy segment of its body was a different color, with a skin of what looked like baked-on enamel.

My brother Franc caught sight of it too. We agreed that you couldn't just step on something like that: "it would be like stepping on a rabbit."

The spider signalled to me, nonverbally, that it needed paper and a pen to write something down. I provided these. With one leg the spider wrote something in a sort of shorthand; in the dream I understood it to mean: housewares. But I didn't know what to make of that. I'm not especially domestic, awake or asleep.

When I woke up, I also thought: Ho Wares or Ho Wears. (Prostitution is an element in a novel of mine.) House also brought to mind "publishing house."

Anyway, it felt important. And writing-related, but maybe not.

I know that telling one's dreams outside the company of students of dreams can be considered tedious and obnoxious.

But it so grabbed me that I can't resist. If it triggers associations in you, I'd love to hear.





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Back in the Saddle

First day back in the office after my 18 day Extra Life in NY.

I arrived with the bold resolve to: "not be a workaholic drudge with eyestrain."

The day has been no shorter than usual. But I've certainly been more relaxed. Not once all day have I thought while doing one piece of work that I really should be doing another.

However, I find that I'm the only person working today in my five-person office building. Very quiet. Do you suppose they've all run off to have extra lives? (I do know that one is taking her son off to school, which is certainly the start of a new life.)



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A Bold Confession or Observation or Something.

You'll have to admit, it takes some cheek to say this:

My focus is shifting from accomplishing things to having fun.

I noticed this during my recent 18-day extra life in New York. I did accomplish a few things, both for clients and myself. But I didn't drive myself crazy over it. And it's entirely possible that the results were, as a result, better.

But whether they were or not, I feel my devotion to self-discipline fading.

I meant to lose three pounds in all that walking in New York. But did I? No, I ate ice cream at some point on probably every hike. On the morning of my return, I weighed exactly the same amount, to the tenth of a pound as I did the day I left. And didn't berate myself about it. (I used to have an eating disorder, so this is significant.)

And I didn't go straight to my office after my overnight bus ride home from Manhattan. In fact, I haven't been there yet. Instead I've been hanging out with Husband Bob and catching up on a few things at home. After all, it's the weekend. And the Emmies are on tonight.

This hedonism may fade; I've seen it happen before. Or it may hang around, and then we'll just see what happens....

In the meantime, it's a good thing that on most days I love doing most of my work.





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My Bold Bonus Life: 18

Friday was the final day of my 18-day extra life as a New Yorker. As Audrey Hepburn at 28.

This two-weeks-and-four-days experience was a tremendous success for me. I loved it. I do feel satisfied now that I've had a Manhattan life. Just as I feel satisfied that I had a life in India, in the three months I spent there researching my novel Sister India.

These were not mere trips. They felt entirely different. They included laundry, and ups and downs, and seasonal change, and neighbors. And enough time to dabble, and get lost, and have second chances.

I feel so lucky and grateful to have gotten to do this. And I'd had my mind set on it for almost two years, so I'd really built up an appetite.

My last day was, as usual, a long long walk. Some of it in circles. I decided to "do" a large chunk of the East Side, especially the area sometimes known as Spanish Harlem. I began by setting out to walk from the West Side apartment across Central Park. I decided I knew the place well enough by now that I could take a path instead of following the road.

After 30 or 40 minutes of walking, I saw traffic and buildings ahead. Success! I walked a few blocks into what I took to be the East Side. Then came upon Broadway. But that's on the West Side!! I'd made a great loop through the park and come back close to where I'd started.

So I headed back into the park and this time came out on the other side. Took a subway north to begin my walk back.

Then I got off the train too soon and saw only a few blocks of Mexican restaurants, and a Dominican one (harking back to the Dominican Day parade on my arrival day) and was soon into the cushiest neighborhood of New York, browsing designer windows. On an earlier day I might have gotten back on the subway and started again. But I was running down. I decided to settle for luxe window shopping, with an emphasis on shoes.

Food report: prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich.

Photo report: random things that caught my eye, including moss between stones on a wall in Central Park (a visual metaphor?).


That night, my overnight, amazing-bargain-for-$30, express bus was to leave Chinatown at 10 p.m. For about twenty tense minutes, I thought I was going to miss it. Once again on this last day, Manhattan took the opportunity to show me that I didn't exactly have a grip on the place.

First, the subway ride was longer than I thought. Then, for the second time in the day, I confusedly got off a stop too soon. Then got bad directions and ran in the wrong direction with computer and heavy, heavy suitcase. Realized I'd gone wrong, and picked up speed in the other direction. Then thought: Get a cab, you idiot! (My sweet shrink husband Bob says to me at such moments: Don't talk that way to my wife.)

Cabs passed me by. With luggage, I looked as if I were heading for the airport at a time when it would be hard to get a fare back.

Finally, a nice driver stopped for me. He hadn't heard the name of the cross street before, but we figured it out. Got there only about 30 seconds after the supposed deadline.

The bus was then delayed a full half hour, waiting for three people who were running late.

The ride back wasn't as easy as the straight-through bus ride that had brought me to New York. This time, we stopped twice. Each time the bus driver turned on the lights and announced a ten minute break. Thus waking everyone who'd gone to sleep. Twice that happened.

In the morning, we rolled back onto my home turf. Exhausted, I went home and went to bed.

Didn't even blog.

