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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.
