Not What You Signed Up For

A series of related things happened recently:

1. I went to Israel
2. David Bowie died.
3. I got my second tattoo.

While the second two may be clearly related to each other, on the surface they seem to have nothing to do with going to Israel, and all together they still wouldn't appear to have anything to do with making choices about my acting career. And yet, going to Israel helped me become the woman in the picture below, which in turn helped me realize the kind of artist I want to be.

While I was on my birthright trip, I found myself saying to my new friends something I've said occasionally over the last several years - that if I weren't an actor, I would look like such a weirdo - covered in tattoos, with short hair constantly dyed some weird color (purple is first on the list). And I realized, during a conversation about tattoos with a few friends on the trip who had some, that I didn't want to continue pursuing a career where I didn't feel like myself.

David Bowie, my great artistic inspiration, the inspiration to freaks and weirdos and aspiring weirdos of generations, died on January 10, 2016. I found out early in the morning of the 11th, before 9 am Israel time, while America was sleeping. Our group was sitting in a national park while our guide told us about a former military outpost we could see on a mountain in the distance. He pulled out his phone to look up a specific detail, and, upon launching the internet, proclaimed "Oh fuck, David Bowie died." That was how I found out my hero, the Starman, the Thin White Duke, Ziggy Stardust, was gone from this planet. I suppose we were only borrowing him from somewhere else.

On the bus after our hike that morning I was allowed to take over the audio system for a while, and played all of his hits for the regular fans, and then played all of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust for my own sake. The whole group had seen me silently weeping throughout the morning, not having any way of knowing how much Bowie meant to me. And as much as I wished in the moment that I could have locked myself in my room to mourn alone, I'm so grateful now that I was able to process my grief the way that I did - with his music, surrounded by the beautiful landscapes of Israel.

That evening, we went to a hot spring located right along the Galilee, with incredible views of the sea and surrounding mountains. That was where I finally had a chance to relax, with my Squad, and chat about tattoos and mundane things. That was where I told more of my friends there was a freak trapped in this pretty normal-looking, albeit-red-headed, person. And that was when I decided I was going to let myself be me, and look how I want to look, and do what I want to do, and find or create the theatre projects that support that.

We spent a lot of time on the bus the next day, driving from the Golan Heights to Haifa to Jerusalem. During one of the quieter stretches, an idea for a tattoo came to me - not any of the three I already wanted, a new one. As soon as the idea was fully formed in my mind, it felt weird that it wasn't already a part of my skin. The picture that came into my head on Tuesday ended up on my body on Friday, the day after I got back from Israel.

My second tattoo, inked boldly on my chest, is the signifier of my decision to be me, and do "the industry" my way. It may have been a decision that prevents me from getting cast in some roles, working on some projects. But that's okay. I have never felt more like myself than since getting this tattoo. The lightning bolt is of course the most iconic Bowie symbol (though it's always associated with Ziggy Stardust when in fact it's from the album art for Aladdin Sane and was never worn on the Ziggy tour). The black stars symbolize his last album, Blackstar, released on his birthday, two days before his death. And the Hebrew says "ho lo ahuva at lo l'vad," which translates to "Oh no love, you're not alone" - a lyric from Bowie's "Rock n Roll Suicide," my favorite song of his, and translated with the help of several people who have made me feel very "not alone" - Elaun, our tour guide who accidentally broke the news, Jack, our security guard and member of the Squad, and my friend Michael, who I met during the RENT party in 2008 and who has always held a special place in my heart for a number of reasons only he can understand.

Right over my heart, a big red lightning bolt is difficult to hide. I have no intention of hiding it anyway. I'm proud that it's a part of who I am. Deeply connected to Bowie, to Israel, to being a weirdo.

My only other tattoo has, for a year now, slightly more subtly proclaimed my self at its deepest level. The "Hope" tattoo, in the Harry Potter title font, was one I thought about for almost four years rather than four days. But proclaiming my lifelong literal middle name in the typeface of a sixteen-year love affair seemed like a good start to proclaiming who I am on my skin. (This photo happens to also feature a length of blue yarn tied around my wrist, still here two weeks after I left Israel, connecting me to the rest of Bus 486.)

I posted this last picture on facebook because I felt good about my hair the day I took it, but after looking at it more I realized it really summed up me at this moment in time. I subtitled it "Not the granddaughter my grandparents signed up for, but the only one they got." No one expects, when a baby is born, that she is going to grow up to love classic rock and dye her hair bright red and get big tattoos and be a weirdo. But I'm awful proud of the weirdo I've been, and the one I'm growing to be.

Will you stay in our lovers' story

If you stay, you won't be sorry

Cause we believe in you

Soon you'll grow

So take a chance

On a couple of kooks

Hung up on romancing

-- David Bowie, "Kooks" Hunky Dory

America, Germany, Israel, and Identity

In the month that I've been back in New York since my trip to London and Berlin, I've become a hermit. I get up, I go about my morning routine, I go to work, I come home. I make no plans, and those engagements I previously committed to I frequently bail on at the last minute. I skipped the NYRF reunion the weekend after my return; I skipped the Daryl Roth Theatre (where Fuerza Bruta plays) holiday party this week. I make vague half-plans for drinks or lunches and then don't follow up on them. I hide in my apartment, in books, in solitude.

While in Berlin, on my Red Berlin walking tour, I told my tour guide briefly about the play I've been writing since my last visit, and asked if he had any insight into the daily lives of East Berliners. He recommended I read Stasiland, a book by Anna Funder, an Australian writer who lived in Berlin for a time in the 90s, while Germany was still rebuilding itself. I bought the book recently, and over the last week have spent every train ride to and from work disappearing into East Germany, a country that no longer exists, but whose citizens are still largely alive and well, some only a few years older than I am. Both sides of my family have roots in Germany, and lately I constantly wonder what my life would have been like if I had grown up there.

Tonight I went to my pre-trip orientation for my Birthright trip to Israel. Birthright is a gift of a free ten day trip, from the government of Israel and Jewish communities around the world, to young adults of Jewish heritage. I come from a multi-faith family in a multi-faith country. I always felt, growing up, that I didn't really have much of a national heritage, because the heritage of America, as it was taught to me and as I've experienced it for twenty-five years, is that our nation is a one of many nations. In the scheme of countries globally, we're on the young side. We don't have thousands of years of history as a nation. And similarly, in the religious sphere, I grew up Unitarian Universalist, the religion of many religions. Because my mom grew up Christian and my dad was raised Jewish, I, like so many children of interfaith marriages, grew up in a church full of families with diverse backgrounds and beliefs. Unitarian Universalism came from the merging of two religions and technically, by definition, is a cult, because it is less than one hundred years old since the merger.