Now, a day later, I'm recovered. I'm back in the regular life I most want: living with Bob out in the country, driving most days to my little office in Raleigh. I also have the full feeling of just having had a whole extra life-- in Manhattan.

I so love this idea of tucking in a bonus life.

I mean to keep writing on the subject here -- different kinds of extra lives, and how to make them happen. What could be bolder?

I'd love to hear your story about your own such experiences, and the one you're planning.




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My Bold Bonus Life: 17

On my penultimate day as a 28 year-old New Yorker (my mini-life on the Upper West Side ends tomorrow), I took a bus to the Bronx.

It was the borough I hadn't yet hit. And I wanted to see it slowly and aboveground instead of popping up out of a subway. The part I saw around 145th, not far across the river, was jammed with fast food and bargain stores and sidewalk merchandise. Lots of narrow and crammed-full stores. One heavily devoted to voodoo. I chose one devoted to ice cream as my turn-around point for heading back to Manhattan. Food report: pralines and cream.

Earlier in the day, I'd had the best bagel of my life (this 18-day one at least) at Hot & Crusty, a bakery/deli a few blocks from the apartment. Twice before I'd been there and not been able to find a table. This told me to keep trying. I was glad I did.



Then for dinner tonight: pasta at Bella Luna, also nearby: cappellini with broccoli that was neither too raw nor too cooked and sun-dried tomatoes and warm goat cheese, etc.

I'm slowing down in the amount of New York I cover in a day, definitely on a trajectory toward my regular life.

At the same time, I feel as if I have all the time in the world. No need to cram anything in, which is a relief, because I'd never be able to cram it all in, even if I had two more days.

I like this feeling about time. I hope it follows me back into my Main Menu life.


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My Bold Bonus Life: 16

I revisited some of my New York past yesterday. That's probably an important piece of an extra bonus life like my 18 days as a Manhattanite.

First, I had a very pleasant coffee and re-connect with the literary agent who sold my first novel, Revelation and The Healing Power of Doing Good, and with one of her colleagues.

Then, by chance, I wandered past the famously artsy hotel, the Chelsea (in photo), where I spent a week in the mid-70s at $11 a night. My room included a dead refrigerator, an appliance that was landfill-ready. There were and are much more splendid rooms available.

But the aura of the place was fabulous. From the website:

"...The hotel has an ornate history, both as a birth place of creative modern art and home of bad behavior. Bob Dylan composed songs while staying at the Chelsea, and poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso chose it as a place for philosophical and intellectual exchange. It is also known as the place where the writer Dylan Thomas died of alcohol poisoning on in 1953, and where Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols may have stabbed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, to death on October 12, 1978.

Famous visitors and residents of the Chelsea Hotel include Eugene O'Neil, Thomas Wolfe, and Arthur C. Clarke (who wrote 2001: A Space Oddyssey while in residence). Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead passed through the hotels doors in the 1960s.

Virgil Thompson, Larry Rivers, William Burroughs, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Patti Smith, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Quentin Crisp, and many, many others stayed here too."


As usual, I walked and walked, in the West Village and Chelsea areas, the Meatpacking district (boutiques and nightclubs), and along a section of the new High Line, an elevated train track turned into a garden walkway with views of city and Hudson River. A quick turn through the design museum at FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Then attended another good play in the NYC Fringe Festival. This one, Miss Magnolia Beaumont Goes to Provincetown. It's about an antebellum belle who takes up residence in the body of a 33 year old gay man. She helps him with his emotional problems and his interpersonal skills during a trip to the beach. Funny and good.

I took exception to the critical review in The New York Times yesterday of the festival. The writer bashed the whole series based on a handful of plays out of the roughly 200 staged. Okay, I guess if I'd hit four duds, I'd be mad. But three out of the four I've seen have been very engaging.

Food Report: cheese blintzes for lunch and a milkshake and sweet potato French fries for dinner. A shake at the sleek burger joint had won top billing in New York magazine. I plan to eat lots of leafy green vegetables when I return to my regular life where I don't walk all day. As a hiker fitting a lot into a short-term life, I really do need to load carbs.



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My Bold Bonus Life: 15

Audrey Hepburn came home.

For new arrivals here, this is the way I think of the New Yorker whose apartment I'm "sitting" in for my extra mini-life as a Manhattanite. Her glamorous job called her back a few days earlier than she'd planned; she's now staying with a friend so that I can finish out my life here.

It was a happy meeting. (She's the daughter of a friend of a friend and we'd never set eyes on each other before; though, after two weeks in her sunlit studio, I felt I knew her pretty well.)

Well, she's everything you'd expect of Audrey, plus outgoing and at ease. And totally unworried about the health of her plants in my charge. (see plant crisis)

Yesterday turned out differently than I'd planned. This is not a new phenomenon in any of my lives. It was chilly and raining pretty vigorously when I went out. By the time I'd walked a few blocks, my shoes were soaked through as were my jeans to a level up above my knees. No museums or long hikes.

I came back to the apartment and worked most of the day, except for a break for my first-ever bowl of matzoh ball soup at a nearby deli and my late-afternoon meeting with Audrey.

Then last night, dinner at a little place I stumbled upon near the little theater where I was going to see another of the Fringe NYC festival's plays. Mission Cafe is what I think of as a shotgun restaurant: one narrow room with a bar on one side and a single line of tables on the other. (see photo above)

I ordered one of the dinner specials: a deep bowl of penne with shrimp and salmon, with bread plus olive oil to sop it in, and a glass of pinot grigio, all for $10.95. And it was all good!

