Urban living

I notice I haven't posted in two weeks and I wonder where the time has gone...mainly spread between working manically, trying to finish a paper or two, being a bit sociable, and monitoring little girl scouts as they sell cookies.

The latter has been both a pain and an interesting experience, like so many things to do with my troop. It was not particularly fun to spend two chunks of my weekend standing about in the cold in central Princeton watching the girls peddle the cookies to the masses - though I have to say that the masses were hardly reluctant to receive them, we shifted almost 200 boxes over last weekend, and people are mostly really nice and nostalgic and kind when they come up to us. But it is anthropologically interesting to observe the girls dealing with this task, coming up with songs and rhymes to chant out to draw people's attention, little dances too, quirky things to say about the cookies (which may or may not be entirely true), and also what they notice about the other people - like they excuses they give for not buying any cookies, or a particular comment someone might make. I am constantly surprised by them, by the way they will suddenly say something really insightful, or deal with a difficult issue with a smile. But do these 'awww' moments outnumber the 'omg you are such a brat' moments? Have I suddenly become enamoured of all child-kind? If you're reading this, you probably know me well enough to know the answer :-)

But the blog title refers to my recent forays into the urban havens that so conveniently surround Princeton - I seriously think I would implode if I wasn't able to run off to a city every few weeks and listen to cars honking and watch steam escape from manholes and gaze upon lit skyscrapers (note to self: easy access to London probably essential trait of future dwelling-place).

On Thursday night, I met up with Wilco in NYC, his current stop on this amazing tour that he and H have undertaken on behalf of the university - it's always fun to see an old friend in a random setting, so that was nice. I was a little early to the meeting place (because NJ Transit did not let me down with the amazing 4.40 train that gets into the city in 59 minutes and may well be my favouritest train in the world - or maybe second favourite, the favourite being any train that takes me to or from an airport thus hastening my reuniting with Nick [apologies for the soppy moment there!])and had a wander round the High Line, which you may remember had me enthused this summer. Except this time it was 6pm in January, freezing with a wind chill factor of freezing^2, and of course I decide that wandering round an elevated and exposed structure is the best plan. I was basically the only person there and it was...fantastic. I caught the tail-end of the sunset (conveniently, it faces west), the bit where the sky is almost all dark but there is a glowing reddish hue towards the bottom and it was so beautiful, I looked down at the end-of-the-day traffic, looked around at the skyscrapers and the water towers (which I adore for some bizarre reason) and just felt incredibly happy. So that is my zen moment of the week.

On Friday night I headed over to Philadelphia to meet up with Lara, whom I hadn't managed to see since the summer. I hadn't been to Philadelphia for anything other than gigs since I was there with Naomi last spring so I had sort of forgotten what a nice place it is, especially the neighbourhood where Lara lives, with lots of funky cafes and chilled places to have brunch, lunch, coffee, and whatever else you might need. We had dinner and drinks on Friday, including an attempt to learn something about US whiskies (we ended up with a rather nice one whose name now of course escapes me), chatted lots (much appreciated, much needed), and looked at cool stuff on Saturday, in between the polar temperatures - the Philadelphia Museum of Art was very amazing, with lots of reconstructed environments such as Indian and Japanese temples (best not wonder too much about how this all came about) and Chinese governmental offices and also a large amount of American art and objects - very enlightening in trying to get a sense of what life was like in the first decades of this country, and what was considered art-worthy. We also went to the Magic Gardens, a truly incredible place which I can't really describe - follow the link to see photos - imagine a mural/mosaic consisting of bottles and ceramic tiles and glass and mirror shards and terracotta figures, spread over 3000 square feet...you could probably spend days there trying to take everything in and appreciating all the different images. I have never seen anything like it.

So there you have it - my life seems to be lurching between the innocence of girl scout cookies and the debauchedness of copious imbibing, propped up by looming deadlines at every corner. I guess the next logical step is to make some sort of girl scout cookie-based cocktail, no?

Good times

Bits and pieces have been keeping me busy since I got back (and last wrote). The first weekend I was back, we had an overnight trip with the girls to the same campsite we'd gone to in September. This time though we did not, thankfully, stay in tents but in the nice heated 'main house' which gave me my own room (albeit with a not-very-comfortable bunk bed) and had a lovely kitchen for the kids to try their hand at all sorts of recipes. We had gorgeous weather though it was freezing - around -10 (C), to be precise. But see how pretty it was!