Neither my national nor my religious heritage have the longest historical background. That has always made me feel a little lost, in the greater scheme of things. I applied for the Birthright trip because I am desperate for a deeper connection to something, to my Jewish heritage. Judaism has rather a long history, you could say. But I grew up as "the only Hanukkah kid in my class," as I said when I came home from one of my first days of Kindergarten. I lit Hanukkah candles with my family in November or December throughout my childhood, and that was most of my experience of "being Jewish" for a long time. I have only attended four Bar/Bat Mitzvahs in my life, all for people I am barely or almost related to - children of my dad's cousin (second cousins? Once removed? I never know), his college friend's daughter, my "cousin" who is the child of my "uncle" Marty, another of my dad's closest college friends. But I had no such experience myself. I have only been to Synagogue on those four occasions. The only Hebrew I know is the Hannukah prayers, and that's memorization more than actual comprehension.

So I float, tradition-less, through a young secular country, and obsess over strange things. I have always felt a connection to the Holocaust even though my Jewish grandparents were born in New York. Gas masks disturb me like nothing else. I spend ten minutes of rare hour-long Skype call with my brother talking about German history from World War II to now. I text my friend John, a grad student studying the holocaust and genocide, at 10 am on a Monday morning, asking for clarifications on the Nazi-Soviet conflict and the differences between communism, socialism, and fascism during the Cold War. I am becoming an encyclopedia on the lives of strangers that lived in a country that dissolved just months before I was born.

I am German; I am Jewish. But actually I am neither; I am American and Unitarian. My passport says I have been to Germany, and soon it will say I have been to Israel, but my passport was issued by the United States of America. My passport says, in the form of seven stamps at the back, that I have pretended to travel between East and West Berlin, places that no longer exist except in the experiences of millions of now-just-German citizens. The truth lies in the date of the stamps, 30 Oktober, 2011, 22 years after the fall of the Wall.

I read my books; I write my play. I listen to Led Zeppelin and Bowie records and disappear into the 70s.  I try to tell the stories of people I never knew, a place I have never been to, because Berlin and Germany are unified again now. A place and people that have nothing to do with a twenty-five year old girl from Chicago who lives in New York and has never been anything but American, who has never fled any kind of persecution or oppression and is only now becoming "woke" enough to realize the police state we live in. (Please watch Citizenfour. I don't know what to do about what I learned from it, but just watch it.)

Daily I feel small, alone though by my own choosing. I have always been independent, but now I exist like a satellite in orbit of the lives around me, away from family, friends, sometimes sanity. I shut out the problems of 21st century New York to despair in those of Cold War Berlin, and still try to find a way to make the two eras talk to each other as we shut out refugees, and threaten the building of new walls, and want to increase surveillance on possible terrorists, and barring an entire faith population from our country. I would have lived a different life as a German Jew in the 40s. I would have lived a different life as an Eastern German in the 70s. But those lives are still being lived now, by different faiths in different countries, and I just want people to wake up. 

That's what my play is for, if I can ever finish it. As I read and research more, I feel the scope expanding, sure it will one day soon escape my grasp. There are such big concepts at play. My access point is a history I was never taught but almost lived, from so many angles.

I wear still in this moment my name tag from the Birthright event tonight. It says my name, my trip organizer - Tlalim Israel Outdoors, and my departure date.  I feel suddenly just now, like I'm wearing a yellow star, but without the danger. "This is when she will claim her history." It labels me as at least Jewish-adjacent, with a date for the homeland. Getting on a plane, not a train, in safety, not in fear. To celebrate something that was once supposed to be hidden, shameful, dirty. To confront a lost heritage, color in a missing part of my identity as I have tried to do so many times on so many trips. 

For me, my Jewish-ness is tied up in my German-ness, two identities that were once so at odds, though my existence as a union of the two is not uncommon. Both cultures are shadowed by a history of conflict - and Israel isn't exactly history's most peaceful country, and that at only sixty-seven years old. I sit here, at 11 pm on a Thursday night in New York, trying to come to terms with all of my perceived history that is not mine at all - that of Germany, of Israel, of Jusaism, and, after a while, of America, that to which I can actually lay claim but don't know how. What is the meaning of being American?  Freedom? Fear? God and guns? So much of what America stands for seems either false or terrible. But then again, I have never been interrogated simply because I wished to travel, or had a boyfriend from another country, or because I dissented from my leader's politics. I can say what I want. I suppose it's just a question, now, of whether it is heard, or whether I want it to be.

Berlindon 2015 (Part IV - All Was Well)

I had a day and a half left of my trip when we got back to London from Berlin. I had no more time for theatre, between my 5:30 flight on Sunday and my plans for Saturday were dominated by a 5:00 appointment at the Harry Potter studio tour. Tickets had been sold out when I tried to book them a couple weeks before I left, but somehow became available after I got to London. I specifically wanted to go on Saturday, because it was the second day of the Hogwarts in the snow display, which meant I would get to see the Great Hall decorated for Christmas. (This is a big deal, if you're a Harry Potter fan.)

So I spent Saturday morning unpacking from Berlin and repacking my suitcase, and then headed off around 3:00 to make the journey to Watford Junction where I would get the shuttle bus to Leavesden Studios.

Even though I had been to the tour once before, three and a half years ago when it was new, I was still ridiculously excited. The estimated three and a half hour tour took me over six hours last time, and I knew this time I would only have four and a half before I would have to catch the last shuttle back to the train. I wasted no time once I got inside the lobby, picking up my digital guide and joining the queue to enter. In the lobby was a huge Christmas tree, the first sign of what was to come. 

In the pre-theatre waiting room, a guide was asking a group of about a hundred people Harry Potter trivia questions. I was one of the last people allowed in to that group, so I didn't hear the first questions, but I was the only person who knew that Aragog (the big spider in the Forbidden Forest) is actually an acromantula. So I don't need to worry about my title of biggest Harry Potter nerd anytime soon. The preshow video began, with good old David Heyman telling us how much he came to love the books, making me cry already. We then headed into the actual theatre for the film with Dan, Emma, and Rupert talking about their lives on set to introduce us to the tour.

And then, just as before, the screen lifted, and the Great Hall doors were there, now with Christmas wreaths on them. Some people celebrating birthdays pushed open the doors, and the Great Hall was revealed, full of giant Christmas trees being circled by little faeries, a fire in the hearth, and Christmas crackers on every place setting. One of the big differences with the tour now, compared to three years ago, is that they have a lot more staff inside the stages, explaining what things are, how they work, and showing off specific props. In the Great Hall, they demonstrated how they made flaming puddings, and showed off the light/mist effect that made the fire look so real.

Throughout the rest of my tour I listened to my digital guide - disappointed to find that the intimate tour narrated by Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) had been replaced by a generic woman giving basic behind the scenes information. It was still interesting, with lots of extra videos of interviews with production staff and designers, but I missed the personal insights Tom had brought to the tour. A few sets had changed in the years since my last visit, but mostly it was just nice to be back among so may places where I felt strangely at home. One of my favorite things this time around was seeing inside the potions textbook - a staff member was showing it off, rifling through the pages to show that the entire book was authentically designed for the film with tons of original drawings and recipes for potions. The dedication of the art and graphics departments on these films never ceases to amaze me.