The evening's Fringe play was Faye Lane's Beauty Shop Stories: a one-woman musical about her growing up in Texas in her mom's beauty parlor. I didn't realize that comedian Joan Rivers had attended the play the night before and the word of this had spread as a sort of endorsement. On this last night of the run a crowd was waiting outside the door.

I got in line. There were eight tickets left. I was number eleven in the queue. The two guys in front of me left. I was number nine. Waiting, I chatted with the Dutch theater studies student in front of me who was reviewing the festival for a Dutch online publication. (I'd find the idea of reviewing a string of plays in Dutch a little daunting.)

The line started to move. The student reviewer in front of me apologetically got the last available ticket. I was told to wait; maybe some of the press seats wouldn't fill. I leaned against the box office window and chatted with the woman who sold tickets.

The line of admirable people who had planned well and bought their tickets in advance filed past us into the La Ma Ma theater. We waited. Then: two more tickets. One for me and one for the tall texting fellow behind me. I didn't even have to be the one to smile ruefully at whoever was first to be turned away.

The show itself was a delight. "Volumptious" Faye Lane told and sang her story of being a fat little girl doing song and dance before the captive audience of women under hair dryers. And then as a young woman selling everything she had and lighting out of Texas with $1100 and a ticket to London.

Spoiler Alert: In her first three days in London she met and moved in with actor Anthony Hopkins' daughter and had a director ask to do a movie of her life. Six months later flying back into England after a trip to Cannes, she was given 24 hours to leave the country because she didn't have a work or student visa.

The next day she was back in Texas. Two days after that she answered the pay phone in the beauty parlor where she was again at work: "Casa Vale Beauty Shop." It was the director. He asked her to marry him. They rendezvoused at the Chelsea Hotel in NY, and "never checked out."

Their twentieth anniversary is next week. Faye Lane gave a warmly emotional performance that felt fresh and genuine. I got the strong impression that "the director" was in the audience up near the front on the left side last night.

Guests leaving the show were each given a banana Moon Pie, an important item in the life of the young beauty shop star. Faye Lane stood out on the sidewalk (see photo) greeting people at the end of the show.

I never expected to end the day walking through the East Village eating a banana Moon Pie. But you never know how things are going to go.


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My Bold Bonus Life: 14

Audrey Hepburn is coming back to town today. That's how I think of the young woman who is letting me use her apartment for my 18 day bonus life in Manhattan. l

Audrey is a few days early and is graciously staying with a friend so that I can finish my extra life here.

Her terrace plants are doing well (see above)-- except for the one I 90% killed, then replaced.

Interesting note on the outcome of that hectic crisis: Audrey said don't worry about it, that all the plants would be gone in a couple of months anyway.

So I didn't need to ransack the field of horticulture and tote the crispy plant around Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. On the other hand, that little maelstrom led to some shoe-leather plant detective work that became a mini-adventure (except for the hand-wringing.) And it put me back in touch with a guy I knew in high school and hadn't talked with since. Now an agricultural extension agent, he said it might well recover, but in the meantime to hope it hadn't come from a now-deceased child.

Rainy and marvelously cool here. Have plans for a museum and another of the Fringe NYC plays.




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My Bold Bonus Life: 13

A cool rainy Sunday in my extra life in Manhattan: a rousingly good church service, a three-hour brunch-with-live-jazz with good friends who'd driven up from Philadelphia, then an excellent late-afternoon play in a small theater with audience discussion with the playwright and composer afterwards. Then, of course, the long walk and the frozen dairy product, this time a roasted almond fro-yo in a sugar cone.

It has been decades since I was a regular church-goer: roughly since I moved in with my husband in our house out in the country 40 minutes from the church I used to attend.

Today's service makes me want to go back. From the website: "Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village defines itself as 'a church in the Christian tradition' and 'a sanctuary for progressive activism and artistic expression.'"

The congregation endorses and works for peace without asking everybody to hug the person to their right, which always annoys me. Here people introduced themselves to me afterwards without even being prompted, which I did like.

Wonderful lunch and conversation nearby at Cafe Loup with friends Anne and Al. Anne and I met 32 years ago at Berkeley when we'd both won NEH grants for nonfiction writers to spend a month there studying fiction. (That was another bonus life I lived once. In fact, this is probably my third extra life.) Food report: eggs Benedict -- very good -- and chardonnay.

The 4:30 play was Dear Harvey, about San Francisco gay politician and human rights advocate Harvey Milk, who, with the city's mayor, was assassinated by a fellow city council member. This was part of the ongoing Fringe NYC festival.

I almost gave up on this festival because I didn't like the first play I saw. Glad I changed my mind. This one was the perfect bookend to the morning's church service. Heart-stirring and inspiring to action. Milk showed that if one person takes a stand and sticks by it, he/she can accomplish remarkable things.

Or, as Cleve Jones, the creator of the AIDS quilt, says in the play: "You can be this totally ordinary person with this really fucked up life but if you have courage and speak the truth and are willing to stick it out, it's amazing what you can do."





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My Bold Bonus Life: 12

This splendid orb was created for the 100th dropping of a Times Square New Year's Eve ball. The New York Times started the practice in 1907. This piece was made by Waterford Crystal and a lighting company in 2007 to commemorate the century of these celebrations.

This ball now sits in the Times Square Visitors Center, with an inspiring commentary:"The ball has always been a physical symbol of second chances, new starts, powerful memories, and the promise of the future...."