The frozen white stuff is a bit of the canal - it was all quite frozen over. I was a bit wary of going at first, what with being busy and tired and having been back for less than a week, but then the martyr in me decided to go, and I'm so glad I did - I ended up having loads of fun, felt very refreshed watching the girls play outside and take pleasure in simple things like jumping on the ice until it broke (I hasten to add this took place in a shallow stream, where the most they could get wet was their feet and ankles - I had no desire to reenact Amy March on the ice), and discovered new aspects of some of my girls, whom I had previously had somewhat different opinions about. And there is something about watching kids - whether they are outside or handling cooking implements - which sort of takes up your whole mind at the time, so you really don't have a chance to dwell on anything else, and paradoxically I found that very, very relaxing.

We haven't really had any proper winter weather so far, apart from it being rather cold - mostly very sunny and bright - which is ok by me, much as I'd like a snow day, I'm still dreading having to drive in the snow/ice, so the longer it stays away, the better, really.

What else...had loads of fun today going to this amazing Japanese supermarket with my Japanese friend. I had no idea what most of the stuff on sale was, and you couldn't even tell from the drawings on the packages half the time, but it was very intriguing and fun all the same. Sometimes I wish I could take a year off and just eat my way round the world...so many dishes, so little time...

So as you can see I don't actually have that much of interest and excitement to report - but life is good, I'm trying to take time for myself (as at least one good friend never fails to remind me to do), trying to chat more with friends, and above all feeling so grateful that this winter is epically different from the previous one. It took some work, but we got there in the end!

Home is where I put down my macchinetta

(the one that makes espresso, of course)



I had all sorts of deep and meaningful thoughts about emigration and displacement on the flight back. I should have written them down, though this was made difficult by the absence of lights (caused by the sleeping child next to me, which was such a terror that I decided I'd rather be bored in the dark than have to endure his company any longer). Now, of course, all the beautifully crafted prose that was in my head has slipped away.

The main spur for these thoughts of mine was the fact that most of the people I spent time with over the holidays are part of the Neapolitan diaspora in one way or another - be it Rome or Milan, Barcelona or Liege, Edinburgh or Norwich (yes, seriously), we seem to get everywhere. Mostly in pursuit of some academic job or other, it appears.

And when we do, what do we take with us? I took, and take, undue comfort in finding my own experiences and feelings mirrored in those of the others. A rampant sense of guilt for not being there for the rest of your family (ignoring the fact that this might come from an over-inflated sense of worth). The constant nagging feeling you have to 'be family' when you're there and spend mealtimes and evenings together instead of seeing your friends (especially the dreaded 'last supper/last night'), which inevitably results in going out very late at night but then waking up with the rest of the family to assuage the guilt and never getting enough sleep. Perhaps a warped relationship with your own room, which has been crystallised in whatever state it was in when you last lived there, and somehow forces you back into that time whether you like it or not. Trying to strike a balance between hanging on to our identities as Neapolitans, and ending up being more and more integrated into whatever foreign culture has taken us on and wondering how long you can keep the balance going. The delicate process of introducing a foreign significant other to the mayhem of our city and our families. Packs of coffee which we couldn't possibly buy anywhere else, though the water is different here. A funny mixed language which can span from Neapolitan to English in the same sentence, and makes perfect sense that way.

So we go off with all the above baggage, as if the bags we cart back and forth are not enough, and we think we are settled in whatever place we have chosen for ourselves, but really we remain hybrid creatures, infinitely more interested in following the minute-by-minute match report of a Naples game than in even picking an English team to support, developing an intimate relationship with airports, watching our mammas shed far more tears than is fair, never knowing what the word 'home' maps onto and not wanting to upset our parents by using it inappropriately. It does my head in.

I realise that as time goes on, indeed sooner rather than later, the years I will have lived away from home will outnumber those spent living there, but surely that should not be reason enough to stop thinking of myself as Italian, as Neapolitan, even if I am far from a typical one, right? And yet I worry I will end up like the US-based woman I sat next to on the flight over to Naples, who had last spent Christmas there 40 years ago, and started weeping copiously when we touched the ground.

I'm not really sure where this is going anymore, so perhaps I better stop. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it was good to talk so much with other people in the same situation, but the displaced feeling is a long way from disappearing...for now, I will stare wistfully at my coffee-sponsored calendar of Neapolitan views, while I have a London backdrop on my computer at work and an Oxford one on my mobile. Will that do?

