(no subject)

I don't want to dwell on negatives, so here is Friday in point form instead of drama:

- lots of driving which is, by definition, a bad thing
- 90 minutes in crawling Montreal rush hour traffic that made me want to gnaw my arm off
- Spinning off of the suddenly snowy highway 55 into a ditch and almost dying.
- Instead, getting a free tow out within 50 minutes with no damage to the car

Pause to say that I'm glad we survived.

- being stopped and sent in to immigration at the border.

(
Border Guard: Why are you in rent-a-car instead of your own car?
Me: I don't own car.
BG: You DON'T OWN A CAR?! How do you live without a car?!
Me: What kind of a fucking idiot are you? I live in downtown Toronto near a subway.
)

- 12 hours instead of 8.

(no subject)

Today was just damn lovely!

I started the day in frustration because it was raining and I found out that MOMA is closed Tuesdays. So I said fuckit and went with my original plan of visiting the Lower East Side and the Tenement Museum instead. It's a pretty simple thing: an original tenement building from 1863 in which they've restored various rooms to their states in various ages of the building's life as a dwelling. But it is a highly visceral experience to actually stand in the the 350 sq. ft. apartments that held families of 14 in what was, in 1900, the world's most densely populated neighbourhood. When the tenement (which, I learned, only became a pejorative term later) first opened, the hundreds of people living there all shared a few privies and a single pump in the back yard.

I left the museum and walked through the drizzly streets appreciating the crazy juggling act a city is. It is something planned, something spontaneous -- it is a thousand seams on the verge of tearing simultaneously in a glorious patchwork dancing brightly in the wind.

Pictures called out to me and seemed to flow effortlessly into my camera. I bypassed Moby's TEANY in favour of the storied Yonah Schimmel's Knish Bakery where I had a disappointing knish and the best bowl of hot borscht I've ever eaten -- surprisingly peppery under the sweetness.

I hung out at the Barnes and Noble's on Union Square until it was time to meet my friend John for dinner. I took the train to Brooklyn and marvelled at how pretty it is! That's where I would live if I were in this city. Everything was glistening in the rain and I wouldn't have changed a thing about the day. I finally feel like I'm on vacation. Tomorrow: MOMA and Pacific Overtures and, if there's time, a gander at South Street Seaport where, apparently, there is a working 19th century printing press with real movable type!