I've watched the ball fall on TV many a time, but never thought of it that way. Now I will. Another legacy-to-be of my extra life-within-a-life in New York.


Today's explorations took me to the downtown tip of the island of Manhattan and across to Staten Island, then up to 125th Street and Harlem.

Some of the best adventures of the day, and of this "life," have come from taking the wrong train, or direction. I have a lot less patience with my wrong turns at home; it will take effort to bring that attitude back home.

Today was one of the "Summer Streets" Saturdays when about 7 miles of Park Avenue were closed to cars, and given over to walkers and bikers and bladers, etc. I walked about 30 blocks of that distance, and it was an interesting sensation to stroll down the middle of Park Avenue. Also noted, I became used to it surprisingly quickly.

An interesting bit of re-purpose transformation was part of this summery occasion: "dumpster pools." Clean, unused shipping containers were transformed into swimming pools, three of them open for splashing at 40th and Park. Very imaginative, though the idea of trash still floated in my head.


After a bit of lunch (food report: granola, with fresh raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, etc.) I decided on a boat ride. I'd never taken the ferry over to Staten Island at the bottom of Manhattan. Felt a welcome swell of patriotism, and pro-freedom fervor, as we cruised past the Statue of Liberty with her lighted torch.

Like a lot of passengers, I took the ferry for the boat ride. But then I decided to stay, walked around for a while in the historic part of Staten Island, old dark-shingle houses along such quiet streets. And hills! I hadn't expected such steep climbs.

Landing again in Manhattan, I was set to come back to the apartment, but decided to linger long enough to find a scoop of ice cream. By the time I'd found it, I'd visited Wall Street and the site of the World Trade Center, which I wrote here just yesterday that I didn't want to see. I'd feared it was asking for unnecessary pain to go there. But the familiar images of the attack were not there, nor did I see the visitor's center and thought there wasn't one there. I found myself instead looking at cranes, at a construction site that I didn't recognize at all.

Once again an effort to head "home," but: wrong train. I took an express rather than a local and thus overshot by about forty blocks. Which landed me on a wide commercial street of Harlem at dusk on a Saturday night. I emerged from the subway onto such a crowded festive-feeling sidewalk, I decided to wander a while before finding the "right" train.

Happening upon the famous Apollo Theater, where Billie Holliday, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and so many others launched their careers. I peered in, admired the chandeliers. A poster outside said that Tracy Morgan, who is on the short list of comedians I find really funny, would be taping a show there for HBO. But the place was locked up, and I didn't know how long I'd have to wait, and so moved on. (Turns out I'd have had to wait until a Friday in September, guess I didn't read that poster too carefully.)

Then I got a bit lost; asked a woman which direction Central Park was, as a way of getting oriented. She said, "Central Park? You're a long way from there. You have to go to Manhattan for that. You're in Harlem."

But Harlem is part of Manhattan and Central Park was only a couple of dozen blocks to the south; it was as if she was in a different world. That I find troubling.

The next train ride was the last of the day, took me back to the apartment. I'd like to be able to pack this much into a Saturday at home.





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My Bold Bonus Life: 12

Food report from my bonus 18-day life in Manhattan: above you'll see a lamb kofta burger from a fine establishment called 5 Napkin Burger.

It was impressively good. And as juicy as advertised. In fact, 5 napkins were not enough; I needed a bib, really wrecked my shirt.

Speaking of wreckage, here's the update on yesterday's crisis with the plant that I'm supposed to be plant-sitting for here that I allowed to dry up. (All the other plants around it were fine?!) Thank you for the sympathy and advice that came pouring in. People all over the country have pondered over this plant. No one has yet been able to identify it, including the person in the library at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens where I took it this afternoon for a consult. She's going to do further checking and get back to me. I've yet to hear back from the vacationing Audrey Hepburn who owns this apartment and its plants.

In the meantime, I bought a nice jasmine at the BBG to fill the space in the bank of terrace plants that was like a missing front tooth. And have done what I can to start the wounded one into recovery; in the days to come, we shall see....

And I am pretty much psychologically recovered. I suppose there had to be a crisis if this was going to be a real mini-life. I hope I have that covered now.

Rest of the day quite busy. I'd decided I had to get a grip on my schedule. Without office hours or Husband Bob to keep me in line, sleep had been sliding all over the place. (Probably not surprising in the setting up of a mini-life. At first, it's like going off to school....)

Today I was up-and-at-'em by the not-too-taxing hour of eight. Had time for a cruise through Saks and some perfume testing, before hitting the Matisse show at Moma. (Bathers by a River repeatedly caused me shivers, don't know why; but it's widely considered a masterpiece so there's something at work there).

A very strange installation by Bruce Nauman also stopped me. It was a room full of recorded voices repeating the names of days over and over. The idea at first seemed to me somehow sophomoric, and then when I first walked in: insane. And then I was very taken by it. The names of days coming from every direction felt like time hurrying, something I'm quite conscious of, more in my regular life than in this bonus life.

After my afternoon gardening consult in Brooklyn, I headed for "home", but took the wrong train. Wound up zooming out to Queens. When I realized this, I decided to just keep going. I'd meant to go out to Astoria anyway, had heard it was the largest Greek community outside of Greece, and seemed important to my multi-national tour of the boroughs.

My short walk in Astoria, hauling two large plants still, was in a pleasant downtown largely-residential neighborhood, with Greek and Latin people seeming to predominate. Lots of Greek names on businesses, but no Greek-Island-style houses climbing hills from the dazzling blue sea. I was only there about an hour, maybe I missed them.

