New York Day Three

I'm at the little Italian cafe around the corner on 2nd Ave., where I go in NYC to get wifi and a cappuccino. It's 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, another beautiful day - have I mentioned that, apart from the thunderstorms on Friday, the weather has been perfect, mild and sunny? This city can be beastly hot, so I feel very lucky for the breeze.

Today I am going to Central Park - walking across the park to the Green Flea Market at 79th and Columbus, a fave destination full of interesting things, and then I'll walk up Columbus to 94th, to look at Uncle Edgar's brownstone and then to visit him in Central Park. I scattered his ashes inside the park at 94th and I go to visit him when I'm here, to have a chat and tell him how things are.

I'm taking Cousin Lola to see The Humans, this year's Tony award winner for Best Play, this afternoon. Lola is exactly the age my father would have been had he lived; it is my great pleasure to take her to the theatre and for lunch or dinner. At 94, she is still living in a studio at 71st and 3rd and goes often to the theatre and the museums for almost nothing on a senior's pass. Full of energy.

Tonight - walking? Working at Ted's? Not much planned once the theatre stops - there's none on Sunday nights or Monday. Just this city. I think I'll find something to do. I hope to make it back to the Cafe Noi. Stay tuned.

New York Day Two

Saturday July 2. Sometimes I love this city so much I could croak. This just might have been the most perfect day I’ve ever spent in the city of my birth.

At 9.20 a.m., I intended to get the Lexington subway uptown to the Museum of the City of New York at 103rd and 5th, but when I got to the subway, it was closed. Just closed, no explanation, no uptown service. No problem – the Madison Avenue bus got me there. I was early for the museum, so I walked in Central Park, a part I didn’t know way up north – the Conservatory, the Vanderbilt Gate – such an oasis, this huge green rectangle of sanity.

I was at the museum as it opened, to see its exhibit on the Yiddish theatre. And there is was – the bronze bust of my great-grandfather Jacob Gordin that I used to see in my grandparents’ hall on W. 79^th. It’s magnificent. He’s magnificent. It's odd to see family - even family I never knew - in a museum. The exhibit is well done, extensive and beautifully put together, covering the whole era, from just before Gordin to the resonance the Yiddish theatre has had through the years. I bought the book from the exhibit, which I’m proud to say lists my book in the bibliography. But I’m sorry to say that while I was touring the exhibition, I had it completely to myself.

He was only 56 when he died. Doesn't he look about 80 already? Probably about 54 when this was taken. Ageless.

Watched a great film about the history of the city, from when it was a wild lush forest purchased from the Indians for approximately $24, to now.

I got the bus back to Ted’s, stopping on the way at Arche shoes, one of my favourite shoe stores on Madison Avenue, where there was a sale, a word that is music to my ears. And yes, there was a pair of comfortable, pretty red shoes in my vast size calling to me.

After a rest, back downtown - in my new red shoes - by subway to TKTS to see what I could get for the matinee. Times Square even more insane, and so many tickets – too many - on sale at half-price there. There are also a lot more empty stores than I’ve ever seen. Things are not right. People are struggling. People work incredibly hard and are all exhausted; everyone in this city looks exhausted. But many are going bankrupt in any case, and the rest are getting richer. Many of the rich, however, are Japanese. They seem to be the ones buying everything. And most of the tourists are French – I hear French everywhere. I think that if nothing else changes France, the fact that so many of its citizens are visiting New York will do so.

I went to see The Crucible, directed by the acclaimed Ivo van Hove, with a star-studded cast including Ben Wishaw. It has had mixed reviews, and for good reason – it’s not a very good production. Van Hove had all kinds of half-assed ideas – setting it in a school so people can scribble periodically on a blackboard, for example, brief flashes of weird stuff, several key roles miscast, and worst of all, the Theatre of Mess. Those who follow this blog know what that means – as I’ve written before, whenever directors start flinging junk around the stage, it means they're lost. And there’s a mighty pile of junk on that stage by the end. Poor stage-managers.

But the actors were all good, and nothing can kill this superb play, a clarion call for tolerance and justice against religious bigotry and hidebound prejudice. It could not be revived at a more important time. I just wish the production had worked for it and not against it. But I’m still glad I saw it.

