8 posts from March 2008

In elementary school, one of the girls in my class had a braid that went down to the back of her knees.  She would swing it around her head like a helicopter.  For some reason, to a seven year old, that was the coolest thing ever.  I decided that I too wanted really really long hair.  And so began twenty-two years of long, straight hair cut in an even line across my back.  For years, haircuts were anxiety producing events.  Under my swim cap in high school, there was always a very un-aerodynamic bump on the back of my head.  This is what my hair looked like at my 21st birthday:

I then decided, for my twenty-second birthday, that it was time for a change.  I wanted to keep length, but add some dimension and have a significantly more grown-up haircut.  I went to my current salon for the first time and had the  frightening, but ultimately worth while, major chop that resulted in this on birthday number 22:

Over the weekend, I had three very disparate, yet very typical, New York culinary experiences:

Saturday Night--Peter took me to a lovely dinner at the restaurant Town, in midtown.  He had been there with his family and really enjoyed it so between that and the fact that they serve my favorite cheese (Epoisse), he figured he should take me.  It was a really fantastic evening.  I love getting dressed up with him and making an extra effort to look nice, even if we are getting ready in the same apartment.  The setting of the restaurant is really posh.  The ceilings are incredibly high for a New York restaurant, giving the whole place an air of grandeur.  The food was also great.  Very small, fancy portions with many unidentifiable ingredients.  We had great cocktails, great wine, and great food and then topped it all off with my cheese and the most incredible chocolate soufflé I've had in a long time.  I hate when restaurant's put chocolate soufflé on the menu but it is really just warm chocolate cake.  Don't get me wrong, warm chocolate cake is amazing.  Its just not soufflé.  This came out in a small copper pot with a long handle and a side of thinly sliced mint ice cream that had some weirdly delicious crunchy things in it.  Despite the great food and drink, the best part of the meal was really the conversation.  When Peter and I spend a lot of time together, we fall into a routine and act silly or sarcastic most of the time.  Nice dinners, however, tend to jolt us out of our usual repertoire and make us talk seriously again.  It felt like we were on a real date like when we first starting going out.  It was a really nice evening.

Sunday Lunch--I went out to Brooklyn with my dad on Sunday to see my Grandmother and help her run some errands.  For lunch, we went to the diner.  I have always been a huge fan of diners and if I start waxing poetic on them right now I will probably still be writing this next week.  There is something about the consistency across all Diners, despite them not being a franchise, which I find comforting.  You always know what to expect yet its still always a new experience.  And you never need to look at the menu.  Also, a place that serves breakfast 24 hours a day is my kind of place.  This diner did not disappoint.  It definitely provided a lot of humor, however.  To start off, I hadn't eaten all day and that is always a recipe for disastrous ordering.  I got a tuna sandwich on toasted whole wheat with plenty of full sour pickles and pickled tomatoes on the side.  Because clearly that wasn't enough, I also got Disco Fries.  Disco Fries are just about the best and worst things ever.  If you've never had them, you'll find this disgusting but, trust me, deep fried potato smothered in melted cheese and gravy is just about the best thing.  Ever.  It was a really amusing trip because of the St. Patrick's day celebrations, the fact that three people (me, my Dad and grandmother) who normally don't feel svelte and slender felt just that among the rampant obesity of the clientèle, and my grandmother's interactions with the waitress.  Just as an example, at one point, when she wanted more coffee, my grandmother just shoved her cup in the direction of the incredibly jovial and skilled waitress.  Classic. 

Sunday Dinner--While this excursion has less interesting parts to it than the previous two, it was classic New York.  Sunday night, Chinese food, four Jews, sitting next to a table of ten sixtysomething-year-old Jewish men and women speaking in perfect, loud New York accents.  It couldn't have been more stereotypical.  

Like a bad artery or a highway full of rubberneckers, my brain has been totally jammed up with writer's block.  I have tons of posts composed in my head and just can't get myself to write them.  I have to talk about my plane ride, being back in New York, and my field trip with my seminar in the city.  So much has been going on and I can't seem to get it out on "paper."  It feels like when ever I have a large task in front of me and rather than being able to break it down into little pieces and tackle one section at a time, I get bogged down by the entire project.  Hopefully that'll change soon so I can get back to blogging regularly.