Food report from this afternoon: a cup of chocolate frozen yogurt in Astoria and one of chocolate ice cream in Brooklyn. A traveling feast.

Back in Manhattan, still hauling the two plants, I browsed through Bloomingdale's which was an elegant Friday night carnival. As I finally headed to the apartment, one of the drivers of the Central Park horse buggies,nodded at my two plant sacks and called out to me, "You better clean out those bags. There's stuff growing out of them."


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My Bold Bonus Life: 11

Well, I screwed up.

I'm here in New York apartment-sitting, with the simple duties of watering the plants and bringing in the mail. You'd think I could handle that.

But I let one of the plants on the terrace go too long without water. Its prognosis is now iffy.

I've sent my confession and apology to Audrey Hepburn (that's the way I think of the New Yorker who owns this apartment). I didn't want her to discover the news here first.

I feel bad.

And, as regular readers here may already know, I have a touch of mild-to-medium obsessive-compulsive disorder of the type known as scrupulosity: fear of doing wrong, of accidentally hurting somebody, that sort of thing.

I've done the best I can to turn my upset to action to fix the situation as well as possible. I'm trying to ID the plant. Have sent photos of the troubled creature to two NY Botanic Gardens and an extension agent back home in NC. Been to three plant stores this afternoon. No help. At one of them, the guy didn't know a leaf from a stem. (I should talk!)

In the meantime, I'm hoping that watering and misting and staring at the plant will help.

Again, I'm sorry, Audrey Hepburn and my friends who helped to entrust me with her plants. I'm striving to make it up to you.



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My Bold Bonus Life: 10

The first day of the second half of my bonus life in New York felt like four different days crammed together. Yesterday was:

Gallery-hopping.

Doll clothes.

Meeting with book editor.

Evening haircut that felt like a Japanese tea ceremony.

And then today turned out to be a half-day. Time has been funny that way in this extra life.

Yesterday morning I started with the galleries, the cluster of them in the 57th street area. Clutching a torn page from a magazine guide, I found that finding each one was part of the adventure. The first gallery, curiously named Haunch of Venison (you'd think it was a rock band), turned out to be upstairs in the same building with Simon & Schuster, publisher of my first novel, Revelation. Huge erotic paintings formed a major part of the show: tangles of pink limbs based on photographs of moments in the life of the artist. In another room was a sound sculpture made by the amplifications of the faint noises of a foot bridge, with a weirdly fascinating video of vibrating cables. I loved the music of the bridge -- a strange sort of wind chime.

Four other galleries forming a similar melange. One of the highlights in an exhibit on privacy was called Privet: a wall lighted from within made of green glass shards. A hedge forbidding and beautiful.

While I was hunting for these art spots, I happened upon a collection of a radically different sort: The American Girl Place. You may have heard of this doll that has become a cultural phenom. I had read about it, and the American Girl emporia that have become pilgrimage sites for pre-teen girls and their mothers.

I was never big on playing with dolls -- I feel disloyal to Cuddles and Jane as I say that. But I've always liked miniatures. And this store for me was a museum of intricate and detailed miniatures: the customizable and child-like dolls in their bazillion different outfits and settings. And then there were clothes for children to match those of the dolls; a girl could get a photographer's outfit (short loose jacket, serious working pants, and a beret) for herself and her doll.

Aside from the fascination of the miniatures, I was interested in seeing what a pro-girl-power message was conveyed. Be brave, be a leader, pursue your interests, follow your inner star. So valuable for girls of this age.


In the afternoon the meeting with a book editor: I pitched several ideas. She liked one, was interested in a proposal, but first wanted me to increase my blog traffic.
A much more complex and mysterious undertaking than writing a book.

The meeting felt relaxed and fine to me. But I felt wiped out afterward, wandering around in the heat in stupid high heels. I also realized I hadn't had my daily caffeine and it was too late in the day for it.

But an oasis lay ahead: I had a 7 p.m. appointment for a haircut. It was with a student at a high-end salon; a $10 bargain I'd discovered in The Cheap Bastard's Guide to New York City. I'd badly needed a trim at the time I got this apartment-sitting invitation and, in the flurry of getting ready, forgot about this detail.

The salon on E. 55th was Shige Kosuda and the hairdresser's name was, as I understood it, Santoshi, a lean young guy with thick black hair. He conducted my haircut in a stylized manner that felt like a quiet, almost religious ritual that went on for a full hour and included a neck and shoulder and scalp massage. As you might imagine, I enjoyed this. And felt completely restored. Here is the haircut.


Mid-evening, I went back to the apartment and slept sixteen hours. I started my day at 5 p.m. today. This is the half-day I'm talking about. I couldn't believe I'd slept so long. But I woke up doubly restored.

Spent the evening in the West Village, had supper at the White Horse Tavern, haunt of many writers in the 50s and 60s. My friend Dan Wakefield, author of New York in the Fifties among many other books, had asked me to hoist a pint there for him. I stopped in and hoisted a chicken pot pie and a Sprite. (Food report: the pie was excellent, but no bigger than a cupcake).

Then to a musical that's part of the arts festival, Fringe NYC. I didn't love it, had had enough at half-time and slunk out, though I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Somehow, the story just hadn't engaged me. It was about this novelist....




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My Bold Bonus Life: 9

Number 9? This means that I'm at the halfway point in my 18-day extra-life-within-a-life. As a New Yorker, I'm middle-aged.

