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Wednesday, July 24

An hour on the train from Princeton, and I am once again in the heart of lower Manhattan.

I call Kyle from Penn Station and we confirm our plans to meet up on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn.

He seems as jazzed about the whole thing as I am, which is cool considering we have hardly spoken since high school, and even then were not really all that well acquainted.

---

In the subway, waiting for the A train, I watch a whole extended family of subway rats hurriedly doing the business of their precarious existence in the dirt clad between the subway track ties.

They seem to be well aware that they must rush to finish before the next train comes.

"Don't push people out of your life," I think to myself. "The next train will be coming soon."

---

I arrive at last on Bedford Street. Milling around the subway exit, groups of people meet and laugh and greet each other.

I wait for Kyle, and eventually begin to wonder if he meant we should meet on the platform. I waste a swipe of my Metrocard to confirm that he is not on the platform, then exit again to spot him waiting on the corner.

We consult on a destination for food, and finally settle on Thai & Japanese cuisine from nearby Planet Thai. It's a hip, dark, vaguely industrial space packed with people.

After a 20 minute wait for a table, we settle in for some excellently-priced and deliciously-prepared food. It's a tough call which bears a more striking resemblance to its living form—Kyle's sashimi, or my whole fish flash-fried Thai-style in a chili-tamarind sauce. I think the benefit of the doubt goes to the fish, though—if not for the dim, atmospheric lighting, I might start believing its very prominent eye was looking at me.

In any event, dinner is delicious and leaves us in a pleasant, happy mood for the short walk over to the club where indie rock band Desaparecitos will be playing.

The neighborhood has a lively traffic of people travelling from place to place. It feels alive and active and neighborhoody. On my first ever visit to Brooklyn, I am really digging the vibe.

---

When we reach the club, the first band is still on stage.

With the full moon shining over Brooklyn, and the nighttime weather so delightful, neither of us is particularly keen to go inside the club yet.

We talk for a while with Kyle's Rainer Maria bandmate, William, who is sitting just outside the club next to a very handsome motor scooter. He's the promoter for the evening's show, so he has to be there, but like us he's taking as much advantage of the fine night as possible.

Waving to William, we walk down to the water, and the informal "park" on the site of a soon-to-be-constructed power plant.

---

The park is mostly crushed rock and mud, spotted with occasional sprays of tenacious wild grass. Discarded railway ties and an abandoned bench seat from an old car are the only park "furniture".

Under the full moon and the low clouds, Manhattan sparkles from across the water, reflection shimmering magically on the black water.

---

The light is so bright that I can actually snap some decent shots with the digital camera. Even handheld, without a tripod, and at a not-quite-good-enough-for-nighttime-landscapes ISO of 400.

We walk up and down the "beach", me snapping pictures like a madman, Kyle pointing out landmarks and taking the occasional call on his cell phone.

---

During one lengthy phone-call break, I focus my attention on a power plant towering on the near side of Manhattan island. With clouds above it splashed yellow with city light, and behind them the sky, almost purple in the moonlight, the effect is a superbly moody Blade Runner cyber-noir feeling.

I snap a few more photos, knowing even the best of them will turn out grainy and slightly blurred. It's the best I can do gto capture the peaceful feeling of being here. Despite the mud and the rocks and the limited seating options, the park draws a thin, steady stream of people who come down to hear the water and see the city shining, shining.

I know now exactly why they come here.

---

Kyle finishes his phone call, which was to confirm a date for the weekend. We head back toward the club.

All along we have been gradually catching up with each other. We cover what mutual classmates are up to, ex-girlfriends, his Polish neighborhood, my life in Austin, work.

Most importantly, he's making a living from his music these days. In fact, he has been for the past three years. He has an apartment, and the band has a rehearsal space, and it pays the rent for all of that and then some.

He says that the people who say that making a living from doing something you love automatically changes don't know what they are talking about. He is loving it.

Good for him.

---

On the way to the club, we see an end table we passed on the way down to the water, out on the street with someone's trash.

Kyle's moving to a bigger place on Sunday, and as he says, "I need an end table," so despite its ugly exterior and obviously Seventies design, we grab it and carry it up to the band's rehearsal studio, conveniently located directly above the club.

