P. and I are sitting at a table outside of a small restaurant in the Lower East Side. She says that during her stay in the City this week she noticed I had changed. She says she wants to see me eat. She thinks I'm starving. She says that she's treating me to a panini sandwich, which she assure me are excellent here. I look at the menu but I don't understand a word of what's in front of me. All I think is that $9 or $10 is quite a lot for a panini. She says she noticed I'm not really there. That when she speaks to me it's like I'm here but also somewhere else at the same time. It's strange. I had never thought about that. At this moment she's totally right. I say I'll take whatever panini it is she had last time she came here because this menu makes no sense. But my biggest problem at that moment is trying to find a way to drop a Lexomil without her noticing it. I love P. She's a great girl. I've known her for a while but only vaguely. She was my bro's girlfriend but never had an occasion to really sit down and talk. And then she decided to get a "training" in the U.S. and got one in a restaurant in the State of New York. I put training in between inverted comas because there's not much American cooks can teach her. She's really good at what she's doing in that kitchen. That's why they sent her for a week at Jean George. So I helped her with her papers and last year she came to the City and that's when we really met and talked.
Later I take her to Grand Central and watch her train pull out of the station and return to L.'s. I was suppose to take P.'s Metrocard and give it to L. but we arrived late at Grand Central and in the rush we totally forgot the Metrocard. When I arrive at L.'s place, she starts a speech not very different from P.'s at the restaurant, except that she focuses more on my "career" or rather lack of and of the negative influences that surround me. I immediately wish I was supple enough to kick my own ass for not having seen this coming and taking a prophylactic Lexomil before entering her building.
It's not that P. and L. don't know about the Lexomil. It's just that it would be rude to drop one in front of your friends when they start a critical analysis of your current life.
So P. came from upstate to do a one week training at Jean Georges. I'm not a big fan of top restaurants. Which is probably why Sara insisted so much to invite me there for lunch. She made a reservation through P. which also probably explains why we got so many freebies.
I arrived 10 minutes late at the Trump tower. Really, the MTA is getting on my nerves these days. I don't mind the random searches at all. But Metrocards keep getting more and more expensive and it seems that the quality of service is getting proportionally worse.
So, I arrive at the restaurant and Sara is already there of course waiting for me. We are seated immediately and the shows starts.
Don't expect details from me here guys. I can tell you it was fucking good what I ate, no matter what it was. I wish I had asked for a copy of the menu before I left. I tried to talk the nice waitress into giving me the recipes though. She said she couldn't really do that, but she could give me the recipe of that dark green sauce that come with the scallops if I beg her really hard. I would have, actually, but her shift ended before we were done eating.
We waited for P. to join us at our table at the end of her shift. Then we left and I walked her to Midtown. It was a nice day and obviously, good food and the production of endorphin are closely linked because I was feeling slightly high.
That night, even though I didn't really want to, I was so hungry that I had my usual $2.50 burger.
So it seems that the launch will take place tomorrow, after all. Nobody seems to give a fuck now, but launching something into space remains a challenge, especially if it is a manned aircraft -- and a particularly dangerous one. I suppose the NASA guys know what they are doing but I don't have a good feeling about all this and how the NASA people dodge questions about the chances of success. It's like nobody wants to be the one to say: "I believe that all the things we have done and checked and checked again guarantee a safe mission." Of course, no mission can be 100% safe. But still, there really is a hot potato dance going on here. I hope tomorrow's lunch will prove me wrong. I support all space programs. Even if tomorrow's launch is a success, I don't think I'll feel totally satisfied. The NASA attitude is really something to be worried about. It has left the realms of science. It has become political. Everybody wants the shuttle in space ASAP. The guys in the orbital station because they need supply and someone to pick up their trash. The NASA to prove that it can still remain competitive after Columbia's accident and to keep its financial support. The astronauts because they want to be in space. The President should attend such an important event. But he is not. He probably has better things to do. I hope he does. Otherwise it means he just doesn't want to take any chance of being associated with a disaster.
You've also had some of those days. I hope you did. The only way it makes sense is to believe that Jealous (God's real name according to the Good Book itself) realized that maybe he was a little heavy on you on the shit throwing and you deserve a little break of some sort.
The day I'm talking about is Thursday 21st. Thursday qualifies as the best day I had in quite a long time. Two days before, Tuesday had also been kinda good in its own way, in the shape of a letter from the Immigration graciously granting me another visa. I'm thinking about the letter I wrote them and I cannot help wonder which sentence made it possible.
