Catsup 14: From a Lot of Park to a Parking Lot.

DIARY

For a while we threw the frisbee around on the green meadow, and then we lay down in the grass to eat apples and carrots and relax. Then, we wound our way through the western part of the park, and had about an hour left to spend at the Botanical garden. The garden itself was gorgeous looking, although really the fragrance was the most striking thing about it. Of course, we wouldn't have epxerienced this as strongly if we'd come at a different time of year. My favorite trees are almost always the trashier, cheaper ones: poplars, cottonwoods, aspens, and willows. There was an impressive willow, though, and who cannot be overwhelmed by the stately rows of pink cherry trees all in blossom.

I had to leave a little early, to get to the first night of the New School Thesis Readings. People were more dressed up than I'd ever seen them, and there was a genuine, palpable excitement to the whole thing. Jessica arrived, and we started in on the free food and drink. When Sky and Emma arrived, I took them around and introduced friends from workshop and the program. Amy read that night, and basically stole the scene, but for the most part people stuck to the 350-word limit, and the pace was brisk.

Afterwards, Jess was feeling bad so she offered to head on home. Sky and Emma and I walked down to Chinatown for a quick meal, then returned north to the Lower East Side to try to get into a friend's party. I was the only person of the three of us that met the bar's dress code, which is never a situation I expect to be in. After waiting there for a few minutes, and saying "hi" to a friend of Emma's we walked back south and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. We got home some time after two...

The next morning, Sky and Emma had to transport their luggage to a site closer to the train they'd take to the airport, but I still took Sky up to the roof for a quick tour. When they had left, I ran about getting things ready for my own reading that night. I took the train up to the Upper East Side, and grabbed a coffee with the two of them, and we headed over to Central Park. There, we lounged around on a rock outcropping for about an hour (and watched the closest thing to a high-speed police chase I've ever seen, with one cruiser tearing down the sidewalk with pedestrians springing out of the way). Eventually, we wound our way over to Strawberry Fields, then on down to 60th Street and MOMA.

We spent the middle part of the day at MOMA, spending most of our time in the architectural galleries and the sculpture garden. At about four o'clock, my dad arrived, having taken a flight and several gurrelous subways to Midtown. The four of us had a bit over an hour left together, so we went upstairs to the top floor where all the famous paintings (Van Gogh's Starry Night were). We stopped at an overpriced diner for a quick bite to eat, and all of us pretty much stuck to coffee and appetizers. Then we said our goodbyes in a very-crowded, very slow moving subway, and dad and I headed down to New School where we met Jessica.

END OF POST.