It's sad-looking, but it has potential. Kyle is already thinking of it as a creative canvas for any number of interesting ways to improve it. This fact probably sums up the reason why I am glad to be making his reacquaintance more than any other.

---

We catch just enough of the opening band to whet our appetites for the main event—two or three songs' worth.

After a lengthy, exceedingly nitpicky sound check, Desaparecitosfinally begins a set. The sound is bad, and they are clearly all in various stages of drunkenness.

We stay for a handful of songs before bailing out to walk around the neighborhood again. I tell Kyle on the way out that you can hear the potential of the songs, but the band is obviously not up to the level of that potential tonight.

We wander up Bedford, then down again and on to the local park. It's after midnight on a Wednesday, but restaurants and coffeshops and clubs up and down the street are still serving small, energetic groups of customers. The city that never sleeps—the cliche proves all too true.

There's really not much else to tell about the night. It's mostly walking and talking and the sights of the city. But it's nice to catch up with Kyle, and know he's happy where he is.

I ask him, "So, do you think you'll settle in and stay here for a long time?"

I don't even have to hear the answer. I can see on his face that he will, at least for a while.

---

Suddenly we realize that we left my bag up at the rehearsal space. It is a pretty long walk back, so on the way we pile into Kyle's ex-girlfriend's car, conveniently on loan to him in her absence, and he drives us back to the club.

Time is running short, so he drives me to Penn Station himself.

---

Crossing over the Williamsburg Bridge with the windows rolled down, I can feel the night air rushing into me with the thousand thousand smells and sounds of the city. Beyond the brightly lit girders of the bridge, still the lights are shining, shining.

I almost want to stay here.

After a blur of cars and mad taxicabs, we part at the train station and plan to meet up on his upcoming visit to Austin.

I board the train, close my eyes, and for an hour I dream of stars, in fields of watercolor purple and eerie golden yellow.

 

Princeton, Day 2 Monday, June 24, 2002

After finally hitting the bed around 3am following the Sunday-night trip to Manhattan to see Rainer Maria, I woke around 8:30 to begin the first day of actual work.

My ears still ringing from the concert the night before, and my face still yawning from the curtailed period of sleep, I muddled my way through the morning routine and an overpriced breakfast at the Hyatt restaurant.

The Hyatt is in the midst of a big, labyrinthine corporate park called Carnegie Center. The directional signs in this park are completely misleading. I am planning to arrive at the parent company's offices—also in Carnegie Center—by 9:30am. Instead, I get the grand tour of Carnegie Center before finally finding the building, which was in the opposite direction of that recommended by the "helpful" sign. This is what we call foreshadowing.

I find the offices without much further trouble. Like most modern offices, they are dominated by cubicles, but they seem palatial compared to our cramped, cube-sharing conditions at home. There is no call center, so a gentle, pleasant hush rests on the entire office suite. No one is sharing a cubicle, and indeed many of the workers have a double-size cubicle with two workstations.

My cohorts for the week are the staff of the development & database group. They are almost all directly or genealogically from the Indian subcontinent, not an unusual circumstance when dealing with database professionals in the Northeast. They are also all very polite, friendly, and brilliant. The work portion of the week ahead begins to look like it will be quite pleasant and stress-free.

We work through lunch, with catered food brought in, a practice which seems to be de rigueur for such visits in today's corporate America. Our country unfortunately has no sense of the value of breaks, rest periods, or extended vacations. I dare say if this meeting had happened in France, we would have adjourned for two hours to a nearby cafe for a leisurely lunch punctuated by regular infusions of delectable wine.

Despite the American locale, the day's work does go smoothly, and I depart with directions for locating the local restaurants and shopping centers, in case I need dinner and/or amusement for the evening.

Exhausted by the day's activity and the previous night's late-running Manhattan festivities, I opt for a brief excursion to the nearest restaurant I can find, and then a return to the hotel for relaxation and rest.

As it turns out, the first restaurant I spot is a Chili's. Not my ideal choice, but it will do. (Note to kitykity: I have nothing against Chili's other than the fact that it's the same everywhere. I thus try to minimize my patronage of such places so that when I have no other immediate option, as in this case, I'll actually enjoy the visit rather than be bored with everything on the menu.)

