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: 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: 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

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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