The biggest change was a huge expansion that had been made to accomodate the original Hogwarts Express, a real steam engine used in the films. So there's a whole Platform 9 3/4 set up now, and you can actually enter the train and see the compartments staged to look like scenes from the films. This was where I got my iconic trolley-in-the-wall shot, rather than dealing with the chaos at the actual Kings Cross station.

After the train it was out onto the backlot to see the vehicles, the iconic Hogwarts bridge, Privet Drive, and another new feature - the Potter's cottage from Godric's Hollow. (Concerned about time, I skipped the line for butterbeer at the backlot cafe, figuring the alcoholic version I make at home is better anyway.)

Back inside the other soundstage was the creature shop and a lot of designs from the production department - drafts and models of sets, all leading up to the big finale, the scale model of the entire Hogwarts grounds, gracefully covered in snow for the holidays. It was just as majestic as I remembered. I took pictures from every angle - by the time I had reached this point before, my camera battery had died so I only had a few poor-quality shots taken on my iPad.

Beyond Hogwarts is a final room filled with wands, each hand labeled with the names of every person who worked on the films. This time around there was a staff person to help point out favorite actors and JK Rowling herself. And, in the middle, a quote I will love forever, "The stories we love never truly leave us. Whether you return by page or by screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home."

Outside in the gift shop, I picked up a few things requested by friends. The only thing I bought myself, however, was a replacement for a rocks glass I had bought at Harry Potter world in Orlando in May of last year that had since broken. I have reached a point where I pretty much own all the Harry Potter stuff I want that I can afford - the only other thing I wanted was yet another box set of the books (WHY DO THEY KEEP DOING THIS TO ME) but I had neither the money nor the space in my suitcase for that.

I was in line to check out when the announcement was made that the last shuttle would be leaving in ten minutes, and stood anxiously in line and then at the checkout counter before running out the door to the bus as it drove up. (There was a frantic moment in which I was afraid it was driving away and I would be stranded at the studio forever. I mean, there are worse things in the world, but still.)

Back at the apartment I had a late dinner with Kerry, who had been at home doing work for her college course. Sunday we ate together once more, I picked up a few gifts for my nanny kids, and then it was time to say goodbye and head to the airport for the flight home.

The whole trip was really what I wanted it to be - inspiring and informative. I was able to do a lot of research and gain a lot of ideas for how to move forward as a theatre artist, exactly what I needed at this point in time. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have been able to take this trip, and proud that I was able to finance it through savings. I started saving money at the beginning of the year - a dollar the first week, two dollars the second weeek, so that I was saving over forty dollars a week by Novermber, and I was able to deposit or exchange over $1000 at the bank before my trip - enough to pay for my flight and leave me spending money. I'm still working hard now to make up for taking a ten day vacation, but buying a plane ticket to Europe less than a month in advance is not something everyone could do. I did. And all was well.

Berlindon 2015 (Part III - Berlin Tarot)

While in Berlin, I took my tarot deck with me, and photographed a card of the day in various important locations along the way. These are my posts from those four days.

Berlin Tarot I: 2 of Swords - do not blind yourself to reality. Face the truth of situations, let go of your fears and be bold. Find balace. (Location: hostel window with a view of the Gutenberg printing press office, Prenzlauerberg.)

Berlin Tarot II: II The High Priestess - reflecting the subconscious, the interior, a time of darkness after which we return to the light. (Location: Neues Ufer cafe in Schöneberg, a favorite haunt of Bowie's during his time here with Iggy Pop in the 70s.)

Berlin Tarot III.1: XIX The Sun - brimming with life and brightening up all the dark corners, remember to look around and share goodness with others. This was in fact the first sun I've seen since being in Europe. (Location: East Side Gallery, Friedrichschain-Kreuzberg.)

Berlin Tarot III.2: XIX The Sun - brimming with life and brightening up all the dark corners, remember to look around and share goodness ith others. This was in fact the first sun I've seen since being in Europe. (Location: No man's land, the Berlin Wall Memorial, Mitte.)

Berlin Tarot IV: 10 of Chalices - contentment, connection, appreciation for all that is around you. Sense the thread of human connection between us all. (Location: Chapel of Reconciliation in the former death strip of the Berlin Wall, Mitte.)

Berlindon 2015 (Part II - Berlin)

On Tuesday morning, Kerry, her friend Matt, and I flew to Berlin for four days. I viewed my time in Berlin as a research trip, and my list of activites I hoped to accomplish strayed very little from the focus of the Wall. Though I found the Jewish Museum and Holocaust memorials very powerful last time around, there was no time to visit them again on this trip.

Tuesday afternoon the three of us did a little exploring of the area around our hostel in Prenzlauerberg, and ended up eating at Cafe Cinema for dinner. Outside we stumbled upon an alley with lots of grafitti and a cool shop of local art with a gallery attached. We spent some time looking around there, and then I departed to walk over to the Berliner Ensemble, Brecht's theatre, to see The Good Person of Szechuan performed in German. (I saw the sign below along the river on my walk.)

Three and a half hours of abstract German theatre in a very warm room on very little sleep.

I didn't stay awake the whole time, I'll admit, but I did get lucky - the lady at the box office asked if I was a student, and I answered honestly and said no. She asked me how much I wanted to pay then, and pointed out the price levels on the seating chart. Nothing exceeded 30 euros, which is pretty close to $30 right now. Imagine regular orchestra tickets to a Broadway show being $30. Right. I picked an area with 10 euro tickets, and she said "I'm gonna say you're a student anyway," and I said "Well I did go to theatre school, so I kinda am always a student," and she said "I thought so" and handed me a ticket. I went upstairs, to where I had pointed on the seating chart, and an usher said a lot of things to me in German. I smiled and nodded. The house wasn't open yet. I sat and waited. Eventually she said "You speak English, not German, don't you, because I said your seat is downstairs," but she was very nice and explained what the "parket" was and where my seat was, and so off I went, to a 30 euro seat that I paid 9 euros for, and I watched three and a half hours of Brecht in German.

Early this year I saw a production of Good Person at The Public starring Taylor Mac and it was life changing, so I was looking forward to this, thinking I knew the play, but the productions were so different that it was nearly impossible to follow. My couple weeks of duolingo German prep left me with a limited vocabulary of about a dozen words, and the only ones I really caught during the show were "wasser" (water) "liebe" (love) "risjt" (rice) and "frau" (woman). But I'm still glad I went; the scenic design was really interesting and the sound design was exciting because it was so different from what I expected. 