The waitress and hostess at Chili's both give me their special look reserved for the solo diner reading a novel. I really should start a website listing reader-friendly restaurants.

Overall, though, the service is pleasant.

It is on departing Chili's that I make my fatal mistake. I turn right on Route 1 and move into the left lane, so I can take the next available left or U turn for a return to the hotel.

Big mistake.

At this moment, I acquired my deepest, most intense dislike for any particular feature of Princeton; namely, that there are no left turns.

In order to turn left or U-turn from any road wider than a carriage path, you actually have to turn right and negotiate some variation of a cloverleaf, double-back, or pile of spaghetti.

Needless to say, from my viewpoint in the left lane I caught a glimpse of the "All Turns Here" cloverleaf as I helplessly zoomed by it.

Then things became truly infuriating. I was presented with a fork leading to two major highways. No further option of a U-turn. I took the right fork, hoping for an eventual opportunity to turn around and find my way back to Route 1.

I drove for about a mile and a half before finally seeing an exit for the northbound Princeton Pike. I took the exit, expecting to find an opportunity to turn around—a common feature of most exits, after all.

Instead, I was spilled into a northbound 2-lane highway with no turn opportunities, or even driveways, in immediate sight.

Having no other option, I resigned myself to my fate and decided to adopt the Taoist wu wei approach. I was now on the southernmost edge of Princeton, on the northbound Princeton Pike. If I went with the flow, it seemed reasonable that I should eventually arrive in downtown Princeton.

I drove calmly northward, getting the grand tour of Princeton along the way. Eventually I reached a major, traffic-lighted intersection. The intersecting road appeared to become the new major highway, as the pike reduced to a small tree-lined residential street. I turned right, following the two cars that had been ahead of me at the intersection.

Within moments, I was...on a tree-lined residential street. Joy.

After a considerable amount of aimless meandering through the neighborhood, I re-emerged at what I suspected to be the Pike, and took what my internal orientation mechanism deemed to be a northbound turn.

Eventually, the tree-lined residential street deposited me on the edge of the tree-lined Princeton campus. I now had a vague idea of where I was. Washington runs east/west through the heart of campus, and Alexander runs east/west just south of campus, and right past my hotel. I just needed to spot one of these streets.

Which brings us to pet peeve number two: minimal street signage in downtown Princeton. After continuing northward into the campus area for a while, I eventually deduce that I have missed at least one of my turns, so I turn right on the next promising street.

The Princteon campus is lovely. Old stone architecture, green grass, elderly trees. It's quite picturesque.

The downtown area is nice, too. Unlike the increasingly chain-store-commercialized campus ghetto adjoining UT here in Austin, the area adjoining Princeton seems designed for description by the word "quaint", with little independent shops and cafes and bookstores, and stately little houses.

Nice place to visit, although if Caithlin's characterization of the campus culture is anywhere near accurate, probably not the sort of place I would have wanted to go to school.

So, I'm eastbound on an unknown street through the campus. Suddenly, my eastbound street takes a hard right turn and veers south. Oh, dear.

I arrive at a traffic light behind a very large moving truck. I can't see a thing—traffic light, street sign, whether the street continues or I will be forced to turn right or left...

The light having apparently changed, the truck departs, magically revealing a street sign reading "ALEXANDER". Calloo! Callay! I am saved!

I turn left, and wend my way along the weaving turns of Alexander. I pass a park, and then a historical battlefield with tall grass waving in the breeze under the darkening gray of dusk.

At long last, I cross Route 1, turn into the hotel, and breathe a sigh of exasperated relief. All this because of one missed turn.

In the end, I did get a nice grand tour of Princeton.

I suppose I should just be glad I found my way when I did. I might have sailed right past Washington and Alexander to Hannibal, Caesar, and Napoleon, or whatever the streets after that were.

Napoleon. Caesar. Where would that have left me?

 

OK, I love how most people turn out. There are the rare exceptions.

Case in point: the guy who lived down the hall from me at the Texas Academy of Math and Science, and used to come over to play cards with me and my roommate.

Guess where he is now?

On the lam, wanted for murder, and one of America's Most Wanted.

They can't all be good eggs, I guess.