Yo

It's not that the past couple of weeks haven't had things happen in them - dealing with ideas for jobs, and doing my first journal paper review which was a very interesting and slightly scary experience, and slyly indoctrinating my girl scouts into the ways of Oxfam Unwrapped (most satisfactory, as was seeing the probing questions they asked about things), and buying Christmas presents, and having various holiday season festivities, and learning about the madness that are cookie swaps, and being taught to make jap chae (omg so good), and of course proofreading Nick's thesis which led to the discovery that I can be a really picky proofreader if I put my mind to it - but I've also been spending rather too much time inside my head, and what's there isn't really fit for public consumption. I'm not sad or upset or anything like that - just been mulling over lots of things, not quite sure to what end.

Anyway - off home soon, which will be interesting in itself - so happy holidays and all that.

Winter has come

So, Nick has gone and winter has come. The two, I admit, are somewhat unrelated - but I thought it made for a nice literary/pathetic flourish :-) And actually, winter hasn't really come properly either, to be honest - we've been alternating days of proper cold and frost on the grass with days like today, which were around 15C and sunny and lovely, so...

Lack of posting has been mainly through lack of time and energy than lack of things to talk about. There's been lots of little things going on, keeping us busy both during the week and at weekends, and somehow blogging got pushed back.

Still on a weather-related note for a moment, I seem to have missed the wonderful autumnal foliage colours that I got to see last year. Not sure if it's because the rain got in the way, or the being in LA, or just being generally distracted and driving rather than walking/cycling around - but it's a little sad. Hopefully there will be some to make up for it next autumn!

But we have been getting outside, honest! For example, one morning we went for a nice walk in the woods behind the Princeton Battlefield. It was very pretty - cf. photo:



and involved an optional crossing of a very shaky rope bridge (look familiar, Chris?) which I REALLY did NOT enjoy doing but sort of felt I had to, to prove a point or overcome my fears or some such motivational crap. Might opt to remain unmotivated and unproven next time though.



And, just to show you how in touch with nature we are, we also spent a few minutes observing and photographing a rather hair caterpillar-type creature, appropriately decked out in Princeton colours:



Our being-in-touch-with-nature-ness actually goes even further - have I ever waxed lyrical about my farm scheme thingy? No? Shame on me!! So, here, instead of (or as well as) having deliveries of veggie boxes, you can also buy a 'share' in the farm (sadly to be paid upfront, covering 6 months) and each week you go to the farm and pick up whatever has been collected that week, of which you get, unsurprisingly, a share; and there are also other crops that you can and pick yourself in the fields, also within measure; and it's all very nice and wholesome and local and ethical (probably) and organic and means that clutching obscure root vegetables while pondering their fate has remained a viable activity for me rather than being simply an Oxonian memory. ANYway. The point of this was, that in mid-November the scheme ends and before they close down the farm for the season, they have the 'annual pig-out', whereby we members could go and roam the fields and collect any leftover produce for our own benefit.

This sounds very nice, and very fun, and the weather happened to be absolutely lovely that Sunday morning, so we naively set out to get a few veggie things for the winter ahead. Oh reader, we were naive indeed! We had no trowel, nor garden shears, nor towers of bags and containers as all the other infinitely more prepared people had. Nor did we have any knowlege of many vegetables, and roamed the fields wondering what was chard and what was weeds. We did manage a few successes, such as snapping broccoli heads off, and unearthing small celeriacs, and our personal favourite, digging out carrots with our bare hands. While watching our neighbour doing it with a trowel and being about 10 times faster than us. We concluded that farming is helluva hard work, and it's no surprise that people get the urge to give it up. Yes, it feels very satisfying to stand up clutching a punnet of carrots that you yourself have extracted, but it also feels very painful on your back - and that was just after a few minutes, done for fun, not for a living....

What else...mainly we just lived like a normal couple, which was the whole point of it really. Occasionally went out with friends, or went to see them for dinner/coffee (yes! I have that kind of friends now! Amazing what a difference a year makes). Cooked lots - we tackled my collection of random snipped-out recipes and gave them a go, which was fun, if not always successful. You should have by now seen (on FB) the glorious picture of the glorious roast chicken, among other things...And of course, we had our first American Thanksgiving (I'd gone to see Nick in Europe last year) with my family in NYC, which was nice in both a culinary and a sociable sense.