Wednesday I began the day with Kerry and Matt; we all slept in, having gotten very little sleep Monday night before our early morning adventure to the airport. We got food at a restauraunt down the street that seemed, to me, to be disguised as a junk shop, with lots of vintage lamps and typewriters and things covering more surfances than were left bare for eating. The three of us sat at a table with a large hole in the middle filled with legos (the reason it had caught Kerry's eye in the first place). It was a korean place, and we had rice bowls with an assortment of vegetables. Quite good and pretty cheap.

After what was essentially lunch, we headed into the city center. I did most of the navigating, both because I was the one of us who had been to Berlin before, and because I'd downloaded a Berlin metro map that came in handy constantly. Last time I visited, it took me four days before I managed to go in the correct direction on the train every time. This time around, I only went the wrong direction once in four days, and that was on a tram, which I never braved on my last visit.

We started our sightseeing at Potsdamer Platz, where I had gotten my passport stamped four years earlier with all the Cold War-era stamps required to pass from West to East or vice versa, and Matt and Kerry got their first taste of the wall - just a few segments with information wedged in between, and a couple of period-dressed guards available for awkward photo ops. Afterwards Matt and Kerry wanted to see Brandenburger Tor and Checkpoint Charlie, which I chose to skip in favor of some David Bowie adventuring.

I hopped on the subway and navigated down to Schöneberg, where Bowie and Iggy Pop lived together in the mid-late 70s while recording at Hansa Tonstudio. There's a company called Music Tours Berlin that does a David Bowie walking tour, but only on Sundays, so I had to just recreate as much of their itinerary as I could on my own. This mostly consisted of wandering the neighborhood and stopping to drink a beer at Cafe Neues Ufer, a favorite haunt of Bowie's when he lived in Berlin. The walls are now covered in photos and posters of Bowie spanning from his Ziggy days to his more recent tours in the late 90s and early 00s. It surely didn't feel like it must have when Bowie went there, but it was still a good place to sit and read Bowie in Berlin for a while and drink a tall Berliner Pilsner and attempt a bit of conversation in German with the bartender. (I knew enough to ask for my beer in German, and say thank you, tell him I didn't smoke when I was offered an ashtray, and understand how much it cost when I paid; that was about it.)

Kerry and Matt and I had planned to meet for dinner, so I met them back at Checkpoint at Charlie, and we headed in search of food, ending up at Cafe Journale, an Italian place where all three of us ended up ordering the same house special, but it turned out to be delicious so that was fine. I ran out a little early to try and catch another show, a musical about the Berlin Wall that was being performed in German with English subtitles at a theatre back in Postdamer Platz. Turned out I couldn't find it though (or so I thought; I went back the next night in another attempt, and found out it wasn't playing for a few days because of a premiere for Bambi or something). So I went back to the hostel and did some reading and planning for my reamaining time in Berlin.

Around eleven I got a text from Kerry telling me where she and Matt were - communication is difficult when you can only reach someone by wifi, which is not as common for free in Europe as it is in America. So though I was ready to be settled in for the night, I went out to join Kerry and Matt at Bar 39 in Kreuzberg, where we spent several hours drinking the cocktail of the week, called a pink elephant, and swapping stories of our days.

I forget what time we got back - sometime around 2 or 3, I think, and by cab, because the metro had shut down for the night, a possibility I had completely forgotten about as a New Yorker. Fortunately getting a cab in the area wasn't hard, and we were back to the hostel in no time, asleep shortly after.

Thursday I had big plans involving the East Side Gallery, record shops that appeared to be nearby on the map, a stop at Curry 36, the best currywurst in Berlin, and then on to the Cold War Berlin walking tour I had booked earlier in the week. Not surprisingly, I got a later start than intended, but headed straight for the East Side Gallery, where I visited all the art I had seen before. Last time this was the most uplifting part of my trip, because it is where artists made something beautiful and expressive out of something terrible and oppressive. For the first part of my walk, however, I was only very depressed, to see all the grafitti that covered and largely destroyed the works that were so clear four years ago, having been restored two years earlier in 2009 for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Parts of the wall now have a fence around them as restorations are being made again, where first workers get rid of the grafitti and then the artists hopefully come back and touch up their works as needed. It seems painfully ironic to have to put a fence around a wall, now.

Fortunately for me, though, the piece I most remembered from my previous visit had already been restored, though it was still behind a fence. It was the "Curriculum Vitae" section of the wall, which looks like this: 

The roses by each year each represent a life lost in an escape attempt over the wall. (More on the tarot card I'm holding later.)

I spent longer at the East Side Gallery than expected, so I skipped the record stores for the time being and headed over to Curry 36 for lunch. The map I was using seemed to struggle with scale, making the walk I took far longer than I expected and leaving me with less time to eat than anticipated, but I achieved my much-anticipated currywurst mit pommes frites and then rushed back to the train up to Friedrichstraße and a quick walk over to the Brandenburg gate to meet my walking tour.

The Cold War Berlin walking tour was incredibly important research for my play, which takes place in Berlin in the 70s. I've been writing it since shortly after my last visit to Berlin, though I've been stuck on how to move it forward for quite some time. I learned a ton on the four hour walking tour and saw new parts of Berlin and the Wall, and now have a lot more research and work to do to move the play forward in an exciting and complex new direction. The most powerful part of the tour for me was the Berlin Wall memorial, in Mitte, which is several blocks long and consists of many parts. Part of it runs along Bernauer Straße, where a number of escape tunnels were dug, including one about which a documentary was made that I found online a couple years ago. Bernauer Straße has been burned in my brain since I found that documentary on the CNBC website, and now I was standing on it, seeing metal panels in the grass that traced where the tunnels were underground. The memorial includes a viewing platform that looks out on a section of the wall that has been preserved as the Wall was when it fell, so that people can see just what the "death strip" or "no man's land" looked like. I was on the verge of tears for most of this part of the tour.

Another section included a memorial for the people who died trying to escape, and that I was really not prepared for. It's set in part of the former death strip (where a lot of green spaces exist now, since no one could walk there for so long before the Wall was torn down).

I learned on the tour that in the nearby Chapel of Reconciliation, every Tuesday through Friday a short service is given in honoring one of the people named here. So I planned to go to the service on Friday. It felt really important. The Chapel stands near the former site of a church that was situated in the death strip with the wall built around it, until in 1985 "upgrades" to the Wall required the church to be demolished. It was blown up, leaving remnants of foundations and a few building elements that are now preserved nearby.

Our four hour tour ended back at the East Side Gallery, where my day had begun, after which I quickly dashed back off to Potsdamer Platz to make my second failed attempt at the Berlin Wall musical. Annoyed that I had wasted time I could have spent at the record shops near the gallery, I headed back to the hostel to regroup and figure out how to spend my evening.

Fortunately Kerry returned shortly after I did, and we decided to go out together for the night. I closed my eyes and stuck out my finger, and she held up the map, choosing a place we would go explore at random. We hopped on the train and got off in a new neighborhood, though unfortunately it wasn't a great place to find a spot to eat. We did get some nice shots of the TV tower at night though.