Home again, rocketing up Madison Avenue in the fastest bus ever – now I know which street to use to get uptown. Had my fish and Pinot and a brief rest, and set out again, this time walking from 77^th and 3rd down to 45^th and 8^th for the evening show. A long interesting walk, and again, I was early so went to sit on the steps in the middle of Times Square to watch the unbelievable jumble of humanity. Eventually, the woman sitting next to me and I began to chat and guess what? She was from Toronto. Riverdale, in fact, five minutes from where I live. Ain’t that the way.

heaven

hell

purgatory

And then I went to see one of the best musicals I’ve ever seen, an explosion of joy: The Color Purple. I would not have been much interested if I hadn’t seen an excerpt on the Tonys. It was truly glorious, spectacular, with the best voices – Jesus, the singing! The music! – and three of the best singing actresses I’ve ever seen, especially the stupendous breakout superstar, Cynthia Erivo, a tiny Brit who has everything, a fantastic actress and singer with charisma, sweetness and grace, mesmerizing. I have never been in a theatre where people rose shouting to their feet after a number, or at the end, heard such cries of approval. I, of course, wept. Oh my God what gifts this city can give you. 

New York Day One

Friday July 1. An hour and a half to get from Toronto to Newark; two and a half hours to get from the Newark airport to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. By the time I got to my cousin’s, I was ready to go home.

At Penn Station, where the train from the airport arrives, I tried to get the subway but ended up bewildered, looking for the E train that was there on the map but not there in reality – and the subway was incredibly hot. So I walked out into the morass of New York, to make my way, with suitcase, east along impassable 34^th Street to 3^rd Avenue to get the bus uptown. Crowds on the street, massive, overwhelming crowds, muggy oppressive heat, and 3^rd Avenue was gridlock. A nice lady – so New York! – chatted gaily, telling me about twelve blocks up, the street would clear. It took three-quarters of an hour for the bus to crawl 40 blocks uptown. At one point, the driver said over the P.A., “ 59^th is next, if we can ever get there.” There was a black man or woman in a glittery turban stretched out asleep on the seat nearby, and a mother and daughter chattering in Parisian French who got off at Bloomingdale’s.

Voila, enfin – Cousin Ted’s at 77^th and 3rd, where I have been staying since my Uncle Edgar, who lived at 94^th and Central Park West, died in 1997. Ted has a weekend house in Northport where his spouse Henry lives, so this two-bedroom apartment is empty every weekend. Cousin Ted has worked for Sotheby’s, he knows about antiques, and he and Henry tour the world looking for antiquities and treasure. The apartment is jammed with priceless acquisitions – hundreds of pre-Colombian pottery and Chinese burial figures, petrified dinosaur eggs, 17^th century British drinking glasses - though most of the collection is in Northport.

OMG, I am glad not to be out there. It has been heavy and threatening all day and finally the sky has exploded, a teeming rain with thunder. Trying to manoeuver around NYC in a bad rainstorm … the only thing worse is snow. Once when I was visiting and 7 months pregnant, my husband and I were desperate to get to the airport in a snowstorm, and when a cab finally stopped, a man nearly shoved me to the ground to get in first. And then the driver threatened to dump us in the middle of Central Park when he realized we were going to La Guardia and not to Kennedy.

Anyway, I’m safely here. There’s no wifi – no wifi! – so I am writing this in Word and will post when I go at some point to the little Italian café around the corner.

The narrowest skyscraper in the world.

I went up 3^rd to Eli’s, a gourmet takeout place, which was a mistake – I bought staples and a few treats, cold soup, baked fish, milk and delicious bread – and a jar of organic peanut butter which turned out, when I got to the cash, to cost $12. I spent $63 on a few staples. But at home, the soup – cold carrot and lime – was superb, with a glass of the Pinot I bought at the wine store on the corner, and blueberries from the Puerto Rican fruit stand across the street. And now I’m sitting here waiting for the rain to stop, or at least die down, so I can go to the theatre.