In other news, because of my field trip, I haven't really done much catching up with anyone in the city yet.  I'm feeling a bit disjointed.  Half of me is still in London and was while I spent the time with my class, while the other half of me is here with Peter and in the city.  Tonight, I talked on skype with Molly and Jen in London and caught up on what they've been doing this week.  It is strange to know that everyone is still there doing things together and I'm not.  I actually really miss them and my flat.  Simultaneously, its great to be home back in this city I love and spend time with family and friends.  Tonight I will be seeing a lot of Dartmouth people and that should make the transition more real. 

Here is a screen shot of me and Peter skyping with Molly and Jen that perfectly illustrates how I've been feeling this week, half here and half in London:

Certain college campuses give me a gut reaction that makes me want to stay and learn.  I got that feeling at Dartmouth, as well as being in Cambride, Massachusets on Harvard's campus and in Georgetown.  Certain small communities that have been invested in learning for hundreds of years seem to ooze intellectualism.  The stones record the memories of conversations had and books read and the worn paths are like photographs of the thousands of feet that have traversed their surfaces hurrying to class and to meet friends.  If I got that feeling at campuses that are only about 300 years old, you can just imagine how I felt walking through the streets and courtyard's of the various colleges at Oxford, many of which have been around for over 700 years.  It is incredible.

Last Wednesday, Molly, Cameron, Sarah and I took a day trip to Oxford.  We all had wanted to go for a while and there was an interesting lecture by Alex Potts, a modern art historian, in the evening.  We started out the day by visiting Christchurch College which is, I believe, the oldest and definitely the most well-known and presitgious college at Oxford. (By the way, for those who don't know, Oxford and Cambridge are set up in college systems so, when a student applies to the overall university, they must specify which college they wish to attend.  This creates intraschool rivalries and a lot of competition as well as making a much larger university seem smaller.)  Christchurch is the college that parts of the campus of Hogwarts, the school in Harry Potter, was based on.  It is pretty clear when you first step onto the campus why.  It is so spectacularly regal and beautifully laid out with old stone and an amalgamation of different architectural styles.  We saw the beautiful chapel and, later in the day, came back and saw the massive dining hall that you can clearly imagine Dumbledore presiding over.
For lunch, based on an Oxford alumna's recommendation, we went to this fantastic pub off a small alley.  It had a number of different rooms, was low and small, and had old dark wood beams everywhere.  Besides the always filling and soporific lunch of a jacket potato, beans and cheese with a Magner's cider to wash it down, the pub experience was great because of all the buzzing students.  Apparently, there is a tradition of celebrating, getting drunk, and dressing up after your exams are over.  Granted, this is a pretty standard university tradition.  At Oxford, however, you take your exams in robes and white tie so the post-exam revelry takes on a very interesting air with some people in jeans and others in their full dress outfits.  Furthermore, it is supposedly the pub in which President Clinton "did not inhale" while a Rhodes scholar (see chalk board drawing below).
After some more sightseeing, a stop by the Ashmolean museum, and a little bit of shopping, we went to the lecture.  It was in the auditorium of the Natural History Museum.  The building was like nothing I've ever seen.  It was somehow a cross between a traditional train station and a high gothic church.  Inside, the cases were filled with so many odd taxidermied animals, some of which you were allowed to touch.  There were bugs, dinosaurs, reptiles, mammals, everything.  In many ways, it was very old fashioned in its style of presentation but it was really fun and, if the lecture hadn't been starting, we would have spent much longer playing among the dead animals.
Overall, I really enjoyed the city and could definitely see myself having spent my college years there.  Who knows, maybe an Oxford PhD is in my future....

Sorry for the hiatus.  I don't know why but, over the last week, I just had no motivation to blog.  I have a number of posts written in my head and I just didn't have the energy or desire to get them out.  My goal is to get it done today and break this horrible cycle of writer's block.  