Eventually we hopped back on the train up towards our hostel, heading to an Asian restaurant nearby that I had read about on a "hidden Berlin" instagram account. We found it, but ended up going to the Mexican place across the street because it had cheaper cocktails. It turned out to be the right choice as both the cocktails and the food were delicious, plus our server was a friendly guy so it was an all around great experience.

We got back from the restaurant kind of late and I went straight to bed since we had to check out in the morning and I had to be packed and ready to go early so that I could make it to the service at the chapel. I got all my things together and stored them in the hostel's luggage room before heading out for one more day in Berlin, with plans to meet Matt and Kerry back at the hostel around six to travel together to the airport.

My trip back to the chapel included my only wrong turn of the trip, going one stop East on the tram when I meant to go West, but I made it for the service. It was only fifteen minutes long, and in German, but I was able to determine that the rememberance was in honor of Helmut Kliem, who I learned in later research was shot by border patrol when he accidentally drove too close to the Wall. The space was one of the most powerful I have ever been in, and I took some time to light a candle in honor of the lives lost and said a small prayer before heading out to take in more of the memorial.

I continued back to the memorial museum, which we had passed through briefly on the tour the day before. This time I could take as much time as I wanted reading and listening to interviews by people who lived in occupied Berlin. It helped to fill in a picture of what daily life was like in East Berlin, important research for my play, and full of powerful phrases from everyday people.

After spending another hour and a half at a place I'd just been the day before, I walked over to Cafe Nord Sud for lunch, the cheap French place I had fallen in love with on my last visit. Prices had gone up in the four years since my last visit, but the food was still amazing and Jean Claude was still a delight. Before I left I told him I'd been there once before, and thanked him for making such a happy place. He kissed me on both cheeks (he is French, after all) and then hugged me for so long I thought he wanted to marry me or something. 

From Nord Sud I adventured over to the area with all the record shops I had intended to visit the day before. As ever I was betrayed by a map that didn't understand scale, and did a lot more walking than I expected, but it paid off. At Wowsville, I found David Bowie's Low and Iggy Pop's The Idiot, both recorded and/or mixed at Hansa Tonstudios, in Berlin. Buying authentic, vintage records in the city they were made and manufactured in is probably the most hipster thing I've ever done, but for those punks I'm proud of it.

With daylight fast fading I took one more train ride to see Hansa itself, pressing my nose against the glass since you can't actually go into Hansa without a prebooked tour (from the same company that does the Bowie walking tour). Bowie and Iggy both recorded in Hansa Tonstudio 2, a huge room they nicknamed "the hall by the wall" because it had a view of the Berlin Wall from the windows. (I might have been reading the book Bowie in Berlin during the trip.)

It was time to head back to the hostel to meet up with Kerry and Matt, so I got back on the U bahn at Postdamer Platz, only to go one stop and find out our train line wasn't running for a number of stops, up to the one where our hostel was located. It took some creative navigating involving the S bahn, the tram from earlier, and another long walk to get me back to the hostel fifteen minutes late instead of fifteen minutes early. We ended up taking a taxi to the airport since the trains were messed up, had dinner at the airport (German sausage, yay), and then flew back to London and drove back to Kerry's apartment. I'm so grateful for all that I saw and learned during my time in Berlin, and to Kerry for very generously financing my airfare and hostel. She is the queen of cheap travel deals and someone I am very lucky to call my dear friend.

Berlindon 2015 (Part I - London)

 I spent ten days recently on a trip unlike any I've ever taken before, though I went to two places I've previously visited. On Thursday November 5th I flew overnight to London, arriving at 10:30 Friday morning at Heathrow, to spend some time with my friend Kerry and take a trip with her to Berlin.

I've visited Kerry twice before (when I visited London during my time studying abroad in 2011, and again when I toured Europe with my mom in 2012), and she has since come to visit me in New York for New Year's this past year. So I've done London twice, and I've done the touristy things well. A walking tour of all the palaces and the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben and the parks and whatever. And I've been to the museums, and gone to high tea, and seen westminster abbey. I also went to Berlin in 2011 and did the same kind of sightseeing - walking tour, art museums, etc. - so this trip wasn't about being a tourist.

I traveled to Europe this time with a very specific intent. I came as a theatre artist, seeking inspiration and information. I arrived in London with an agenda focused on seeing theatre that would spark new ideas,  and get me thinking in new ways. In Berlin my plan was to drink up as much information about Cold War Berlin and the Wall as I could. I was determined to use this opportunity to gain as much hands-on experience as possible about what life was like during the years the Wall was in place, to serve as research for my play that I've been writing since the last time I visited four years ago.

During my first few days in London, I flooded my senses and my brain with images: Mötley's show, for aesthetics and energy; Roosevelvis by The Team - my former directing teacher's theatre company - for melding disparate ideas and creating an intellectual piece; La Soiree for atmosphere and spectacle; Belarus Free Theatre's Trash Cuisine - at a secret location that included drinks and food and a post-show discussion - for making politically active, socially-oriented work that matters; and All on Her Own/Harlequinnade - a double bill from Kenneth Branagh's new theatre company - for classic theatre, well-trained acting, and strong story telling.

The Mötley Crüe show was chronicled in my previous post, so all I'll say is I am never bored at their shows, and it always makes me wonder how I can energize a theatre audience the way they get me going time after time after time. 

The next day, having fully overcome my jet lag by staying up all day Friday (despite getting to London at 5:30 am New York time), I went to meet Brandi for lunch near Sloane Square, where we were seeing Roosevelvis. We spent an hour catching up on life (she's living back in Baltimore, where she's from), and then went to the Royal Court Theatre for a show starring two women playing Teddy Roosevelt and Elvis, the latter of whom was our TA for our directing class. Roosevelvis premiered in New York, and though I had very much wanted to see it, I had unfortunately missed it back home, so I was grateful to catch it, randomly, in London. It was, as with any TEAM show, a very intellectual piece with an eclectic mix of influences. I really enjoyed the mix of time periods and timelines, something I'm figuring out how to deal with in my own play at the moment. 

That evening I went to La Soiree, taking place in a tent set up on the bank of the Thames, near the London Eye and therefore walking distance from Kerry's apartment. La Soiree happened to be another show I had missed in New York, despite it playing in a theatre a block away from Fuerza Bruta where I work. The show is, I imagine, a bit like if Cirque du Soleil and Fuerza had a baby (which is funny, because I describe Fuerza as Cirque mixed with a rave). It mixes circus acts with a party atmosphere, and has a 10pm late show (like Fuerza sometimes does), which is what I went to. I bought my ticket that day on today tix, and when I got there, was upgraded from "boardwalk" to "ringside" I guess because I was alone and they wanted to fill in the front seats. No complaints on my part, I got a good seat for about half price. It was a really stunning show that did an excellent job of establishing atmosphere/energy, and expectations of audience behavior/involvement. Every performer was attractive and talented and unique, and somehow in the second act a segment about bubbles broke my heart.

