Sunday Night Non-Sequitur

If you're in NYC on a Saturday night and need a place to grade papers and/or exams (because what else, really, do you do in NYC on Sat night) with good wifi, food and drink, a charming bathroom and a large lovely antique clock, then you should go to Croissanteria.

It was in Croissanteria last night where I had a machiatto, a made-in-cafe chocolate croissant and graded all but one of my students' languishing midterm exams.

As a complete non-sequitur, in another cafe on another midweek day, I'm wasn't sure about my tights.

I had a realization walking around tonight after getting a rather hideous passport photo taken--I spent the weekend doing only what I had to do.  Nothing more.  So I'm just treading water--not making an investment to really turn things around.

Just thinking.

See Above/See Below

1.   Tights sighting today.  See above.  They were on an older woman, too, which made me happy, as we move into the second half of summer vacation.

2.  I re-celebrated my birthday last night on The High Line.  See below.  I've decided you can keep celebrating your birthday day after day until you get it right.

3.  Is there anything better than a post about tights and cupcakes, Lara?  I'm sure there is, but I haven't thought of it yet.

Copying Lara (As Usual)

Tights seen at McNally Jackson on Friday

What I did this Satuday:

Biked to work

Worked

Biked home

Texted kid at sleepover (Did you make it out to Brooklyn?)

Rest of family still in pajamas

Made them dress for dinner.  Walked to Taqueria.  Taqueria was playing the first Rocky on their monitors--soundless.  I could not tear myself away, especially when Rocky and Adrian make out a little in Rocky's crummy apartment.

Found my copy of Diane Williams' This is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate
(excited about this because I'm going to see DW--one of my grad school heroes in my 20s--on Monday)

Cleaned out the top shelf of a book shelf--sorted through zines and Playbills.  Found the Quarterly Wests Lara gave me four years ago from AWP.

Threw away a ton of papers while listening to Emmy Lou Harris on Prairie Home Companion.  Yes, I'm middle aged.

Bowery Coffee's Black Tights Bonanza

I spent about one hour today writing in Bowery Coffee before getting hamantaschen for Purim (more on this tomorrow). Bowery Coffee's only been open since October and is so small, it had only imagined it would be uncomfortably intimate.

 I had been a little nervous about hanging out there: Would the staff mind if I hogged one of the three little tables with my helmet, requisite two bags and laptop? Turns out "no." In fact, the counter dude was so friendly and helpful (to me and everyone) I thought we might become fast friends. (He asked me if I had skateboarded there.)

 Despite the balmy weather--the cafe door propped open to welcome it--gal after gal came in wearing black tights, and it is silly how thrilling this was for me. See for yourself.

Low-tech Love

Okay, I was going to blog about the rest of Secret City, but someone in this household had my computer for ten hours straight and now I'm way too tired.  I hate how exhaustion wipes out the best laid plans. 

But earlier, while I still had energy, a dropping-by relative allowed me to escape for two hours just as the sun was starting to drop behind the tenements. Computerless, I took a notebook and a pen--and an experimental novel by Mary Robison which I wasn't going to read, but for some reason wanted to have with me--and sat and wrote in a grimy cafe/bar outfitted with furniture only the most desperate of squatters could love.  I guess I'm that squatter, because I, with great care, pulled up a grimy chair up to a ramshackle table. and--as if in conscious tribute to my low-tech surroundings--worked on a story long-hand, which I hadn't done in awhile.

I have to say, it was great not to type, and I hoped I was contributing to the visual ambiance of the place, writing like that, my Moleskin notebook and novel placed just so--my mug of chai.  My red dress and gray tights.  A computer would have ruined everything.

Speaking of picturesque, while bent over my notebook, I overheard a vaguely Nick Caveish-looking 50-something Irish rocker engage is some earnest career/business planning with a craggy older man, also Irish. I heard the Irish Nick Cave mention that he was going to be on Good Morning America the morning of "St. Pat's." Who was this mysterious Celt?

 A. said there should be an app for that.

(I just put "cool Irish rocker" in Google images and was given only a plethora of Bono.)

Tights:  The tights' giveaway closes tomorrow!  Stay tuned for the winner!

Upcoming:  The first guest blogger on "Girls in Tight Places"appears on Monday!  Watch this space.

Music Heard in a Tight Place (While Wearing Black Cable Knit Tights)

This morning I discovered that Lara and I were writing at the same time in separate cafes in our respective cities--cities which are 2,189 miles apart (I just looked it up). Knowing that we were doing the same important thing at the same time was heartening because I don't see Lara enough--in fact, it's been more than a year now. I spent five hours in a coffee shop today in a tight place, wedged in between two narrow tables, having staked out a nearby outlet. For sustenance, I drank two cups of green tea and ate my way through a plate of bread and butter and then hours after that, went back for an oat scone with no butter. Unfortunately, this place serves nothing but coffee, tea and baked good from this place. Mostly I was revising a story that is coming out this year in a little literary journal. I'll let you know when it does (if you're interested). After five hours of typing, and just a few morsels of food, I was ready to go, and was going to take off eight minutes earlier than I did, but just as I was packing up a live recording of Van Morrison's "Cypress Avenue" came on (after about an hour of Louis Armstrong, who I also love) and I had to settle back into my hard chair and listen, and I tried to listen without crying. Lara, we're going to write ourselves out of our tight places, won't we? (The video above records the exact stunning performance I heard today in the cafe: Fillmore East (in my neighbrhood!), Sept 23, 1970. I hope you take a look.)

Sensoryship

Today loved intermittently checking out Wikipedia's blacked-out (with pertinent info) site created in opposition to SOPA and PIPA (which I kept automatically reading as "Pippa" as in "Middleton").   I always find protest terribly exciting and excited to learn that SOPA looks like it will fail.

But that's all I can say today.

Speaking of black, sometimes all you can do is post a photo (taken this afternoon) of a fellow citizen in black tights and really stupendous wedge-heeled shoes.