And in the last few days, we've just been dealing with a seemingly endless stream of conference deadlines, forms to fill in and send off, applications for jobs, conversations about The Future, and the like. Obviously I am incredibly sad to be here on my own again, but there is so much to do - more deadlines coming up, more work stuff, more applications to be made, more thinking to be thought - to say nothing of the Christmas shopping - that I hope to get through the next few weeks relatively unemotionally. As for the new year...can't make any promises I'm afraid!

It is perfectly possible to get around LA by bus

Last week (was it last week? Maybe two weeks ago. Anyway, recently) we had a little trip to Los Angeles. It was good - it was good to have a bit of a break (I worked out that apart from trips home and to the UK, I hadn't had 5 consecutive days of holiday in a good two years) and it was interesting. And I loved it that it was so hot - up to 30 degrees (celsius) at some points!

There are photos on flickr and FB, and here are some random impressions on it all.

First: it's a loong way away. Well, 6 hours, which somehow doesn't seem so bad when you're going to the UK - but it feels wrong to be on a plane for six hours, and still be in the same country when you land. This land is a big land.

We were staying in Westwood, which is where the UCLA campus is (because of Nick's conference) and I think it's a great area to stay in if you're not desperate to be near the beach, or in a very glitzy place or suchlike. Because of the students, there's loads of cheap places to eat, cafes, ladidah coffee shops (in one - a very small one - we counted 4/5 macs and a customised dell), and somewhat interesting shops.

Also, crucially, there are many many buses that go to most places you want to get to, at acceptable intervals and very low prices (75 cents or $1.25), thus proving wrong all those who say that you can't possibly survive without a car as a tourist, or that you will miss out on many things if you.

Exhibit A: we got the bus to the splendid Getty Center and were there in 15 minutes. We loved it. You take a little train-tram thingy up the hills, and you end up in this complex of museum rooms and terraces and gardens. The museum, which spans several centuries of art, is just the right size to be interesting and finish before you're bored or tired. The terraces give you 360 degree views of the Santa Monica bay, the surrounding hills, the 405 freeway, and downtown LA in the far distance. The gardens are really pretty. Heck, even the food was good, and how often can you say that of museum cafes? We spent a good 4/5 hours there. Oh, and it was all free. Hurrah for multimillionaires, I guess...

Exhibit B: I went to and from Hollywood very easily, with the trip taking just 35 minutes, and going past all the pretty villas on Sunset Blvd, the gated compound of Bel Air, and bits of Beverly Hills. Ok, so at times I felt a little out of place on the bus, I confess, but it's probably my fault for being a bit snobbish. I definitely never felt unsafe or too uncomfortable - though I was very obviously the only non-local. I have to say, I wasn't keen on Hollywood at all - I had been warned that it is a little tacky and touristy, but I think this is a bit of an understatement....it was a zoo. Overrun with tourists, and with people hawking wares photos special rides souvenirs tickets vouchers and godknowswhatelse. The famous sidewalk with all the stars? Well, that's where we all walk, so it's not exactly practical to take a closer look or search for a particular name. There are some very lovely vintage buildings though, such as this one -



And I guess at least I can say I've been.

Exhibit C: On Sunday we took a bus to Santa Monica, and, again, got there relatively quickly and easily. I loved loved loved it. I loved the pedestrian avenue, I loved the enormous beach, the tacky arcade, the ocean, the dolphins that randomly turned up to play for us, the sunset - everything. It was basically what you imagine when you think of LA, and I hadn't actually had had much of it until then - in fact, a distinctive characteristic of the city seems to be to connect items of interest and/or beauty (a museum, a farmers' market, Hollywood, whatever) with enormous patches of great squalor and - not quite ugliness, nor run-downness, but...unkemptness maybe. Not particularly nice to walk about, or look around, which is sad, because I like walking randomly around places I don't know.

When I wasn't busy critically appraising the public transportation and the urban layout of the city, I turned my attention to other worthwhile pursuits. I walked around the UCLA campus a bit, which was pretty in what I assume is the style de riguer at Californian universities, since I also saw it at Stanford - a sort of cross between Romanesque and Mexican estate, cf. photo (and admire the sky while you're at it! No photoshop involved). Also overrun with tanned leggy blond people wearing too short shorts and flip flops (of both genders). Actually now that I think of it, not just blond, but pleasingly a zillion times more diverse than, say, Princeton.



I also had the great joy of meeting up with a friend of mine from the MPhil who now lives out there, in Long Beach to be precise - he took me out there, via a fun detour down Rodeo Drive (so I can say that I've seen it!), and it was another part of the city I really liked - more in the way of awesome old buildings, nice looking cafes and bars, and a sort of marina/quay type place where we had dinner.