But I'm not taking this as a sign that I should re-assess, have a crisis, or do anything differently in my New York adventure. I'm going to keep on poking into things on whim.

I worked some yesterday on getting ready to talk with a book editor today. Then went off to "New York's largest witchcraft/goddess supply store," Enchantments, Inc. on E. 9th in the East Village. At the time, I didn't think the meeting prep and the store visit were related, but now I wonder. I did glance twice at an orange Success candle.

The low-ceilinged little store was rich in atmosphere, deeply worn floorboards with ground-in sparkle as if from old meteor showers. Incantatory smells. Soothing music. And shelves and shelves of jars of gathered-from-nature mysterious materials.

Fascinating story about the place in a 2008 New York Times. If I'd read it first, I might have bought the orange candle.

I'd planned on having lunch at an appropriately atmospheric place nearby, Cloister Cafe, with its monastic stained glass windows, suit of armor, wall sword, etc. But, no. Closed on Mondays. I peered in the window and absorbed the medieval darkness.

Food report: I wound up around the corner at a Japanese bakery and sandwich shop, Panya. Had a salmon sandwich on a baked-on-the-premises-that-morning baguette. The bread was wonderful, better than salmon.

Then a long train ride uptown in time to catch an ethicist giving a talk at PicNic Cafe, an Alsatian bistro. The $10 ticket included one drink.

The subject was the moral value of "negative" emotions, such as anger. The speaker was a Columbia philosophy professor, Macalester Bell, who described herself as "a recovering Kantian." I have no idea what that specifically means, but found her very thoughtful on what constitutes moral anger: the acknowledgment of wrongdoing, etc. She was quite young and seemed charmingly un-angry --and has taught previously back home at UNC.

At the end of her talk, she asked us to please be kind to the wait staff: she did that kind of work for years and knew that it could stimulate lots of negative emotions.

The wait/philosopher and the goddess store: that's the kind of combination I'm finding intriguing in these days here. Note the combo of business and building in the photo below. The CVS in Raleigh was never like this.


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My Bold Bonus Life: 8

Sunday was Rap Day for me.

First, brunch at The Grey Dog in the West Village. Highly recommended spot, but I was there to say hi to the daughter of a friend back home who waits tables at the cafe when she's not going to auditions. She just got a one-month role on Seinfeld! But she was off yesterday and so I left my note to her with the very charming young maitre d'.

Food report: huge brie and mushroom omelet that came with huge pile of hash browns and two fat slices of cranberry-walnut wheat bread.

Then, to the rap. It was one of the free summer concerts in Central Park and headlined a piece of hip hop history, Public Enemy, the first rap group built on a political pro-black message -- and the first to go worldwide in acclaim.


All very interesting, of course, but what draws me is the spirit and the pounding beat. It was one dancing crowd yesterday, never mind that it drizzled and rained much of the afternoon, and that most of us were standing. I stayed just short of four hours and got a rousing good workout.

I don't have a lot of friends at home who share my interest, but on my 18-day Bold Bonus Life in New York, I'm mostly by myself anyway. So I went. Looking for the bandshell (you'd think something like this would be easy to find) I fell in walking with a guy I'd asked directions; he was also looking for the place -- Rob, a dapper fortyish black comic book illustrator. Then added on a middle-aged Italian woman, Silvana, who updated us on Italian rap. The male security guy frisked Rob and peered into the purses of Silvana and me. Then we went our separate directions into the already large crowd.

I listen regularly to hip-hop on my car radio. But I don't pay attention to who's rapping. (Same with every other kind of music, but not at all the case with books.) So I kept thinking Public Enemy had arrived. The warm-up seemed plenty rhythmic and well appreciated. Blitz the Ambassador, of Ghana and Brooklyn, was a good concert in himself.

The crowd was wonderfully multi-cultural and diverse. Directly in front of me for much of the time, was a scrawny young guy in yarmulke with the fringes of his prayer shawl hanging out from under his T-shirt. He danced almost continuously -- and well!-- for most of the three hours and 50 minutes I was there. His apparent date, a large black woman, was more of a quiet foot-tapper. There was even a couple behind me who appeared to be of my advanced age.

The music was still going when I left. I could still hear it halfway to the edge of the park. It's a wonder I'm hearing anything this morning.

Here's the sorry picture I took with my phone held blindly overhead. That crowd was moving, though it doesn't show.




Actual knowledgeable reviews online today include this item at Crawdaddy.

Not sure yet what I'm up to today.





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My Bold Bonus Life: 7

A few highly personal images from my Bonus Life in New York:

From the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. At home, I live beside a little pond with a Japanese zigzag bridge. Husband Bob has very Eastern tastes and philosophy.


A piece of the Tudor City neighborhood, on the east side of mid-town, where two of my good friends grew up.



The base of a beech tree in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, wonderfully sculptural. (I'm a great fan of trees.)

Waiting for the train. I like cobalt blue almost as much as I do trees.


The Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park: a fair summation of my Bonus Life in New York experience.


And PLEASE NOTE: IMPORTANT: An image of the Time Out New York cover salted caramel sundae
.



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My Bold Bonus Life: 6

5:40 a.m. I was up getting ready to go get my ticket to see live Saturday Night Live.

I arrived under the famous NBC marquee at Rockefeller Plaza by 6:30, only to learn that the making of the shows is "in hiatus."

But that's not what the website had told me.

