The next chapter

Chapter 1: Exile: The protagonist leaves New York and tries to settle into London. Initial nostalgia gives way to life with a new and satisfying rhythm. But then one day the protagonist confesses to London: "London, I like you. I really like you. But my heart belongs to another... [cue the Gerswin and Woody Allen's voice over introduction to Manhattan]

Chapter 2: The Grand Compromise: The protagonist makes a joyous return to New York, but in exchange accepts a grand, pragmatic compromise with these words: "New York I love you. But in exchange for weekends and telecommuting days (even months), I have promised my days to Boston." New York, used to being anything and everything for anyone and everyone, takes this in stride. The protagonist instead finds the bargain increasingly heavy.

Chapter 3: The Return: The protagonist has come to like Boston. Some days pass quickly, others slowly. [Overlay a shot here of the pages of the calendar fluttering by: 1 year, 2 years, 3 years...] But at last the protagonist has served out the partial separation for the agreed-upon period. At the appointed hour on the appointed day, packs books and bags and furniture and flies to New York with these words: "New York, I am yours. All yours."

Alternative treatment (or the Bollywood remix)
Chapter 1: The protagonist is wildly in love with New York. But the future father-in-law, who also happens to be the protagonist's boss (as happens in Bollywood films), says, "Life is not all about love. We need you, I need you, in our London office." Following duty, the protagonist settles in London, trying to learn to love the city. But arranged love proves impossible. The protagonist's heart still belongs to New York.

Chapter 2: The father-figure finally gives in, saying if it's New York you want, it's New York you'll get. But... ah the but. To prove your love of the city, you must spend your weeks in our Boston office for a period of two to five years. If you still love New York after spending all that time apart, then I'll we'll see. While growing to respect and admire Boston, love remains elusive. And every weekend, the protagonist journeys to New York and leaves with the words, "I'll come back to you one day... to stay."

Chapter 3: One Sunday the father-figure is driving by Central Park in his limousine when he sees the protagonist seated on a park bench (I know this seems unlikely, but it is a Bollywood film after all), looking downcast. "What is it child/ trusted employee?" he asks, "It's New York," the protagonist replies. "I've done what you've asked. I've tried, but every day I love New York the same as always, more if possible." The father-in-law/boss, by now sporting a salt-and-pepper goatee, puts a hand on the protagonist's shoulder saying, "You've passed the test my child/trusted employee. You'll move back to New York this summer. And to make up for the hardship we've put you through, we'll send you to Europe for two months..." [Cue the Bollywood dancers in Central Park...]

xo

bb

P.S. Yes, loyal readers. I'm back, back in New York. Of course, I do leave for Europe on Sunday for a couple of months, but come the summer New York will be my destination, not Boston. I did really, really like my stays in London and Boston, but New York has always been where I've wanted to live, so I'm happy, thrilled really, to be home. I suppose I'll have to change the header of the blog! Now there's a task that I'll enjoy.

It's been a source of great strength having you along with me for the journey thus far. And I look forward to more adventures together in the months and years ahead...

Simple facts

I'm a little frazzled and edgy today, the reason being that I'm not sleeping well. And the reason for that in turn is simple: sunrise. I'm always caught a little off-guard at this time of year by the long days. They are wonderful aren't they? But long days imply either early sunrise, late sunset, or both. Early sunrise can be a great thing if you're a farmer readying to milk the cows, a hiker wanting to make as much progress as possible during the cool early daylight hours, or possibly a rodent eager to gather nuts. Late sunset of course means long leisurely nights out.

Less extreme than sleep deprivation, but more insidious, is confusion and disorientation. With years of habits we come to associate certain feelings and activities with certain levels of light. You wake up feelingly like you've just gone to sleep (and you have) -- it should be dark. You're out having far too many drinks after dinner and stumbling home -- it should be dark. You arrive at your first appointment for the day -- it should be light.

One of my vivid memories of my year in London was waking up to broad daylight, feeling tired, and then discovering it wasn't yet 5 am. These are the simple facts as of 1 July:

City	Sunrise	Sunset	Daylight hours
New York	05:29	20:31	15:02
London	04:47	21:21	16:34
Paris	05:51	21:58	16:07
Mumbai	06:05	19:20	13:15

It explains everything, doesn't it? In New York, nights out are dark at this time of year, and I wake up as the sun is on the rise (I'm afflicted with a serious case of early rising.) In London, sun rises at 4.47 am. How does one cope with this? Are drapes heavier? Are sales of eye masks one per man, woman, and child? And Paris, sunset almost 10 pm, with dusk taking you to almost 10.30 pm, those long endless evenings. They were not just figments of your imagination. They really happened. (Well, at least the light. For the rest, I can't say.) And Mumbai, sunrise 6 am. Memories of being woken by the parents as they make their way to play tennis, and deciding since I'm awake and won't get back to sleep I might as well go. Listening to the morning birds. Watching (being blinded by) the rising sun as the game plays out.