Sunday, there were no cheap tickets for anything I couldn't or hadn't seen in New York (Kinky Boots, Lion King, In the Heights) so I had a lazy morning at Kerry's apartment and then went to the Tate Modern for a couple hours. The Tate has been under construction every time I've been there, seemingly preparing for an expansion that is supposed to open next June. In the meantime, however, they seem to have a lot of space with relatively not a whole lot of art in it. So after sitting by the Thames for a while watching a man create giant bubbles for the delight of passing children, I headed back to Kerry's before going to the theatre for the evening.

Sunday night was my big adventure. I had booked a ticket to Trash Cuisine, a show being performed by the Belarus Free Theatre in association with The Young Vic, part of two weeks of performances in celebration of the company's tenth anniversary. It wasn't at The Young Vic, however. True to how BFT shows are performed in Belarus, where the company is banned, the show was taking place at a secret underground location. Without a phone number to have them text the meeting point to, I asked about it at the box office (right by Kerry's) and was given an intersection to be at by 6:20 at night. It took two trains and a bus to get there, to a residential corner with a church, where a crowd of people was gathered. We were then led in groups of twenty or so down the road and around a corner into a warehouse that had been set up for the show. Inside there was music, and projections of propaganda, and we were given a token for a free drink, and then were free to sit where we wished for the show. BFT is banned in Belarus because the country is a dictatorship and BFT does work that focuses on social activism and political issues, so they have to put on their performances in secret and advise their audiences to bring their passports in case of a KGB raid, which happens fairly regularly. Trash Cuisine is a show about capital punishment, particularly the death penalty. It was very powerful, and hard to put into words. The performance was live streamed around the world from the Young Vic website, and an underground audience in Belarus watched via Skype.

After the show we were given beet root soup, traditionally Belarussian, and then took part in a post-show discussion, which took the form of an Englishman who is now a lawyer in America reenacting a death penalty case he tried in Louisianna, where he defended a couple both accused of placing their newborn baby in the freezer where it died. The jury was made up of twelve audience members, who had all stated they would be willing to sentence someone to the death penalty. It was fascinating (if a bit uncomfortable) to be a part of the discussion in a country that banned capital punishment over fifty years ago as someone from a country that still has the death penalty. The lawyer-man led us through the case, presenting information in pieces as he'd gotten it, periodically asking the audience to vote on who they thought was guilty, and asking the jury members if they would convict anyone. Ultimately, in the case, the lawyer got both parents off; neither was convicted. The whole experience got me thinking about what a vehicle theatre can be to get people talking about social issues that can be hard to talk about.

Monday I headed out of London to St Neots, sort of near Cambridge to see Shannon, my very first friend ever. We met when we were babies and we're best friends growing up until Shannon moved away in middle school. We hadn't seen each other in over ten years, and she had two adorable children now, Wyatt, who's three, and Eden, who's not yet one. They met me at the train station and we went to lunch where Shannon and I caught each other up on our lives and our families, and then we went back to the house where I was Wyatt's new favorite playmate for a few hours. Apparently after they dropped me off at the train station Wyatt cried for about twenty minutes because he was sad I was leaving. Bless his little heart. <3

I had to get back to the city though, to get tickets to All on Her Own/Harlequinnade, a one-act double bill by Kenneth Branagh's new theatre company. I'd had a lot of trouble trying to get tickets on the today tix app, but ended up with a £15 partial view seat anyway. The first play was a one woman performance by Zoë Wanamaker, who I know as Madam Hooch from the Harry Potter films. She was incredible. The second play was about a theatre company attempting to put on a production of Romeo and Juliet, with Branagh playing an aging actor who is definitely too old to play Romeo. It was really well done, and refreshing to see something light, not so dense, but still Shakespeare-influenced. And it was exciting to get to see Sir Gilderoy Lockhart in person. :)

That was my first four days in London. Jam-packed and inspiring, and just the first part of my trip. More to come as we left the next day for Berlin.

Gypsyhood

Here's the facts. Since I moved into my first dorm on Third Avenue in late August of 2008, I've moved a total of twelve times. Twelve times in four years. Five of those times were in the last year, thanks to that time when I moved to Spain for a bit.

Post-grad as I've mentioned, I've become a bit of - okay quite - a gypsy. I haven't lived in the same place for more than four months since late mid-2011. After four months in Madrid, I was home for a month, then in an NYU dorm for four months, then in Europe for two weeks, then in New Jersey for a week, then in a sublet on Roosevelt Island for six weeks, then home for six weeks, then couch surfing in Brooklyn for two weeks, and now I'm living in Harlem for three months.

WHY?

It's a valid question. I've had older friends tell me that everyone goes through a kind of gypsy period after graduation. I responded to one friend, yeah but I'm doing it more than everybody else. But I tend to think I do most things I do with a more-ness compared to most people. In any case, the people I know that have moved frequently after graduation still aren't moving this often. Theirs is more a case of, "Brooklyn is too far, I want to move back to Manhattan," or "Manhattan is too expensive, screw this I'm moving to Brooklyn." My year of living out of suitcases has not been that. Actually I've found it kind of interesting to live in different parts of the city, particularly Roosevelt Island since I know a total of three people who've lived there (and I've now lived with two of them).

I didn't lease an apartment after graduation because in February of this year I went to visit my cosmic twin (really, we're the same person) in Philadelphia where he now lives with his boyfriend. I found out while I was there that they were planning to move to NYC and was offered the other bedroom in this hypothetical apartment. I'd always hoped my friend would move back to the city and we'd live together, so I was thrilled. As the spring wore on, the hypothetical moving date kept floating further away. So over the summer, I subletted and then spent some time at home, hoping the boys would figure things out. In the meantime I ended up subletting this place in Harlem where I am now. I just didn't want to buy furniture and sign a lease just to have to ultimately move that furniture and either find a subletter myself of have to wait to move into the apartment with my friends.

So I took on a gypsy life, drifting from neighborhood to neighborhood, sublet to sublet, suitcases in hand on trains and busses all over the city. As I well-documented, I spent my time at home ruthlessly getting rid of anything I could to make ultimately hauling my possessions across country easier. I don't know what size my future apartment will be, but my stuff ought to fit. I believe it would fit into this bedroom I'm in now, and it's not that big.

All this is to say I had an impromptu lunch with my friend today who happened to be in the city for an audition, and he told me he's going to be performing a cruise for essentially the next year. What that means for me, as I was already coming to discern, is that I'm not going to be living with him anytime in the near future. The new roommate search is on.

