Saturday, October 31, 2009

10.00pm, Wednesday July 8th, hotel room ....getting exhausting

I really must finish recording the story of my last full day in Caracas. After leaving Louis the Ecuadorian on the heights of Avila, S and I drank beer, bought boutique chocolate and then head back into town to meet F. The three of us went to a very sophisticated hotel bar, decked out with hammocks and couches, big squares of creamy canvas sheets covering the ceiling, with low lighting and a greenish sea tinge. There were two levels of rooftop bar overlooking the city and it was this view for which S brought me there. The menu at the bar was very expensive (and it was my treat), so we ordered a pizza to share amongst us. It turned out to be delicious – covered with arugula, goat's cheese and olives. S had a glass of wine.

We parted ways with F after chilling ourselves looking out over Caracas. I bought a bottle of red to take to M's apartment, stuffed with other couchsurfers and many boxes. M was moving back to her parents’ house. I talked a bit to a lovely couchsurfer but he left and then I felt bored and quiet as all the gals joked around, putting moving boxes penned with faces on their heads and dancing and laughing. I didn't really get the joke.

As the evening wore on – remember, I had only a couple of hours of broken sleep on the bus the night before - M spilled a glass of wine on S's pants and we had to wait for the pants to go through a wash and dry cycle before we could head off clubbing in search of reggaton music. I was fading.

MS called me on S's cell phone that evening. It was a bit public, the other couchsurfers twigging that something had happened between us (M has met MS and the other girls had heard about him, I think). I was a little embarrased but stoked, of course, and I went into the bedroom to talk to him. I had trouble understanding him what with cell phone and accent, but I think he babbled on about staying at his friend's place and talking with his family. He said he had called to make sure I arrived in Caracas okay. He texted afterwards. And now I get one email in 10 days. It is a difficult adjustment.

Today SW and I went back to Bloomingdale's to revisit the Ralph Lauren turtleneck. We went to see Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels and James Gandolfini in 'God of Carnage' on Broadway. We both enjoyed the play, though SW more than me. I found it funny and always enjoy narratives about how awful marriage is, but ultimately it was mainstream and offered nothing new. The acting was strong but not remarkable and Gay Harden, who won an Oscar, was, for me, a bit too forced. I felt like she was onstage, acting. The others were more natural and I liked Hope Davis best. What I liked about the play was that no one changed. The play had an emotional trajectory but it was one of slowly revealed depths of defensiveness, hostility and dislike that each character had held repressed, not one of resolution, not even revelation, only release. Also, the Gay Harden/Gandolfini couple should have been Jewish (only a Jewish mother and son would have the phone conversations that took place on stage) and Gandolfini is as Italian as they come. The ethnic dynamic may not have been written as between a Jewish and WASP couple (though Yasmina Reza, the playwright, is Jewish), but that is certainly how it seemed and it would have been better made explicitly so.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

noonish?, Tuesday July 7, Carl Schurz park ....another beautiful day

Still I am blessed on this trip. The rainy season, late, hadn't arrived yet in Caracas while I was there, and in New York City it had been raining, raining up until I arrived. Oh, it has rained some: when we were on the pier with SA, once when I was walking to get SW, but it didn't last long and the summer heat ensured I dried off quickly. Mostly my vacation has been full of sun and in New York it is only warm, in the 80s. Utterly, utterly pleasant.

I love this park on the East Side. It has an octagonal-patterned walkway above the river, lots of grassy areas criss-crossed by paths, different levels of courtyard, garden and bridges. Now I sit on one of a curving line of benches overlooking the river near the uptown end of the park, all the benches to the right of me holding at least one person, all the benches to the left of me empty bar one. I can see two bridges, one a rust-coloured metal arch, the other held up by curving wire triangles. There are a couple of little cruising boats and the sound of a helicopter overhead.

Yesterday SW and I went to the Bloomingdale's on 57th and Lexington. He bought a punkish designer t-shirt, ogled an enormously expensive Ralph Lauren leather- sholdered black narrow turtleneck knit and failed to find shoes. Then we went to Queens, where I spent two and a half hours at Aunt K's apartment looking up buses and flights. I booked SW and I a trip to Philadelphia for Friday. We ate papusas - one filled with cheese and a Spanish herb, one filled with beans. We ate a corn tamale served with sour cream sauce. Everything was delicious. The papusas came with hot salsa and a bowl of cabbage, like coleslaw but without mayonnaise.