All in all, a successful trip - not necessarily on my top 10 places to rush back to perhaps, but fun, and pleasing, and timed just right.

Binge gigging

So, where were we...last week was a cornucopia of excitement and gigs, starting from the Saturday - Patti Smith was doing an 'event' at the Metropolitan Museum, to tie in with this exhibition. To be honest we weren't entirely clear what she would do when we got the tickets, but I had a very good memory of a concert of hers in Naples a few years ago and I was keen to see her again, whatever she did.

The exhibition was of portraits of Americans taken in the 50s, and the theme of her show was a celebration of this sort of retro Americanness, the Americanness of the time I guess. This manifested itself in the form of songs - hers and others' - and reading poetry, and bits of prose. Which would be really cool - except that she was all giggly and nervous and I don't know what, and kept relying on her daughter who was there playing the piano and who had apparently helped arrange the whole thing, and it was sort of endearing, but also a bit annoying and surprising, to be honest. Maybe she just wasn't used to this setup? Because when she sang, she was awesome. It was the voice and the energy and the awesomeness you expect. It was a really interesting switch. And then at the end she read out Ginsberg (of course) and it was really very amazing, and you really realised what the Beat poets were aiming for, writing poetry that read like jazz music, totally mesemerizing. My favourite moment, I think.

Then, a couple of days later, Alan Bennett was giving a talk here at the university. Again, it wasn't clear what he'd be doing, but I was massively excited nonetheless as I loved Untold Stories and his diaries and last year I heard a wonderful rendition of the Lady in the Van recited by Alan Bennett himself and Maggie Smith which made me love him even more (especially since it was during one of my miserable flu bouts). Anyway. So off we went, and the best thing was that he started off with a comment on how he last year he had needed quite serious surgery and it was all done on the NHS and it had been great and hurrah for socialised medicine - which got him a huge applause and pleased us greatly. He talked a little bit about his youth, and then started reading from Untold Stories, occasionally giving some context or commentary to what he was reading - and it was nice to hear him read, but having read the book not too long ago, it wasn't quite as thrilling as one might have hoped. He took a couple of (mostly inane) questions at the end, and that was it. It made me a little sad actually, to see him, as he is a bit old, and a bit frail - not decrepit or anything like that, but clearly older rather than younger, and you just wanted to go and hug him...

At both events, we were struck by the behaviour of the audience. They seemed almost fulsomely overappreciative, exaggerated in their applause, their sometimes grating laughter which frankly sounds rather fake especially when what was said was not very funny to begin with, their naughty giggling when someone said the word fuck or mentions sex as if they were 6 instead of 60 - it drove us insane at times. Am I being too harsh? But really, there were times when I just wanted to turn around and slap someone. Or maybe I should become less cynical and rejoice that my fellow humans are relishing the moment. Maybe.

But wait! There is more. One morning during my usual manic cycling through the four radio stations I have memorized, trying to find one that played music rather than moronic adverts for products we will never need ('We wrap children too!' - this being a mudwrap service to make you look temporarily thinner - but I digress), one morning, as I was saying, I happened to hear that AC/DC were playing in Philly the following week. I foolishly mentioned this to Nick, thinking that it might be too hard or expensive to find tickets - but I was proved wrong on both counts, and last Wednesday I found myself headed down 95 to commune with rockers of all ages, feeling quite out of place without a band t-shirt or red light-up devil horns to my name....

So there I was, at an AC/DC concert, of which I know maybe three songs, and do not feel any particular attachment to - but I was willing to see if they put on a good show, which I fully expected them to. And it was a good show! We also happened to have very amazing seats (oh yeah - bizarrely, this was a seated thing, of course everyone was standing, but we had assigned seats which made it a lot less chaotic, and harder to dance around, and meant there was no moshing which was a bit sad - all in all a bit odd, but less danger of bruising or squashing I guess) which were maybe a few dozen yards from the stage, so we didn't really need to rely much on the big blow up screens. It was a proper show, with flames and giant props and lights and all. They are definitely out to entertain and get us to have fun, and that's great. They are also a little aged though, and seemed to need frequent breaks to breathe and drink water and get their stuff together...still, Angus is definitely a great guitar player, and did amazing solos, and I salute that ;-) If I can get to 55 or 62 and caper about like that....So, all in all, it wasn't the most stimulating gig from a quality-of-music point of view, but it was a lot of fun.

And with that, I take my leave.