Tanya woke up late and did not make the Chinatown open mic on time (I spent the hour and a half traveling to Rego Park on a slowass R train and waiting for her) but I did get to duet with Jessica whom I met during Tannenstock, a tribute concert to my dear and beloved high school music teacher who was taken away three years ago by complications from diabetes/silent heart attack. I practiced with Jessica in Leif Ericson Park, the park near 8th Ave that brought spotted memories freckled with passing glances of my directress Samantha who met up with me hours before the Campus Movie Fest submission was due. The park almost reminds me of fall when leaves would splinter the ground and hide the marble-like surface with its foliage. During the time that Jessica and I rehearsed I knew that she was for keeps; her chill attitude and social vibe allowed me to be open around her. She swung her arms like a puffer fish and did an exercise-like routine with her arms and legs which made me realize how comfortable and open she was around me. It is only fair that on Tuesday I treat her to taro ice cream at the 8th Ave homemade ice cream store that sits a few stores from Popeyes where I dined with my ex and she brought me my Gap plaid shirt. The ice cream store also houses my first memory of Tiff when we hung out for the first time. She told me I was a messy eater and that I eat like a four year old. To the sight of vanilla ice cream dribbling down my chin she giggled and that began our friendship will slowed to a crawl thanks to senior year responsibilities. Now that she is moving to dorms in Boston for a possible five year education I fear that not only will we not be able to hang out, but we won't get to trade our stuffed animal squirrel any longer. I might ask her to keep the squirrel but it is just so cute, for the squirrel is a symbol of our friendship and we equally like it so much for its furry/bushy tale.
I have not seen Samantha in nearly two months for her job at her Upper West Side mixed salad bar has consumed her summer. I can't wait to hang out with her again after July 4 at Energy Kitchen, for she has probably abandoned Woorijip because of its preservatives and to also break her habit from eating there. For the many memories of my directress such as our early hangouts on Lexington Ave or inviting her and Carol to my open mic in Chinatown to going to the Donut Factory with the two liang luis, I cannot seem to miss Hien more, not because of our similarities in philosophical ponderings and lifelong learning but also in our ability to mingle and my openness to show her around NYC as much as she has been in the city which means that she schools me on New York City more than I school her. I can't shake the earliest memories of our meeting at Union Square, our two visits to Shake Shack in Madison Sq Park and in Downtown Brooklyn, but mostly the night she had a fire drill turn real and she had to escape from her Long Island University dorm room. She talked to me on the phone the whole time and I heard the bells, the guards ordering students to evacuate, jocks trying to make light of the situation, and Hien went to the local deli to get food. This was when I knew she was mad gangsta, she would escape the fire to get food. Not only does Hien resemble a free spirit whose real home should have been New York City, but her intense zest for politics makes me want to scrutinize Obama and mock politicians for their nonsense. In this time I want to review the distance that I have increased between me and Thomas. I seemed to have cast him away from me because I don't want to take his advice fully to heart. This is difficult to understand considering that he was the one who answered my calls in Chinatown when I broke down after my ex ran away, and that he was the one who consoled me when I had a fallout with my homegirl and we sat in Vanessa's Dumplings filtering things out and straightening my head with me. But after we met each other at the film festival and later with my homegirl on the fake turf at Lincoln Center I knew that the new Thomas who found an apartment in Coney Island will spin into someone entirely new and forever changed (for the better).