10.30 p.m. Never have I been so grateful for a cab. I started walking after the play tonight, heading back to 3^rd Avenue, but after much walking today decided I was tired and the Times Square area was too insane, so I stuck out my hand as a cab went by and he stopped. Miracle! Four minutes after I got in, the heavens opened, lightning, downpour. By the time I got out, I’d put on my rain poncho and opened my umbrella and then I ran the quarter block to Ted’s, but even so, I was soaked. Thank you, God - that cab was heaven sent. Times Square in a thunderstorm – let’s not even think about it.

What I do want to think about is the wonderful show I saw tonight: Fun Home, based on the graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel. A new genre continues to bloom – the autobiographical musical, done by the same team that did Carolyn or Change, the brilliant musical about Tony Kushner’s childhood. And this is a brilliant musical about Alison Bechdel’s. Deeply moving, the story of a sensitive young woman growing up in a family damaged by its big secret – that Dad, the father of 3 kids, is gay. And Alison is too. It’s tender, funny, beautifully directed and acted, and heartbreaking.

Write in the Garden in three weeks

off to New York

This morning, I walked to the end of the garden early to eat breakfast and read the paper. And there I saw a fantastic construction - a minuscule spider had built a web, with one strand attached to the umbrella and another to the swing, at least a 4 or 5 foot span, two delicate threads leading to the perfect web with its builder and occupant at the centre, waiting. Can you see it, gleaming there in the middle?

And I thought, that's what we writers do - we build a web, a seemingly delicate but actually powerful creation, to draw people in. I'm not saying our readers are like flies - but I guess in a way they are. We don't eat them, though, but the reverse: we feed them.

And then I walked back through the garden onto the deck, past this,

and thought, somehow I have to tear myself away, force myself to go to New York tomorrow for five days, to stay at my cousin Ted's at 77th and 3rd, see theatre, see family, see my agent and the exhibit about the Yiddish theatre. I will have to force myself, though I'd much rather sit in my garden smelling the camellias, the jasmine and roses and lavender.

But I will make the sacrifice, leaving my son and my friend Louise to water the garden and take care of the house.

The big news is that I received a major edit of the memoir draft today from Colin Thomas in Vancouver. Ye gods, he has done a phenomenal job. It's many pages long and in great detail, and what he says basically is, it's in good shape but needs work. Of course. He suggests many cuts, which leave me wondering if the ms. will be 63 pages long when the cutting is done. But he suggests needed additions too. Luckily, I will have time over the next five days to ponder what he has said, as I march about consuming culture in NYC. Thank you, Colin. A great deal to digest, and very helpful.

Eli came for a sleepover on Sunday, and did much watering of the garden.

On Monday we went to the gorgeous Regent's Park pool for the preschool swim. It was amazing: every possible colour of adult and child was there, every race, plus a trans (wo)man with breasts and a beard and several children. And we were all doing the same thing, guarding very small people while encouraging them to splash and play. A great time was had by all. Eli jumped into my arms 4,692 times. And then it was time for lunch.

And on Monday night, a huge treat - I went to Books on Film at TIFF, to watch the film "Kes" and then listen to Eleanor Wachtel interview Helen Macdonald, author of "H is for Hawk." It's a haunting film I'd never seen because I knew it would be painful - but worth it, definitely, very moving and true, one of the top ten British films. Horrifying, though, the brutal world of working class Britain that it depicts, this kid so beset and alone, both home and school full of bullies, most of all his neglectful mother, his vicious brother, the teachers.

Helen Macdonald is a great speaker - almost too self-deprecating, so British, she apologized for everything. Imagine pitching her book to a publisher: here we have a memoir about an unemployed academic floundering in terrible grief who decides to train a goshawk, which process she describes in great detail, and also the life of T. H. White. Sound like an international bestseller to you? And yet it was, because she's a stunning writer and very honest. What a confusing business. Eleanor did her usual brilliant interview; it was as if we were eavesdropping on a conversation between friends.

I was her guest at the evening, and after buying her new book "Best of Writers and Company: interviews with 15 of the world's greatest authors" - and if that doesn't make your mouth water, I don't know what will - I went out after with her and several friends to a groovy bar on King St. West, for mussels and wine. I don't get out enough.

But tomorrow I'm getting quite far out. Last teaching of the spring term tonight. Next post from Noo Yawk.