we've been on the east coast for four years and a few months. distributed evenly, that means that i've been a new yorker for one day of every week i've been alive. it's gotten under my skin, that day: as we drove south on the freeway this weekend, i wanted to speed ahead and weave through traffic in the same way that i muscle past packs of tourists on foot in times square. on strolls along the beach, i find myself trying to calculate what homes would be worth per square foot as rental properties (as if orange county mcmansion owners would stoop to accepting tenants - ha). i see little knots of posturing teenagers at the mall and want to sneer at them: you think you're hard? i live in hell's kitchen (admittedly, that hasn't been impressive for about a decade - now it means i have a lot of thai options for dinner)! what is it about new york that tints one's world view so quickly? it's a singular place, but so is southern california, and i spent twenty years here - and i don't go on about how much ska-pop i had to endure back in the day, or how if you want gridlock, man, you should try getting past the el toro Y on a friday afternoon. on the reflexive comparisons, it could be that since i've gone through Big Life Changes in nyc (getting married, beginning a real career, thinking seriously about buying property) and started putting down roots, i pit it against other places to assure myself that i've chosen wisely. or there could be a goblin in my chest who's super excited about becoming one of those people who uses the city as an excuse for being rude ("i'm a new yorker, we're just direct"). they are mysterious, these regional tics. does this happen to you, too?
on a california thing that has stuck with me: joe and i went to the gypsy den last night to play scrabble and visit my favorite painting. i found the den, a shabby coffeehouse full of mismatched furniture and vintage colored glass, when i was fifteen, and i've coveted that damn picture (a nondescript portrait that, for most intents and purposes, is interchangeable with the dozens of pieces around it) ever since. various employee friends have assured me that the den never sells its art, but i fantasize about winning the lottery and making the owner a ludicrous offer she can't refuse (though, knowing hipsters, she'd value the refusal anecdote more than a pile of money). joe is neutral, but he knows how strongly i feel and is cool with it for my sake; me, i practically lose sleep over the thing. my questions to you, internets: what do you think of this painting (please excuse the crappy cameraphone photo)? why on earth does it haunt my dreams?
10 comments:
why? because it's you, that's what i think. i've always thought of it as your portrait...
Mmmmm. I like it. More then I expected from your post. Well, my coffee den of my teen years had a lamp where the body was made of a bronze lady, and I wanted it so badly that my mom bought me one that was similar, but really it's not the same.
Yeah, and tell me about New York in the blood. There we were today on the California Limited (bus) trying to suss out the new city and I was ASHAMED because it made me look like tourist. I've lived in New York ONE THIRD of my whole life. Even.
I don't know how much posturing the Bay makes me do... there is at least some quiet self-congratulation about the weather and the produce selection.
There used to be furniture store on Clement St. in SF with this massive (like 15' x 25') painting of a city under a blue sky, deeply mediocre but mysteriously compelling (but only to me), and somewhere over the painting the pipes had leaked and dripped brownish water over the corner where there was a little orange and yellow biplane painted, and I was so taken with that one spot that I tried to make my own version, but of course it was never right, and it kills me that when the furniture store went out of business, they probably put the painting in the dumpster. Because where are you going to put a painting that big? I would have fished it out of the bin and cut out the corner with the plane.
I don't really congratulate myself on being a Californian - probably because I still associate the word with a certain moony squashiness in the head which is nothing to aspire to - but here in Switzerland when people ask me where I'm from, I always say California instead of the US. Then we all have a good laugh about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Instant friends!
one consequence of living in rhode island has been a growing aversion to car trips of more than, say, 15 minutes. conceptions of distance get pretty screwed up when you live in little rhody. 45 minutes to newport? that's, like, the other end of the state! too far! see, also: ridiculously bad drivers in this state.
i like the painting (though it's a bit difficult to see given the size) - it has a certain sunny californian disposition.
The Chicagoan/Midwestern thing (25% of life-to-date) has sunk into me in a similar way. Non-native language comes in, for example. A nice Fargoesque "ya" comes out of my mouth on a frequent basis--and never "yes," unless I'm in Court. ("Ya" is much more prevalent in Wisconsin, of course, but has stuck in somewhat.) "You betcha," also.
It's not for show, or merely affected. I mean, there was this one girl in law school who was everybody's best friend. Chris had a really broad, loudish, almost stereotypical "ya." Said it every few minutes, really. You can't help it--you just pick it up and it sounds normal to you after a while.
Also: everything from here west to the Rockies is on, more or less, a Cartesian grid. My sense of direction has improved immensely since moving here.
And then there's the weather. Aversion to self-congratulation be damned. I get through winter here. I've gotten through eight midwestern winters. I kick ass.
i have a photo of the two of us at the gypsy den... what feels like many, many years ago.
hello to you, old friend.
-s
and crap, that is so not a good photo, where the hell did that come from?
the pretty pretty princess phone, she is better at making the calls than she is at making the pictures. i could have snapped the painting with my regular camera, i suppose, but i was going for stealth.
oops sorry no - i meant of me ... ;) next to my post.
your picture was lovely.
-s
Post a Comment