Saturday Morning

Still in New York, where finding free wifi is tantamount to finding a four-leaf clover. Also, typepad (on which this blog is published) has introduced "new... improved" software, which, so far as I can tell, is making inputting slow and laborious, and the resulting post, ugly and multicolored. Anyway, sitting in a bagel shop listening to "Harmony and Me" by Elton John, which was one of my favorite songs on the double-album "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," which I bought when I was 12 and which I will maintain is a brilliant collection. I used to sing this song out loud on the corner of Montague and Henry, currently about 40 feet from where I type, where I would hang out all day with kids I did not go to school with, kids who later got in big time trouble and some of whom are dead, whereas I just skated out of there. Saw my best friend from that time a few nights ago, I have not seen here in nearly 20 years, she's just as beautiful, and smart, but our lives could not be more different; I can't go into detail, but will say as I hugged her so tight the other night on the train, it was like touching what is at once embedded in me and another universe. Tonight, I will go to the 30th reunion of the class I left in order to hang out on those streets, to be with those other kids, and these kids, now in their 40s like me, our lives I know before even seeing them, are more similar and yet, also not. It's wild, this cruise through the past, looking into the future, looking at what's going on with the parents; anyone reading this in their 40s or better know what I mean, it does not need qualification; sat yesterday with a girl I went to college with, she was the cox in my eight-man crew boat; she now works at the real estate office across from Montague and Henry, where I sat on the mailbox in my pro-Keds and sang as the fathers in the neighborhood gave me disapproving looks, and I looked back; anyway, this gal, her father-in-law, who had scads of money and lived a professional life, now sends tens of thousands of dollars to Nigerian scammers and lives in a trailer in the woods in New Hampshire and wonders why the family isn't all that keen on his latest business ventures; that she and her husband now support him. Life... is... complicated, on all sides. I spend the morning talking about family matters with family members, and my stepfather says, "It's like a Eugene O'Neill play." It is. I am happy to be here. I will be happy to go home and see my calm, calm family; my calm daughter; to greet my husband when he gets back from Brazil on the 29th and sit across the kitchen counter with a bottle of wine and say, tell me your stories, and here are mine.

In other New York news: the best meal I've eaten was at Market Table, skate with a creamy bacon and corn hash, and a conversation with Robey that started mid-sentence, as though we'd been talking for 30 years and just carried on the conversation. I have done no shopping aside from three slices of crack pie at the new Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar; it was incredible and I am going to try to figure out how to bake it. I have been to several events and have had three men try to pick me up, in a way that made me think, don't they have women in New York? When I mentioned as much to a former editor of mine, he laughed and said, "And they're probably thinking, haven't seen you around Manhattan."

Comments

[Robey]

You touched a nerve with that post. Straddling those worlds, the mailbox outside Baskin & Robbins or drinking beer on the wall on Pierpont St. on the one hand and the Ivy covered world of Flannery O'Connor and Theater of the Absurd on the other (where you are probably gasping for air tonight) is a tough dance. I did it, but felt like an outsider in both. Wait a minute, this is your blog. Sorry.

Thanks for coming out to lunch.

[Stu]

>>don't they have women in New York?<<

Not in my (limited) experience, no.

[Lizzy Caston]

The crack pie at Momofuku is simply a version of that Southern Classic, and a recipe that has been around since at least the mid 1700s: It's Chess Pie.

Just like my Nana in North Carolina used to make, and just like my Mom makes (although she adds lemon to hers). However, I do concur the Crack (aka Chess) Pie at Momofuku is a mighty tasty version indeed.

Let me know how yours turns out.

Oh, and welcome back home!

[Lizzy Caston]

Here is a recipe for crack pie

http://pie-off.blogspot.com/2008/11/crack-pie.html

[Catherine Cole]

Seriously? Finding free wifi in the city is really hard? How can that be? As someone who just applied to graduate school there, that is a big drag to hear. If you have any other city-internetting tips, I'm all ears.