PK to the world
[last post at pkpoetry.blogspot.com is poetry I greatly admire that Gil Scott Heron wrote and delivered, an mp3 file I ran across.]
Last Thursday we rushed out of Anchorage to catch the night flight on time, bringing us safely without sleep to an airport. JFK arrivals led to the Air-train to a Manhattan subway line. Grand Central came next and little time was spent remembering the intervening hours of all the afore mentioned. Our friend Jessica, originally Carey's college roommate Jessica grew up near Beacon in upstate New York. Follow the Hudson like the train we caught Friday morning, and you'll wind up as us, in Fishkill. This town, "kill" meaning Creek in Dutch, isn't violent. The I-84 diner in front of the hotel we drove the rental car to had the feel well funded, well founded, mom and pop run homestyle restaurant or Denny's hybrid; open 24 hours a day, sometimes 25; stacks of pies and pastries; stacks of menu items and pages and pages as thick as a homemade pancake. Napped, woke, ate, slept, tossed, turned, woke. Road-toured; self-guided.
Mostly looking at houses and prices and trying a soak in maneuver as a passenger or a driver. Grumpy but playing, having fun looking all over. History waits at every T-junction. Every town has the name and the story of someplace old where the recognizable names come from. Seventeen-O-something built house with the wood plank floors and the same utensils and cookware.
Everywhere we go we're from Alaska. Palin means what? Just some lady that got promoted for all the wrong reasons. Reasonable to say she was fair and decent in many ways while here, though all politicians are really a bit difficult to trust now aren't they.
Sunday wedding day - couldn't get the jet-lag out of my eyes the night before. Get to Cat Rock where a large apparently wealthy family built a house/castle on the beautifully sculpted crest of hill, looking down on West Point military place school, but more importantly is the atmosphere of thousands of trees and rolling hills, and a beautiful, sunny, humid, swimming pool air, end of summer Sunday. Jessica's sister and her groom are Wiccan, so this double sister ceremony was Wiccan (cups, chalices, and blessings to elements). The after party was in wedding fashion with the addition of a pack of Lindy-Hop dancers; Jessica's favorite past-time for many years now, ever since dance classes at OSU, is Lindy-Hop. It looks like a combination of swing dancing and running in place. Or maybe some kind of bouncy step-aerobics. Last but not least, was the bride-sisters performance of the "Time Warp" from Rocky Horror Picture Show, lip-syncing to a semi-participating audience.
Monday we walked the Vanderbuilt estate, I fell asleep on Jess's mom's couch after feasting on leftover wedding food. Never did eat the wedding cupcake. Did bring home some New York maple syrup as reception gifts. Took back the rental car Monday at dinner time and took the 6:30 ish train back to the Big Red Delicious of Times Square. We needed to wait 'til 5:00 am get back on the subway to return to JFK and home. Instead of waiting in sleep, we waited awake, wandering the blocks. We saw the Lehman Brothers building, ate at Havana (where Plantains taste like Bananas) the Chimmichurri sauce has some magical blend of peanut or coconut oil or something that was definitely mmmmyummmy. We passed half a dozen Starbucks, stopped at the last one, had a chat about Liberal views on Palin and how we like Alaska with a nice guy acting cashier at Starbucks. Apparently they closed at midnight and we saw him later as we were momentarily encamped on a porch trying to raise the internet. Starbucks guy stopped and asked why we weren't at the bar he'd suggested. We said we were going there next. But then we moved along, not liking the Sports-ish bar and going on, and still walking, moving the computer from bag to bag to get comfortable, taking pictures of menus and trying not to feel guilty about "borrowing" ideas and prices (research you see). Say it needless anyway that New York is an unnecessarily big place filled with wonder - kind of like "The Matrix" of Keanu Reeves fame. Then again we didn't get on the tour bus or "see much daylight" and granted we took the subway and a bus to JFK at three o'clock in the morning, but hey, this is f'ing New York we're talking about. We weren't mugged and no buildings fell on - wait, that's in bad taste. I recognize that.
Coming up next time...a multimedia extravaganza! A coniferous epoch of epicurean analysis, the piece de la whatever - the first in a series of Thirty Second Digressions:
The Thirty Second Chef! (actual times may vary)