My first thought was my friend Anna who is currently studying abroad in Madrid just as I did last year. Frequently when kids come back from abroad studies they move into apartments instead of back into NYU housing. (This is much cheaper for essentially anyone who isn't me, who had her housing paid for by a scholarship.) As it turns out, Anna is in the market for a roommate herself as her housing plans seem to have fallen through too, so it looks like I've already hopefully solved half the battle. Anna is quite possibly the only person I've ever met who I would dare to say is as big of a Harry Potter fan as I am. She's two years younger than me and a Playwrights student, and we started talking on facebook the summer before she came to NYU because we both had Potter pictures in honor of the coming film (Half-Blood Prince at the time). I remember in one of our first conversations we analysed the latest production stills that had just been released in the nerdiest possible detail. I know I have friends that would have done that with me when we were twelve, but I don't know about at age twenty.

This is far in the future, as we won't live together until January, and we just started talking about this within the last 24 hours, but I'm excited. It's going to be the best. Have no delusions about what you will walk into if you visit our apartment. Let me give you only this picture: In our "about me" sections on facebook (or "acerca de mí" because our facebooks are in Spanish), I have "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." Anna has "Nitwit. Blubber. Oddment. Tweak."

Friendships have been built on far less.

As Anna and I were talking, I said "I guess I've been a gypsy for no reason," but then amended it to add "Or at least not the reason I thought," which is really the truth. I can see now, on what is probably (hopefully?) the tail-end of my gypsydom (I'm not sure there's a noun for it) that even though I thought I was wandering New York for the sake of my friends, I have of course been wandering New York (and the world, really) for the sake of myself. This blog started because I went to Madrid, and I went to Madrid because I was determined to broaden my experience of the world and gain greater perspective about humanity. That happened. But it continued when I came back to New York and kept living out of suitcases for another year. As I've said before, I've learned a lot about who I am, what I need and don't need, what I value, what I can let go of, who cares about me, what matters. Who are you without all your stuff? You're still you. You really are. I really am.

So, you know, it seemed crazy, it still kind of seems crazy, that I've had no real permanent address for ages, that I've had to have mail sent to Illinois constantly even though I've spent cumulatively about a year there in the last three, but it's okay. I don't think I would trade it to have had an apartment back in May. Yes, I am absolutely excited to buy a bed and have a room I get to decorate myself (which will still include Harry Potter posters, of course) and having keys I get to keep and being able to give people an address that I'm going to still be at in more than three months time. One day, I will actually change my residency to New York, but apparently that will only be after I've already lived there for five years.

All I'm really saying is I still believe everything happens for a reason, even if it isn't always the reason we expect. That's life.

Morning Musings (An Organizational Rant)

It's been so hot I've had a hard time sleeping lately. I woke up around 5 am this morning and saw golden light on my walls coming from the window, and I looked out and saw this. I don't think I've ever been so happy to see 5 am.

 

Look at it reflecting off the river!

So anyway, living in this unairconiditioned box, in combination with essentially living for an additional seven weeks out of the suitcase I packed for two weeks, has got me thinking a lot about things I need and things I don't. Apparently I can get by without air conditioning. I guess I can also get by without solid nights of sleep (at least so far). Yes, I've been wearing the same six shirts for the last month and a half. And yes, the only three pairs of pants I've had to wear basically since I left for Spain in August really do need replacing now; they get worn out a lot faster when you have less options. And not a day has gone by that I have not rued sending my other pair of shorts home, thinking, "I don't need two pairs of shorts for two weeks in Europe." My God I need to buy another pair of shorts. But apparently I don't need a lot of the clothes I know I've got sitting in drawers at home. And I don't know what all that stuff in my desk is that I haven't really seen since last summer, but I hope that when I get home I will remember I got by without it for a year and probably don't need it anymore.

I'm sure some of this attitude comes from my mom, the home organizer. And some of it comes from being a type-A neat freak (thanks for that, too, Mom), but I've still always had a lot of stuff. It's just been well-organized stuff. And now I don't want so much of it. Some things have been a little complicated since I ended up with an unexpected six weeks in New York, but mostly things are a lot simpler with only a carry on's worth of belongings. Now, don't get too excited Mom, I think part of why I'm so comfortable in this room I'm living in is because it has two bookcases packed to the gills with books, and though I go through my collection once or twice a year and always find a couple things to toss, we all know I have a harder time parting with books than with anything else.

Do you know how weird it is to be reading library copies of Harry Potter books? This may be a first.

I really am trying to think of what all the stuff in my very full room is. I have fifteen years of dance costumes in my closet, most of which I'm going to get rid of. I'm trying to sell my American Girl dolls that I have held onto for ten years even though I only ever wanted one (which I bought myself) so that I could do its hair. I finally decided to try to sell my flute that I played in junior high and then only a handful of times in the seven years since. Before I started college I condensed all my grade school crap into a single cardboard box.

There is a nagging feeling growing inside me that a lot of the random things cluttering my room are bits of my collection of Harry Potter memorabilia, which I can say from 800 miles away I won't part with. I mean, my eighteen Harry Potter books alone (not counting Tales of Beedle the Bard or Quidditch Through the Ages/Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them) take up plenty of space. And space, if you didn't know, is something of a scorching commodity in New York. It's a hotter than this weather we've been having, and that's saying something.

So, we've established Potter is important. My photos and scrapbooks are important. Minimal clothing is important. The books stay. But eventually I've got to haul all this stuff across half the country, so most of the rest of it has got to go. (I can already feel this whole thing coming back to haunt me in a few weeks when I get home.)

Join me, friends! You know you've got a drawer where you throw the junk you don't know what to do with and plan to go through "at some point." Which is never. Believe it or not, I have one of those drawers. I do. And the only thing I can promise you is in it is some Harry Potter calendars from 2002. (I'm not kidding.) Don't think of it as summer cleaning, think of it as lightening up your life! Even in Europe I got tired of lugging the suitcase around. I think I wore all but two things that I had packed, and yet I still didn't want to be dragging around as much stuff as I had. So I definitely want to get rid of the excess in my life before I have to pack it into the back of an SUV and probably inevitably haul it up a narrow staircase while my mom reminds me this is the fourth time she's helped me move into a New York apartment.

And I promise you don't need all those school papers you're keeping. Just stop it. It's taking up so much space, and it's utterly useless. I gave my brother my calculus notes years ago and threw the rest away, with the exception of things I wrote. And don't keep those readings you never read that you think you will later because you want to be well-read and intellectual. Maybe that was just something I did but we'll pretend it's not. You haven't read them yet. You're not going to. And if it was given to you to read in a class, I would bet you could find it in a book or maybe even on the internet if you're suddenly possessed with the urge to read The Prince or something.

I care about skylines and pink heavens at five am and having a comfortable bed and being surrounded by books. And I care way more about my family and friends than anything. And, okay, I take an unreasonable amount of pride in the absurdity of my collection of utterly useless Harry Potter things. But part of what studying abroad did, and graduating did, and living on my own with all this free time has done, is help me figure out who I am, at least for now, and I am not all that stuff. Because I've been me for the last ten months without it. Out with the old. In with (less) new.