SW and I walked around Woodside for a half hour or so and then left to catch a gig at a jazz bar. Only SW must have gotten the dates wrong because the bands at the East Houston St venue were not jazzy. Nor were there many people there to see the bands. The walk across 4th St was not as beautiful as I remembered. Perhaps more tenenments have been lost. When I got to 10th street I couldn't remember which building was home to my old apartment and I saw a big rat in Tompkins Square Park.

I lamented the garbage in Venezuela but here there is not enough! I associate garbage with a crowded city of people, full of the lower, uncouth and/or rebellious classes. NYC's people now seem so controllable. Obeying rules, respecting each other. I think I want this, but it is very boring in New York. Why go there? Now I will tell people the only reason to come to Manhattan is because it is pretty. And to perve on cute boys.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

10.00pm Monday July 6, Moonstruck Diner, 2nd and 58th ....lonely

It is lonelier sitting alone in a NY diner than anywhere else. I feel...single...rather than on my own. I have ordered an ice-cream float: diet Coke with strawberry ice-cream. This is a silvery narrow diner with a neon-blue fish tank in the back and iridescent water-blue glass-tiled tables.

It is time I write about my last Saturday in Caracas. S and I decided to take the cable car up El Avila, at the peak of which is a tourist station with a view of the sea and the city. It threatened to rain all day but the fog was not too bad and the views of the city travelling up the mountain were indeed spectacular: Caracas looks white and clean from a distance.

S took up talking with a cute Ecuadorian computer professional on the cable car and she invited him to spend the afternoon with us. We took him ice-skating - his first time - at the tiny indoor rink at the top of the mountain. Also at the mountain peak is a famous, very '70s, retro hotel and many neat and tidy kiosks, gleaming with stacked and ordered goods inside. It is little non-Venezuela up in the heights of Caracas. From a kiosk, Luis, the Ecuadorian, and I bought cachapas con queso and chichas. Louis had never had either before and he seemed to like the corn pancakes and rice drink as much as I do.

My ice-cream float has come. It looks beautiful - a thick glass of Coke with a scoop of ice-cream perched on top, shoved next to a squirt of whipped cream with a cherry on top.

Ice-skating was difficult for all of us in ill-fitting skates and attacking a very scraped rink, so 20 minutes was more than enough time for a round. Louis clung to the side of the rink, not really getting the hang of it until S told him to tighten his skates. One needs those ankles supported. I tried to show off my skating abilities but I my ankles kept turning out and I didn't skate very well.

I am reading Other Voices, Other Rooms. It is such a sad book, the world so different than today's - today's people, today's children, today's writers, today's books. This makes it hard for me to believe it.

But I should go. I haven't been sleeping so well.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

5.00pmish, Sunday July 5, patio of Hotel Bentley ....sore feet

I have been walking all day and my feet are sore.

This morning, Dad came to the city and met SW and I at the hotel. We went to see Grand Central Station. Dad hasn't seen it since its 1990s renovations, its bright new constellated blue ceiling and shining marble floors.

We walked through a street fair on Lexington Avenue. SW bought sweet corn and Dad and SW bought Kashmiri woven rugs. There were two beautiful rugs with deep-coloured big flowers and butterflies which I loved, but I'm not in the market for a carpet right now.

Dad kept commenting on how clean the city is now. He loves it. I find it sterile - clean, well-behaved, orderly. I was thinking how no one seems to beep anymore (though coming from Canberra SW thinks they beep a lot). I noticed a 'don't beep, $350 fine' sign last night. The only chaos I have seen so far is in Times Square, still crowded with tourists ambling at a crawl. Barely chaotic.

Dad left to go back home around 1.30pm and I got falafel in a gyro pita and bought a $9 bra at Strawberry's for my 'new' (op-shop) shirts that I bought with Mom. Both will look much better with my boobs lifted. I like NY's falafel balls better than Australia's, and the bread, but Australia's falafel-sellers add better fillings, tabouli and hummus included. The falafel was $6.

Now SW and I are resting. There is a movie theatre a block or two up the street, so maybe we will go to the movies tonight. I bought a roll, tomato and avocado for dinner in the hopes that I can revert to my light South America eating.