Shawn has not really replaced my homeboy because everyone is unique and unreplaceable, but Shawn has really been intimate with me in terms of space and heart. For the three times I have joyrode in his yellow taxi, I feel that we have bonded. Our bromance had taken new heights when he invited me over to his Northern Boulevard apartment building on the eve of his birthday. I realized that he was definitely a heartfelt person not only because of his tone of voice but also because of the capacity of care and also the struggles that he had coming to NYC in the first place; he left the smalltown of Ohio with nothing but the clothes on his back to make a new life in New York City first as a cleaner for moving vans and then acquiring a medallion and picking up fares until the 4AMs. I regard riding in his taxi an intimate act that is almost tantamount to being in his shoes and being in his physical space that he is cloistered by every night on the job. With Shawn comes a few other people who I have seemed to have forgotten, but of course not short of mentioning my homegirl who has come so far to receive her tutoring license. Now she can garner higher payment for teaching attentionless teenagers on the eve of their SATs. I am so proud of Linda mainly because she has come so far, from struggling over nonsensical imaginary numbers and set theory at New York Film Academy Cafe (now closed, aw) to typing up her paper in the library on a whack computer, to deciding to go to medical school and pursuing a degree in medicine and to be a smiling pediatrician or sports therapist. Though this departure from arts is huge I encourage her to seek the path to status and upward mobility because only in this way will being Asian American be more pronounced and more significant. In this ascension we can kiss the haters and trollers goodbye and watch them sink their cesspool with their miniscale lifeboats. I admire and adore my homegirl's love for lifelong learning and this is something we have in common: our passion for education even in times of utter crisis and hopelessness: Linda may feel that mathematics will be the ultimate death of her, but it is what she has to show in terms of teaching and in terms of her achievements and this will move her farther in her post-bac in terms of progress and success she's paved. The last thing Linda needs is someone to discourage her and to "paut lung sui" which my mom always says that my dad constantly does. It means to discourage.
Elisabeth will always be my travel buddy when it comes to thrift store adventures. I miss hanging out with her and I'm not sure what her summer consists of; maybe she is doing research with her professor as she had intended to for practice and for experience. I suppose the only person that I have distanced the most is Joe. Poor Joe who thought I had his back all along and thought I would be his partner but yet again his plans to start his own enterpreneurship ("E-Electronics Online Store") has backfired and our friend Charlie cannot help him acquire the huge loans to start a business or pay for a monthly space to house electronics for wholesale. I feel like going to Joe's house is a chore because he lives three avenues from the 25th Avenue subway station compared to when he didn't move a year ago it would only take me one minute to get to him once I disembarked at Bay Parkway. I suppose that my distance with Joe is because I do not know how to renew our friendship. I think we are stuck in this rut where he has annoyed the shit out of me by constantly calling me and now we need a huge hiatus so that we can recover from each other.
Diana has been missing in action and the last time I saw her was at the Sin Rostro open mic when she debuted her first prose piece that was slightly different from her poetry. I am starting to think that we will only be catching glimpses of each at this open mic, for maybe I have scared her when I rehearsed with her on a duet during the few days she had broken up with her ex. I don't think I have given Pam enough attention probably because for some reason I am still distant to Pam, but not in the same way I am slightly not as close to Julianna as I want to be. For some reason I feel like my inertia to message them is strange: I can't seem to really keep in touch with them for some strange reason which I am still pondering. I haven't hung out with Jamie in forever: she is always rainbows and smiles whenever I'm around her. For the afternoons we spent jamming to guitar in Union Square, to Pete's Candy Store, to our visit of the eclectic Wix Lounge which we never returned to, to various bumping-into-hers in the past few months, Jamie has been the ultimate uplifter in my life and inspiration when it comes to achieving the American dream. Who knew that her degree in textile would garner her a position as designer in a fast pace. She is visiting her family in Arizona and I hope to hang out with her once she returns so that we can grab some organic juice that is friendly to her stomach, unfortunately not Jamba juice which she introduced me to. Xia has been a disappearance which she seems to always be in my life. She seems to always be a shadow in her seat, a presence that simply floats in and out whenever I want her to because most of the time I am thinking of her way more than she thinks of me. Afterall she did metaphorically reject me six times in six years.
In the meantime my summer is epitomized by busking at 14 Street F/M uptown platform and at 14 Street A/C/E uptown platform. I insist that my goal for the summer is at least one thousand dollars which I will probably squander on a tote bag and a few J.Crew or Club Monaco shirts/sports jackets. I have meandered with submitting my resumes and surfing for work mainly because I am not interested in working at the moment. My parents sustain me income-wise and I want to take a year off in order to recuperate from nearly ten plus years of this thing called school. But I will need to start studying for my GREs shortly and prepare myself for refacing education, graduate school. I will accompany my homegirl not just at Sweetleaf or at the Brooklyn Heights weekend vintage fair, but also accompany her in graduate school while she does four years and I do two. If my head space permits I will do four years to attain a prestigous doctorate and teach classes at Barnard and stare at women all day long. -_-
No comments:
Post a Comment