Furthermore, the security guard helpfully advised me that if a new performance had been scheduled for tonight, I'd probably have needed to spend the night on the pavement out front to have any chance of getting a ticket.

Website didn't say that either. So I came back to the apartment and took a nap and did a little work. Soon to go have lunch at the apartment of a friend from my school days. I haven't seen her since 1972. She's now president of a large university. And they make fun of English majors' job prospects... She and I had some classes together. She must have taken better notes.


I did go out to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and was glad I did. The Japanese Hill-and Pond Garden alone was worth the trip. And a blooming lotus, a marvelous creamy-white thing. And lunch on the terrace in the breeze: a turkey, brie, arugula sandwich with raspberry mustard.

From there in central Brooklyn, I walked to the cafe whose caramel salt sundae was the cover of Time Out New York magazine this week. It did deserve a cover: caramel ice cream with caramel sauce and whipped cream and some sort of cookie chunks mixed in and, the crowning glory, broken pretzels on top.

From there I planned my next move: to go and see Paul Taylor's company dance at a venue in a Lower East Side waterfront park. I had two hours, so I decided to walk. Quite a distance from where I sat in Brooklyn, but surely I could make it in two hours or get a train when I needed to.

So I walked across the Manhattan Bridge at sunset. Gorgeous views of the Brooklyn Bridge, the city skyline, the boats down below, and Liberty in the distance. Then through Chinatown, past so many fish markets, fruit markets. And on to parts of the Lower East Side I'd never seen before. I walked the entire waterfront of that East River park and never found the first Paul Taylor dancer. Oh, well. The walk was really the point, which was not true of this morning's fruitless hike. By the time I got back to the apartment, I'd walked most of four hours: a slow scenic marathon.


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My Bold Bonus Life 5

Posting in the morning today, for a change, while I'm feeling fresh and clear-minded. Never mind that it's 12:13 pm. That's mid-morning for me in this New York 18-Day Bonus Life. I've settled into a schedule of going to bed about 1:30 or so and getting up about 9. Not really much different from my sked at home. But this feels much more leisurely, of course, since I'm not heading off to my office and working until mid-evening. (Instead, doing a little work on a manuscript and making one call to an editor)

Breeze coming from the terrace through the glass atrium is so nice. Second cool day in a row. Yesterday it was 74 degrees at midday. This weather feels miraculous, is giving me an extra season in my bonus life.

The weather is right to go to Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where I've never been but always had in mind. As my website bio says, I'm a devoted-but-slapdash gardener. Dedicated in spring and fall and laissez-faire in the hot months. I want to see the Brookly spread and do so in this weather, but am feeling more urban than herbal today. And I'm making a point of following whims during this time.

Today's the last day of a gallery show I wanted to see: Richard Kalina at Lennon, Weinberg. Just looked at it online and now I feel I've seen it -- and really enjoyed it.

Just had a glance at this video of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It says to me: Go, you haven't seen but a glimpse. Today?


Maybe I'll just head out and see where I wind up. But I do have to go to bed early tonight to be in line at dawn to try to get a ticket to see Saturday Night Live live.


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My Bold Bonus Life: 4

Lotta lotta walking -- twice across the island of Manhattan, and from 87th down to 42nd and halfway back. And almost every instant of it interesting.

And a little shopping: got a couple of light cotton tops at Forever 21 for dealing with the heat. (I know I'm actually 28 on this trip, but I'm young for my age.) Then, fittingly, went to Love, Loss, and What I Wore, a play by Ephron sisters based on a book by a woman who didn't start writing until she was 60, Ilene Beckerman (hurray for her!). The play is about the stories that particular pieces of clothing evoke, and was very sisterly, funny, and well-done.

I also did a little work, critiquing a manuscript. I'm managing to comfortably fit some work into my bonus life in this new and refreshing setting.

Food report: a stuffed potato at a diner that was extremely ordinary but served with the best Coke I ever tasted. I must have been thirsty.

A caramel sundae is on the cover of the Time Out New York that I bought today. It's the Dessert issue: perfect timing. And as it happens, a caramel sundae is what I had for lunch my first day here.

A fine slice of takeout chocolate chip cheesecake awaits me now. Must go.



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My Bold Bonus Life: 3

Tired. I went out to Coney Island on the train this afternoon, a place I richly imagined as an elementary school kid. I'd heard back then that this was a place that had even more carnival rides than nearby Carolina Beach. This was inconceivable bliss.

But my interest in such rides waned, and definitely ended after I had my first and only roller coaster ride at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. I boldly refuse to do any such thing ever again.

But something about the nature of this trip (see My Bold Bonus Life: 1) made me want to go. Also, Coney Island Beach is adjacent to Brighton Beach which interests me because it's a strong Russian emigre community and I love pockets of other cultures.


Anyway, I had a pleasant and long walk on the beach, which wasn't as crowded as pictures of NY beaches always seem to be. Admired the prodigious size of the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster. Bought and consumed exotic jellied candies, presumably Russian. Heard a lot of Russian spoken, came to understand that not all Russians are blonde like Baryshnikov. And that what appears to be the main drag of Brighton Beach runs directly underneath the elevated train.

And now I've been to Coney Island, home of both Coney Island Beach and Brighton Beach. This desire is fully and happily satisfied.