12.30am, Sunday July 5, Bentley Hotel ....firework extravaganza

I have returned to SW's fancy hotel room with him. The room has one full wall of window that stretches around the corner of the room with a view of the East River. Nice room, but shit location. No subways on the far east side.

SW, Dad and I tried to see a show together, but Hair wasn't in an accessible theatre, God of Carnage only had non-accessible seats available, Waiting for Godot wasn't offering discounted tickets, and The Fantastiks (back in production! Yay!!!) is in a theatre a walk up a steep flight of stairs. We decided to go to the Frick, Dad's favourite museum, instead. It was closed for the July 4th holiday.

To the Met, then. I forgot how many really famous paintings are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Monets, Degas', Reniors, Picassos, Seuratts, beautiful, beautiful van Goghs, Gaugins, Klimts. The best of the best. They should probably all be in France.

We walked through Near-Eastern, Pacific and South American art galleries, then to the Arms and Armor collection, SW's desire. We were all impressed at the intensely intricate work on the armour, swords and guns. Beautiful works of art as well as weapons.

armor at the Met

We walked downtown towards the evening's fireworks celebration and had trouble finding places to eat on Broadway and West End. I remember that about the Lincoln Centre area. We ended up at a fancy Chinese place. SW and I shared unspicy Szechuan eggplant and crispy bean curd sheet ('duck') wrapped in tortillas. Both dishes were nice but a bit expensive and skimpy on the portions.

After dinner, Dad, SW and I walked to 57th Street, followed the Fourth of July crowd, and ended up on a bridge in a barricaded square to wait for the fireworks while the sun set. After 9.00pm far away fireworks began to puncture the dark and there was a general fear that these were the city fireworks display and we had all picked the wrong spot to watch. But at long last the Manhattan display began, five simultaneous locations along the river. A nice show - blooming flowers dying in the sky, dandelion puffs dispersing, cube and planet and kiss shapes slowly blowing apart.

July 4th fireworks

When it was all over, thousands of people left, taking their garbage with them. How un-New York. I was disappointed in this display of respect and obedience.

Afterwards Dad went to the subway and SW and I found a bar at fancy hotel on 54th Street. I had a $12 glass of reisling and gorged on the complimentary nuts, wasabi peanuts and pretzels. It was a small dark masculine bar, muted, with big leather chairs and a King Cole mural behind the bar and no background music.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

night, Wednesday July 1, Queens ....pizza

Dad arrived in the city this evening. We ate delicious Korean food. New York is still so cheap. Mom and I saw organic peaches for $2.45 per kilo. A bottle Dr Pepper was only $1.25, a hot pretzel $2.00, and a slice of cheese pizza is $2.50.

At the Korean restaurant Dad and I were brought cold omelette slices with a selection of pickle. We ordered grilled dumplings - delicious - and I had a cold noodle dish, refreshing, with a peanuty or sesame flavour towards the bottom. Dad ordered meat. So much food for $20.00!! The waitress, however, spilled kimchi all over my brand new skirt and I doubt it will come out. Poor girl, she was so apologetic.

SW, Australian, arrived in NYC and had his first slice of NY pizza downtown near the World Trade Centre site. He really like it. He said he didn't much like Australian pizza but this he liked and agreed it is very different. I, of course, also thoroughly enjoyed my pizza slice, something I dream about, along with hot pretzels and Mexican food, in Australia on an occasionally regular basis.

L (high-school best friend), J (her husband), A (her cousin, also with us at White Plains High), SW, and I wandered around South Street Seaport, stopping for micro-brew beer at the Heartland Brewery. L is very pregnant. She and J are in the process of buying a house and their baby boy is due on the 12th of August.

Last night I had an email from MS finally. It was only short, a couple of lines, but I felt such relief hearing from him. He wrote that he was bored without me.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

?, Wednesday July 1, Veniero's cafe ....I live in hope

Every time I am in New York I come to Veniero's in the hope that Eva, a lovely Polish woman who married and was divorced by my cousin, still works here, though I wouldn't wish anyone to have been waitressing for more than 10 years. But, of course, no Eva.

I have spent the afternoon with W, which is always fun. We ate at Caliente Cab and I had a mixed plate with a vegie burrito and a bean tostada, a side of rice and refried beans. Ahh, Mexican like I remember it!