And the best thing about that sky? It takes up all the space in the world, but no space at all in my room. :)

Stepford Island

So then what happened?

Did I tell you that the day after I got to London my friend introduced me to a friend of hers who was looking for a subletter? Did I even mention that when I was packing during graduation week I had to sort my things into stuff staying in NYC, stuff going home, stuff going to Europe, and stuff going to New Jersey? Yeah, that's right. Try sorting your belongings into four locations while graduating from college and trying to host your family and preparing for two weeks of travel.

Aaaanyway. So I skyped with this girl from Kerry's apartment and it seemed like a good deal - the place was in Astoria, with other theatre people, and since she was leaving all her stuff, she was only going to charge me half of her rent, making the place really cheap, and the timing was right. Great!

We got back from Paris, left JFK, and began the ridiculous public transit trek (requiring two trains and a bus, not including the airtrain from the airport to the subway) and finally got to my new home for the next six weeks. We were looking forward to putting our stuff down, maybe showering, taking a nap. I was looking forward to not having to pack and unpack every few days for the next six weeks.

Suitcases hauled upstairs, unlocked the door, got inside. The place was filthy. I tried to be positive about it, but after sitting in the living room (on the trunk that they used as a coffee table, because I wouldn't sit on the couch), I decided I couldn't live there. I didn't want to be paying money to basically sit on a loft bed for six weeks. So Mom called my aunt in New Jersey, and we ran away via one more subway train and a NJ transit train.

Let's take a look at this picture: Lindsay has no driver's license, no debit card, no credit card, and no address to which to have new ones sent. Lindsay had already called to have a new debit card sent to the Astoria apartment, which she now has to cancel, since she doesn't think the roommates she abandoned are likely to want to send it to her, and she wouldn't know where to have it sent anyway. Yes, life feels like crap.

Mom changed her flight (for free, yay southwest!) so that she could stay and help me figure things out for a few days. I decided to try one more sublet option I remembered at the last minute and decided if that didn't work, I was giving up and going home to Chicago until further notice.

The sublet was on Roosevelt Island. Don't worry, no one knows where that is, I didn't either - it's a teeny island between Manhattan in the 60s and Queens, only two miles long and less than a quarter of a mile wide. The Queensboro Bridge goes right over it. I found this place thanks to a friend placing an ad in the Playwrights digest - our weekly-ish e-newsletter with announcements of performances, auditions, sublets, etc. She said "price negotiable," and I wrote her with the upper end of my budget, sure it was too low, since her place sounded so nice, but she said the people who had offered her more money were strangers, so I was in luck.

I was anxious to go look at it that day (Wednesday), but the timing didn't work. Turns out I couldn't really go until Saturday. So I spent the next couple days trying to relax in suburban New Jersey, hoping I'd be able to start putting things back in order over the weekend. I even got to see my nine-year-old cousin's third grade play about New Jersey. It was awesome. Friday night I was scheduled to work in the city, so I took the train in and then spent the night with friends in Brooklyn, since I didn't get off until 12:30.

Saturday morning I made my way to Roosevelt Island, which has a stop on the F train. (You learn something new every day). The apartment was great and the best part, to me, was the view of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings from the living room window. It was a definite yes. We made plans for me to stay the next night, Sunday, with her leaving Monday, and then I left, the happiest I'd been in days.

In the afternoon I met up with my favorite NYU professor, Bob, who I sometimes have coffee with, and we had a celebratory brunch at Le Pain Quotidien, with mimosas, since we were feeling exuberant, I guess. We spent some time catching up on graduation and everything going on in his life - we can always talk for hours - and then went our separate ways as Bob was meeting guests later and had to get ready.

I then walked uptown to meet back up with my aunt, uncle, two cousins, and two of their friends. My other cousin was celebrating his twelfth birthday (even though his birthday is the day before mine) with an overnight in the city. My aunt has had an apartment in the Gramercy area for a long time, a place I have been fortunate enough to stay at on several NYC trips before moving here, and they were all staying in the city for the night.

We went to the spy exhibit at the discovery center in Times Square - God bless my aunt and uncle for chaperoning three twelve year olds and a nine year old in New York City - via subway. The adults thought the exhibit was really interesting, with lots of McCarthy-era technology, but it required far more reading than the boys were really interested in, so we moved through pretty quickly. With so much time to spare we went to Toys R Us and the boys rode the ferris wheel. I didn't even know there was a ferris wheel in Toys R Us, I'd never been in there. And I don't need to go again.

After Toys R Us we headed back down to Union Square - they to go to Max Brenner's for dinner, I to go to work just a few blocks away. After work I went back to the apartment, conveniently close, and then on Sunday morning we all went out for breakfast at Big Daddy's, one of their favorite places.

My plan then was to head out to Roosevelt Island (my suitcase having been brought in the car with everyone and stored in the apartment), but we realized the bag of all the toiletries I'd bought at a Target in NJ - much cheaper than anywhere in the city, of course - had been left back home. So we left my suitcase with the doorman and I rode with everyone back to New Jersey.

Then the rainstorm came. There was huge thunder and lightning, and I decided I didn't want to travel and lug my suitcase all over New York in that weather. So I contacted my friend, told her I'd meet her the next day to pick up the keys, and spent one more night - Tony night! - in New Jersey.

Late Monday morning I finally took one last train into the city. I met up with Ryann, my subletter, at Playwrights to get the keys, walked up to the apartment to pick up my suitcase, and then took two trains to get to my new home. Exhausted but happy, I unpacked, which took about five minutes, as I only had one suitcase, and then enjoyed staying in one place for a while.

The apartment is amazing, with a big kitchen and big living room. I have my own room, which I think is bigger than my bedroom at home, with a half bath attached. From my window I can see bits of Manhattan and Queens, as well as an outdoor theatre directly below me. There's a Shakespeare play going on there this month, and someone I know happens to be in it.

Roosevelt Island is weird though. It's like a small suburb in the middle of New York City. It has a tiny branch of the public library - the size of a one room school house and carrying exactly ZERO Harry Potter books. There is one school and one high school. There is a post office. There is a police station. There is a grocery store. There are I think two churches. There is a bus that goes around the island that costs 25 cents. There is a starbucks and a duane reade. There are two hospitals, a park, a baseball field, a basketball court, a youth center. There are a few restaurants, a thrift shop, things like that. Most of the people who live here are either young families or older people, because of the hospitals - lots of people in wheelchairs. So really. It's like a suburb but condensed into less than one square mile, so it's apartment buildings instead of houses. The apartments are nice but the buildings and the hallways are all very industrial. It's weird. It's beautiful, there's lots of trees and lots of water, but I think it's too quiet. I'm enjoying it for now, like a six week vacation, but I guess it's okay that I can't really afford to live here.

Still... I'll miss this view.