It all makes sense.

xo

BB

BIG CHEESE little cheese

Somehow, somewhere two weeks have slipped since my last post. I thought this next post was going to be about some films I've seen (the next one maybe...) but this one is a about:

BIG CHEESE and little cheese.

So what's it all about? There's no way to pretend the following will be coherent, so I'm not going to try:

* In London I lived next to a cheese monger (love that occupation name - monger, iron monger and cheese monger being the two I continue to see - it's not used in American English). Well, I thought of myself as living next to La Fromagerie, though in reality it was a 4 minute stroll away. It's a gem of place, and most things cost just about as much as gems. But getting back to the cheese, they have their own cheese cave. I should say "cave", because it's a wonderful room that the customers can walk into, to be surrounded by the smell of ageing cheese. What a smell! And the cheese monger himself will give you a tour, with some suggestions and tastings thrown in. Looking back, I don't know why I didn't buy more cheese. For one thing, you could get unaged raw milk cheese, which we can't here. For another, it's irresistible! So just for the record, it's not that I could resist, it's just that somehow I went shopping on Sunday, market day, and tended to buy my cheese there...

* In New York, I live next (in the same sense as above) to a very fine, quite reputed cheese section. Indeed, one person liked it so much he asked - and was given permission - to get married there! (No, not me, though not a bad idea for the future...) The only problem here is they have many cheeses pre-cut and pre-wrapped. Good cheese, but usually hunks (don't like that word, but it's the right word...) Of course, you can get them to cut piece for you, but you have to endure the competitive sport called New York grocery shopping. Some people move too fast and knock you over. Some run their shopping cart into you Achilles' tendons (there's a reason ancient mythology picks this as Achilles' weak spot...) Even more taxing is weaving your way through the crowd. Overtaking the slow walkers and the indecisive, while yourself being flanked by a shopping cart and a baby stroller. In this kind of high-risk situation, you don't really want stop to to ask for your bespoke slice of cheese. You grab what you can and run.

* In Boston, I now have my own cheese monger. Actually it's a wine store and provisions store. The wine store is great, if like me you enjoy good wine but don't enjoy the sticker shock of buying wine outside continental Europe (sorry UK -- same problem there as here....), and I'm sure at some point I'll write about how this has changed my life. (But that phrase sounds bad no? At the least, a bit tricky...) But the cheese monger... Life changing... My local grocery options here basically consist of overly expensive, overly large, pre-packaged cheese. Now instead, I pop in for somewhere between $2-$4 worth of cheese. A thin sliver of Gorgonzola here, a brick of Robiola there, and even better a great selection of American cheeses. (For the doubters out there, American cheese isn't only Kraft slices. There's good stuff there. Right now I'm nibbling on a American raw cow milk's cheese...)

I wish there a were a more philosophical peroration to this line of thought. But really, that's it for now. Big cheese, little cheese.

bb

Fill 'er up (2)

I'm always a little surprised when the American media make such a fuss about General Motor's plans to build an all-electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, and amused when such a fuss is made about Tata Nano, an Indian designed micro-car that will sell for something like two thousand dollars.

I'm surprised because an Indian-made, electric, micro-car can be seen plying the streets of London daily, the Reva, which is called the GWiz in the UK. Sometimes living in the US I feel so far behind the times. In London you find free parking spots for electric cars. Anyway with these little beauties, parking space is not a problem.




Apparently the driving range is 40 km. But in London this isn't too much of a problem because you can always fill 'er up here:



BB

P.S. Not to say that I don't miss the Texaco Station altogether.

The look

One of the first things I rediscovered after getting back to New York from London is the look. By this I don't mean what I'm wearing (or choose not to wear), or the style, or the attitude.

I mean simply that people look at each other. In London I thought I had it figured out. At a distance of 10m or more you were free to appraise people, but then any closer you would turn your eyes away, only turning them back at the subject as you passed. Interesting, but really quite limiting.

Here in New York instead people simply look at you. No, not stare, but give you an honest moment's appraisal. And unlike some other places (Paris? I am inventing this? Those who know more, please correct me) in which any such inspection requires a neutral to bored expression, in New York you are allow to appreciate what you see. People will smile, or more often simply let you know that they like what they see. You can sit at a sidewalk cafe, and those at tables and on the those on the streets are always playing the look game. And if that's all you're going to do, then you have pretty much a free pass. If you want to proceed to the next level - a word exchanged, perhaps more - then it's another game, more on which later when I myself learn the rules of this game.

But the look game is simple and fun, because once you get into it there is more than one look. There's inquisitive, appreciative, disapproving, flirtatious, bewildered, scolding, critical, and of course the harried-get-out-of-my-way look.