It has been strange to be here, in New York, with my mother, surrounded by New York accents. After South America, New York is all of the sudden not so exciting. Comparatively there is hardly anyone around. The familiarity of it is strange: that I know which subways to catch and where certain shops and cafes are and I don't live here, haven't been here since 2005. Despite my lack of awe for the city, wandering around the West Village is beautiful - 12th and 11th streets, especially the residential bits with their graceful brick or painted walk-ups and lines of trees and tiny corner parks: lovely.

On Friday, our last day together, MS and I browsed one of the Fundacion Librarias bookshops. MS bought two books, one called 'Happy Travels, No Smoking' ('Feliz Viaje, No Fumar'). We wandered around the ethnological museum and ate Middle Eastern food.

The government bookshops sell a series of black hardcover numbered books of Latin American classic literature and non-fiction. There are more than 200 volumes. The Puerto Ayacucho shop also sold expensive locally made art and jewelry in plastic display cases and housed a spray of book piles and boxes that a girl was sorting through.

The ethnological museum contained a collection of artefacts from several Amazonian tribes, including the Piaroa, which is the tribe Tito, our Amazon guide, is from. I saw beautiful woven baskets, hunting and fishing weapons, models of long- and round- houses, historical photographs. MS read to me about the differences amongst the tribes, such as being more nomadic or more agricultural.

I was curious to try falafel in Venezuela so I appreciated that MS remembered where the shwarma joint we passed was. The only diners in the restaurant, we chatted with the proprietor, who was surprised to learn that there is Arab food in Australia. I asked where he got his tahini from, since I had to make tahiniless humus on Margarita. He gets it from Caracas, where it is imported from Syria.

Watermelon juice goes well with falafel.

The food did have a slightly different flavour than Australian Middle-Eastern food. The dips (humus and babaganoush) had a similar unidentifiably different flavour and the falafel had a beautiful melt-in-your mouth fried-crispy crust but was not spicy and was a corianderless pure beige colour.

MS and I ate a lot (a falafel platter and mixed plate with chicken, beef and dips) and both thoroughly enjoyed it.

Getting back to S's on Saturday morning was a bit of a drama despite my happiness at arriving 'home' to her and her family. I arrived at S's apartment thanks to an expensive cab ride from the Lavandera bus station around 8.00am. I hadn't been able to call her, as the previous evening her mobile phone kept telling me there was no service and then I had no credit. I had hoped just knocking on her door would be sufficient to get someone to open up, but no luck. I left a note under the door saying I was here, the phone wasn't working, and I'd go look for a place to call her.

I walked down the 18 flights of stairs and made my way to the communications centre, which was roundly closed on a Saturday morning. I walked back to S's building, eyeing the fresh-white-cheese seller at the entrance to the complex. In the lobby I looked for a powerpoint to charge the phone and, lo and behold, I found one.

Without MS I am distracted and mentally restless. I emailed him on Monday but have not heard back. I hate this, this inevitable waiting and guessing despite the fact that he doesn't owe me an immediate reply, especially when he doesn't have internet access at home. Yet I want him to have stopped by the internet place after work on Tuesday in order to be in touch with me. Boys just take my life out of equilibrium - I don't like it. I can't just shut off the swell of excitement I feel. I think and think about MS.

9.30pmish, June 28, on plane at Miami airport

US security is stupid.

Caracas airport was crowded. I waited in the wrong line for a long, long time because it was so crowded I couldn't tell where the line was going and there were no airline staff members directing people to the correct desks. I did ask a woman in the line which airline she thought the line was for, and she also believed it was for the American Airlines check-in. She must have figured out earlier that this line was indeed not the AA check-in line because she and her family shuffled off the line at some point considerably earlier than I did. Luckily when I finally did see my line curving around into a separate entrance for a South American airline and went off to seek the AA line, I found it next door and not crowded. Still, when I arrived at the check-in counter there was a problem with my ticket. The attendant consulted her fellow colleagues, got on the phone and consulted someone on the other end, waited, wandered, and finally resolved the issue, whatever it was, as I stood nervously waiting, divided from her by a big white counter.