But I digress. Thursday is also the day I realised I actually qualify for a Driver's Licence. I'm late when I walk up the stairs of the station on 40th street. In the middle of the stairs, two girls going down into the subway ask me if one of the trains there will take them to Soho. I said I don't know, because honestly I don't. I never go to Soho and I'm not sure I can tell which trains will bring you close to that neighborhood. And then the girls start to actually talk to me. Where am I from? How long I have been in New York? Do I know where to find work?
Our little chat is seriously slowing down the flow of people up and down the stairs so the girl walks back upstairs and we talk on the sidewalk and I give them a prolegomene to how to survive as an imigrant in NY. They are from Poland. They have incredibly beautiful blue/green eyes that hypnotise you. Their face are kind of cute, they look young but their bodies look mature plenty. It's a hot day in the city and they are wearing short skirts and viewer friendly low-necked tops. While I'm putting something back in my bag, the very short skirt of the youngest girl suddenly goes up, blown by the wind, and reveals for a couple of seconds her white laced underwear. Everybody pretends nothing happened. I told you: I'm a gentleman. They had arrived in NY only two days ago, so I gave them the basics (Village Voice, Craigslist), these kind of things.
I didn't ask for their contact info. I didn't give them mine. I should have.
What if we were each other's mistake -- each other bad habit? Unable to leave each other and doomed never to make another step further. How you do when you love someone but you know you have to move on?
First off, I have some friends in Great Britain. I've never been there myself, but what I'm talking about here is not the English people, but the British government and its policy.
If you go to Paris or any of the big cities of France for that matter, you'll see that public trash are clear plastic bags attached to a metallic rim. It has not always been like that.
If you go to a train or subway stations in any French cities, you're very likely to witness military patrols walking or standing with a finger on the trigger of aFAMAS. It has not always been like that.
I remember when bombs were exploding in the middle of markets in Paris. I remember when the towers of the WTC collapsed. Mollahs living in London were preaching their cheap ass Islam in the open. These old farts asking young people to kill themselves for Allah's glory or shit. I remember when a suspect in the Paris bombings hid in England and the British refused to extradite him to French authorities on the account that, being a terrorist, he was facing risks of torture.
The thing about using clear plastic bags for public trash is that they cannot be used to hide a bomb.
Then came 9/11. And extremist mollahs were still openly preaching the destruction of the Western civilization in the British parks and mosques. Later, the British government decided (against the opinion of majority of its people) to follow Bush in its war in Iraq. And, well, by then, the British government started to do something about the extremists that had found protection in the UK, because it probably didn't look good to host terrorists when you claim to be the United States best friend.
I understand that British people are shocked. As long as their government let those bastards preach freely, and protected them from the justice of other countries there was no terrorist attacks in England by Muslims, even though they have a huge Muslim communities over there. It sounds like some kind of deal. I can fancy the MI5 saying: "OK, you can say whatever you want, your freedom of speech will be protected, you can find a refuge here when you are being hunted down by other countries because of acts of terrorism, and in exchange no Gaza Strip bullshit in the streets of London."
In the meantime, France was being the target of the retarded editors of FOX & Cie for being anti-American. Since the mid-1990s we have never stopped tracking down terrorists in OUR country (France.) And as the New York Times wrote it the day after the attacks in London: "One of the greatest terrorist threats to the United States emanates not from domestic sleeper cells or, as is popularly imagined, from the graduates of Middle Eastern madrassas, but from some of the citizens of its closest ally, Britain."
So now that the British government is no longer protecting extremists they are just as likely to be the victim of terrorist attacks as any other Western country, as the recent days events showed.
I'm on the roof of my building. I was supposed to go to some friend's place near the Manhattan Bridge, on the Manhattan side of the river, but there was a problem in the organization. So I just stayed home, knowing it was too late to take the train to go to the city and find a nice place. If I was lucky, I knew maybe I could catch a sight of the fireworks while the train was crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, but after having crossed the bridge then what?
So I just climbed the fire escape ladders up to the roof. I'm far away from the River, so I couldn't see much of the big city's firework. Too many buildings. But I could see fireworks all around. In Queens, Brooklyn, maybe even further like the Bronx. And there were also plenty of fireworks sporadically launched by ordinary people. It was a strange sight.
It's incredible how shit never just seems to stop coming my way. I don't mean to be writing here just to bitch all the time. But, man, if I could write down here all the shit that keeps happening...
It's like, as soon as I solve a situation, and I manage to bring things back to normal, a new one pops up. And in the background, there are all the other things I have no power to change by myself. Like the visa etc... It's just wait and see. But I cannot not think about it. Every day, every time I open my mailbox I wonder whether I'll be notified to pack up my shit and leave the country asap.