* * *

Last night my friend Till and I were sitting at an sidewalk table; unusual for NY and more typical of Paris we were both seated to look out at the street. It was a street and not an avenue so the traffic was not overwhelming. But what a scene! First there were the 4 motorcycles, each parked to occupy a car spot (not laterally). Curious. And then after a while a man in a big SUV rolled along, his four children jumped out to go the Mr. Softie ice cream truck, and he got onto the one of the bikes, but just lounging not driving. Initially, I wondered whether he was just sitting on someone else's bike. The man had a perfectly hemispherical belly and wore shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt. After a while, an older man who I had assumed was just loitering came up to him, approached him really. They spoke, and the younger man gave the older man the keys, and went in. The man rearranged the pylons that were cordoning off the area, and began to shift the cars around. After he was done, he was beaming. As though his position conferred great importance on him, and perhaps it did. I noticed that were 2 older guys just hanging out, looking after the different cars.(*)

A while longer and I noticed that there were many people loitering near the entrance to the building were the man had gone in. From time to time, people would stop by and speak to someone in the second-floor window above us (the same man?). Others would go in. The people going in were a wide cross-section of New Yorkers. I couldn't really pin down the type. Many seemed to live there, many did not.

After a while, the man above threw down some keys to one of the younger guys and he drove off with one of the motorcycles. But not before the boss's 8 year old son got to turn the ignition key and rev up the motorcycle. He was thrilled, and skipped off seeming very important.

And I suppose the highlight of the evening was when the woman made her appearance. She was fake blond, with reasonably good legs, but pretty (I believe the New York word is...) curvy from there up. She wore a black and white knit dress with horizontal stripes that was shall we say very fitted. Right out of a cartoon, Till commented.(**) Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Don't be too sure, because she hung out for a quite while, just chatting to people she seemed to know, and Till and I had to move along before we found out how this story ended.

* * *

Another night in the East Village.

xoxo

BB


(*) I was trying to pin it down, and finally I concluded they reminded me of the old men that populate the edges of town in a Sergio Leone or Kurosawa movie.

(**) Till went a bit further. He said, Europeans can't really pull off this look. They're too self-conscious. Americans (both North and South) can really inhabit the character without any inhibition, with a why not me? feeling.

Some simple facts for today:

New York






Sunrise: 7.01 am
Sunset: 4.28 pm
High: 0 C, Low: -4 C

London






Sunrise: 7.47 am
Sunset: 3.53 pm
High: 13 C, low: 12 C

So what (exactly) do you do?

Sooner or later this question is going to come up, so we should address it now. There are two things I do (in the New York sense, more on this below). I am a Flugelbinder, aspiring to someday achieve the title of Meisterflugelbinder. This is my passion. I real life, to pay the bills, I work in an aglet factory. They have to come from somewhere, those invaluable plastic caps that keep your shoelaces from fraying. I can tell you where they come from. I wish it were more artisanal work, but that's the way it is. At least I can live for my art.

When you meet you someone in New York, first few lines of dialogue pretty much goes like this.

"Hi I'm X."

"Hi, I'm Y."

"So, what do you do?"

And somewhat later,

"So, which part of town do you live in?"

We'll come back to the last one some other time, but the "so what do you do" question is way to pin someone down. No, not just box them, but also to suggest lines for further conversation. "Ah, latex. A fascinating industry."

I am still trying to figure out what they say to each other here. Not, as far as I can tell, the old fashioned "How do you do?" I've tried a few others, with limited success: "Hi, I'm BB and I'm a flugelbinder. What about you?" or "What do you folks do around here?" or even the old New York standby "So how do you know [enter here the name of the host of the party you're at - a person neither of you typically knows directly]?" No, I'm coming to the conclusion that in this city people just tend not to speak with each other, unless of course introduced by a mutual acquaintance.

Wherein the author addresses the purpose of this blog

Blogging has become quite the thing these days, at least among those for whom it is the thing. (If this were a novel, then this would surely become famous as one of the worst opening lines ever. )

Second attempt. It was a grey day, overcast, with the constant threat of rain, much like the previous day, and the day before.

Third attempt. It was my first day in London. Nostalgia isn't really my thing. Though I wasn't aching for New York, it was nonetheless always in my mind, hovering like a song you can't get out of your head, the constant reference point for each of my actions. Remember, look left, not right when you cross the street. (Not so hard to remember given that they paint it on the street.)


I happened to look at a red phone booth, a typical sight in London.


And of course without going in, could well imagine what I would find inside.


The New York phone booth instead isn't even a booth. It's telephone. Sometimes there's a canopy over it. Sometimes there is a phone attached, but not always. But they are invariably grimy. Putting one to your ear is worse than using the facilities/ loo (dual terminology is going to be a bit of a burden) at a train station. What you see is pretty much what you get.
And this was the kernel of the blog. To share with friends the small moments of being new in London. Often the moments that give color to the day are exactly those you wouldn't trouble your friends with over e-mail or the telephone, but add a bit of texture (and occasionally consternation) to the day.

So dear friends, let us take this path and see where it leads us.