American Airlines puts you through security at its own gate after you've been through the airport's security process. Then you and your personal items must be scanned again at the US transfer point, because in the transfer and immigration corridors and halls and during the chaperoned bus ride there is opportunity to mingle with unsecurity-checked people likely to pass on bomb-making plastics at every turn. At the transfer point, everyone had to take their shoes off and plonk them on the conveyor belt.

Getting somewhere is a long idle process of waiting, so it is good to travel for a long time.

It is strange to be surrounded by American accents. I felt like crying in the airport - I didn't want my South American holiday to end.

After our walk in the Amazon, MS and I once again lowered ourselves into the shallow water of the river, in a pool a little sheltered from the main river. After this brief cool-off we, our fellow-travellers, and our guides, climbed back in the boat for our four-hour journey return to Puerto Ayacucho. We were served heaping plates of spaghetti for lunch on the boat, hold the ground beef for mine. I was stuffed from the big breakfast. Nevertheless I asked if there was leftover chocolate cake.

The journey back was calm and uneventful, except for a bit of rain. We were picked up by our tour agent and in the jeep we told him that we were unable to do the tepui walk. After everyone else had cleared out of the office, MS talked to the agent about our disappointment in not going on the walk, which was the very point of the excursion. As MS went on and on the poor agent looked increasingly like he was ready to cry. Not that he offered us any money back, mind.

I couldn't even speak - when MS looked to me for agreement I simply said, 'En Espanol mi silencio', which is not a grammatically correct sentence. I felt bad for the guy, though, and wished him a good weekend as we left. MS and I had talked about asking for $500 bolivars each back, but in the end MS couldn't actually ask for this anymore than I would have been able to. Andreas had been more sanguine. When I asked him if he was going to ask for money back he said no - he got a walk in the Amazon and Tito found us things to do and this kind of thing happens in Venezuela a lot anyway and Venezuelans don't take criticism well. MS agreed that Germans don't ever complain but that Venezuelans certainly do.

I am thinking of my mother and the face-wide smile she will have when she sees me. It's lovely. And reminds me of all the people who love me so much and I feel so lucky. Lucky to be and have been so well loved, not just as a daughter, but as a friend, a lover, a person. Bless my life.

Friday, October 2, 2009

?, airplane, ....the young Amazon

We are beginning our descent into Miami. I have been trying to sleep as I had only around five hours of sleep last night and a few hours the night before that. I am on an older plane - public screens for the movie, a place on the armrests where ashtrays used to go.

On early Friday morning in the Amazon, I woke MS up so I could crawl into his hammock. I had only slept a little because, again, I was cold. I rolled myself into MS's hammock, accompanied by another fit of giggling, and cuddled with him, trying to locate a suitable position for the arm crushed underneath my body. I failed in this task and only stayed with him long enough to get warm. I was up early again, with Sylvano, hanging out for the coffee to be ready.

That morning I finally walked in the Amazon forest. A white-shirted, bare-footed Indian guide (from the Piaroa tribe) with a big knife led us through the narrow-trunked trees, wet brown leaves, tall palms and wiry saplings. He kept twirling a stick into holes, only once rewarded with a procession of large 24-hour ants, which the boys laboriously photographed while I watched huge, white-tipped mosquitoes circle around us hungrily, and withdrew my arms into my clothes.

Though the knife-weilding was impressive, slicing neatly through beautiful palm stalks and other green flourishing things, the forest was not particularly dense. Why couldn't MS and I find a way in yesterday?

So my four-hour tepui walk became a one hour in and out forest tromp. I suppose I can at least say I went where probably few tourists have gone before. I was surprised by the apparent youth of much of the forest, of narrow smooth trunks and new palms. Only a few trees looked old, with lush, thick, marked trunks.

It is funny how one reacts to the accomplishment of one's dreams. I was thrilled to be in the Amazon. But it wasn't unadulterated pleasure. My second analysing self was still there, monitoring my reactions, worried that I wasn't paying appropriate attention or savouring each and every moment.

I thought about how the forest wasn't as grand as the tree fern forest of the Dandenongs or silly like the Australian scribbly gums or playful like the symbiotics that wrap their roots wildly around obliging trees. There were no crazy exposed wall-like roots to clamber around or loads of mossy, fungally ground cover. The Amazon was simply wet and green and quiet in its spindly dignity.

the not-so-mighty Amazon