But an even better part of the day: I had lunch with a friend here who is one of the most inspiring speakers I've ever heard: Colleen Keegan. She is also inspiring and emboldening at lunch. I came away with the feeling that the future is promising, that exciting new possibilities exist in what generally seem to be discouraging global circumstances. And that individual voices and quirky ideas really do have a better chance of reaching people than ever before.

Plus, the lunch and the view were splendid. (Reader/commenter/artist Lynne asked for more food reporting here.) We dined at A Voce, in the Time/Warner building on Columbus Circle. The Stracciatella,
"creamy pugliese mozzarella,roasted artichokes, lemon thyme, arugula, bresaola," was kinda unbelievable. That alone could expand one's sense of possibilities.

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My Bold Bonus Life: 2

After the euphoric first day of my 18-day life in Manhattan, I learned that even in a bonus life, one has to run errands: the drugstore, the ATM, etc.

However, doing these mundane things here makes them fresh and new. For one thing, everything was in walking distance. No driving. That alone was staggeringly refreshing.

And, coming back, half a block from "my" apartment -- hereafter to be referred to as my apartment -- I walked up on a crowd of people all over the sidewalk on both sides. And there were lots of piles of stuff on the ground and on tables. A multi-family yard sale, I thought. But then I tried to figure out what they were selling: cross-country skis, folding chairs?

A second later, I figured it out. It was a shoot. For Law & Order, I learned. (A surge of feeling lucky overwhelmed me at this point.)

I didn't see any of the stars. What I saw was people who were referred to by the shouting crew as "background" being taped walking back and forth on the sidewalk. One woman's assignment seemed to be to rummage in her bag while walking. I thought she did it very well, but somebody yelled "Cut" every time she got a few seconds into her rummaging.

Had I been really bold, I'd have said to one of the guys with clipboards: You need any more background?

Still, a surprise shoot was a nice addition to errand running.



This morning a mini-transcendent experience in the Cooper-Hewitt design museum: Lobmeyr Glass. I was drawn to the place by a photograph of a cobalt blue bowl. I like glass art and love cobalt blue. What I saw stretched my idea of what glass can do. (This video is Lobmeyr glass, but not the display at the museum)


One case of goblets and such was made of extremely fine muslin glass, "with a restrained iridescence, a whispered reference to Roman technique." The curator said these pieces have "the delicacy of a soap bubble." He wasn't exaggerating. The glass seemed barely there.

Bold design ideas are the point of this museum, and there were so many astonishing ones on display. Example: a machine that "prints out" houses, extruding concrete in lines that make walls, rather than print in lines that make type.

And some contemplative moments watching model sailboats skim across a pond in Central Park....

Bonus life personal change: I'm getting rid of a couple of pieces of clothes that I brought. They're worn out. How had I not noticed that back home?















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My Bold Bonus Life

Have embarked on my 18-day life-within-a-life in New York, the one I promised myself as celebration of turning 60 a year and a half ago. I hadn't yet figured out how to work it out (pay for it) and then this marvelous house-sitting arrangement fell in my lap and suddenly I'm here.

And it's thrilling. I arrived yesterday on "the Chinatown bus" -- an express overnight trip from Grand Asia Market at home in NC to Canal Street in Chinatown (a $30 trip, can you believe it?)

We rolled in at 10 am and then, sweat-drenched, I rolled and toted and subwayed my monstrous suitcase (housing computer et al)to a lefty church service where a former client of mine is minister. Got there just in time to hear her preach, and meet her afterwards. I'd never even met her; being several states apart, we'd communicated only by email. Her sermon was inspiring; about making important changes by shifting your weight in the desired direction, a little and then a little more and so on. Music was gorgeous: a piano and flute performance of one of Satie's Gymnopedies, and then a solo by a woman with a Broadway style voice (rather different from most of the church sopranos I've ever heard, no warble)

Then uptown to my home for this bonus lifetime. Wow! it's terrific. A sunny studio on the third floor with a glass atrium at the back that has been made into a sunlit office that then opens onto a large third floor terrace in a breezy canyon of trees within the center of the block. (see terrace view in photo)

Also, the owner, whom I've never met, (daughter of a friend of a friend, and oh, what nice people) is 28 years old with a glamorous career, Audrey Hepburn taste, and an excellent book collection. I am happy to be twenty-eight again for the coming weeks.

In the afternoon, I went first to the Manhattan Dominican Day parade.
Continuous dance music and everybody dancing. (I had no idea that 90% of New York was Dominican.) Then to the E. 60th Street Fair, and more walking (my favorite thing in New York) and sudden exhaustion: back to the apt. Ate the owner's mother's homemade pumpkin bread and leftover white wine on the terrace at dusk. (I was asked to eat up all the leftover perishables or get rid of them)

How did I get such a miracle opportunity as this? By telling everyone I knew. And I didn't even do it to look for an opportunity, just out of excitement. But the results convince me more than ever: if you have a dream, start making it real by making it public.

Feel free to announce any dream(s) of your own here in the comments.





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Junk Mail to Art

My friend, Christina, knowing I'll be in Manhattan next week, passed on word of a cool workshop there.

I love the idea, and it can be done anywhere: turning your junk mail, your pile, into a piece of art. When you think about it, there's no end to the forms one's pile of garbage paper and odds and ends can take. Highly customized notecards at the very least.

It'd be interesting to take one day's trash/recycling and see what can be made of it.

If you exercise your creativity and come up with something, send a photo. I'd love to post it.

Note: the wonderfully inventive artist Bryant Holsenbeck has an ongoing slide show on her site displaying her art made from trash and recyclables.