Today I reunited with two somewhat long lost loves: Dartmouth and Peggy Guggenheim

In the morning, I met up with a younger friend from Dartmouth who was passing through London on his way back to the states from an off term in Barcelona.  We met in the morning to go see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace.  I sort of remember seeing the event when I was ten.  I think we went to it right after getting off the plane and dropping our bags at the hotel.  It was incredibly cold, that I know for sure, and I had to borrow my grandma's jacket because it was so much warmer in NY in April than it was in London.  I remember much more about the temperature than the guards.  This time, I'll remember more about the back of people's heads than the guards.  We couldn't see a whole lot.  There was some music, some horses, and a lot of soldiers in blue felt coats and large funny hats with uncomfortable looking chin straps.  So how is this a reunion with my college?  I hadn't heard a lot about Dartmouth from a current student in a long time.  More so, I hadn't heard a lot of Hillel gossip.  It was surprisingly really nice to hear about who is in what leadership positions now, what things have changed, and the seemingly positive relationships that Hillel is developing with Chabad and Al Nur, the campus Muslim group.  It was also just nice to get a whiff of the rhythm of campus life again, the comings and goings of the students and the seasonal changes the campus goes through.

In the evening, Molly and I went to hear a lecture at the British Library.  Mary Dearborn, an historian from Columbia, was speaking on her new book Peggy Guggenheim: Mistress of Modernism.  A few years ago, Peggy was all I could think about.  I read her autobiography, dragged my friends to her museum in Venice before we got on a boat to Croatia, and wrote papers for my classes on her and her New York gallery.  Its been a while, however, since I was really immersed in the story of her life and it is always interesting to revisit such a crazy, dynamic, and interestingly influential woman.  The talk was great.  The woman was incredibly scatter brained and fairly inarticulate, but in a charming, endearing way.  Her passion for the topic was almost so great it bubbled over and impeded her ability to think in a linear way.  Based around archival photographs, Dearborn took the audience through a brief tour of Peggy's life. After the talk, I bought the book and had it signed.  It was a really nice look back on something I have always really loved but haven't been involved in intellectually for a few years.

There is something about the lack of control of an exam situation that I really don't like.  No matter how much or little you study, the exam still comes.  The questions are there, and there is nothing you can do to change them or go back and relearn that obscure thing you passed over that you are now being tested on by your professor.  It also does not help when your professor says, like mine did last week, that she did not vote for the institutional change from three essays to two essays and an exam.  She thinks its stupid.  But, that doesn't change the fact that we had to take it.

So take it I did.  I woke up as early as possible yesterday morning and downed a coffee and some toast at home.  Then, notes in hand, I made my way to the testing site, which was not at school.  I left at 8:30 and the exam was at 10.  I wanted to make sure that if I got lost or confused, there was enough time to correct my mistakes.  Needless to say, even after picking up a latte and some yogurt, I got there at 9.  I was the first one.  I followed the signs through this church/conference center to where the test was going to be held.  As I reached the bottom of the staircase, I turned the corner and saw large, open wooden doors leading to rows, upon rows of neatly laid desks.  At the end of the room, behind a small stage, was an enormous, looming cross.  As more people started to arrive, their reactions to the setting were filled with as much surprise as mine.  While in the bathroom, Molly and I joked that we could use Derrida and his post-structuralist writings to separate out the meaning from the sign and have it just be an empty symbol.  Yeah, we're nerds and losers.

So the exam happened.  All three hours of it.  It was fine.  Three of the four questions were fun-ish (emphasis on the "ish"), one was horrible.  And that's that.  From there, we all headed en mass to the Cheshire Cheese pub, site of many a fun Courtauld event.  After our free beers, of which I quickly drank two, we stumbled over to a delicious lunch of eggs, beans, toast, and more beer.  By three pm I was certifiably tipsy and stumbled home where I took a glorious two hour nap.  After awakening, showering, and shaking off my disorientation, I met the ladies for a wonderful dinner and cocktails at the Great Eastern Dining Room.  All in all, a good way to celebrate being half way to Art Historians.

I am remembering why I am in a discipline that favors essays to exams.  I really hate studying for exams.

So many posts to write, so much psychoanalysis to read.

I shall resume my blogging duties tomorrow.