Some After-Effects of My Bonus Life

It's almost a week now since I returned from my 18-day bonus extra life as a New Yorker.

I've noticed a couple of significant after-effects of having tucked in this Plan B Life.

1. I feel very optimistic, as if almost any good thing is possible (and I'm capable of making it happen.)

2. I've been ordering different items for lunch (stuffed pepper!?) at the cafeteria, not my old "regulars."

3. I've had to go off of the dessert-and-pasta binge that I enjoyed so much as a New Yorker.

Number One is a very nice feeling, and likely to be more productive than the rather worn-down feeling I had at the time I got the welcome invitation to apartment-sit on the Upper West Side.

I've had this sudden attitude change happen once before, immediately after my first extra life: when I spent a month as "a Berkeley student" when I was twenty-nine and had received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to attend a fiction seminar on the California campus.

Shortly after I returned, I passed an acquaintance in the grocery store who abruptly said: "You changed. It changed you."

I didn't feel any different except in one way. My thought was: if I can get the federal government to send me to the Bay area for a month to read good novels and listen to jazz and hang out with a major literary critic and interesting writers from all over the country, there's just no telling what I can do.

And that's when I started publishing fairly frequently in national magazines.

Number Two? Changing my lunch menu? Well, that's not a huge deal, but does indicate that I'm making conscious decisions rather than staying in a rut.

Number Three: What a mistake it was to schedule my annual physical a few days after a major prolonged sugar experience. I flunked triglycerides, and now must eat virtuously.

At least for a while.








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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: 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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