New York

August 8, 2014

7th floor of the Paramount, looking out, as is my custom, on the wall thirteen feet away.

The assumption yesterday was that I could travel sick as well as sit home sick. This turned out to be an error. Actually being on the flights was OK– I slept– but the tribulation of the airports was magnified. At Asheville I was stopped, pulled to the side and patted down because of a jar of cold cream. “It was registering one of the substances were trained to detect,” says they.
“No it wasn’t, “ says I. They looked at least momentarily flummoxed at the contradiction. What I meant was, it’s hard to take anyone seriously who hits the panic button over a jar of cold cream.

The taxi ride from JFK to Times Square was longer than the flight from Charlotte, and Khalifa, my driver (whose skin was so black it shimmered rainbows) chattered the whole time on his phone in a language which seems to have no individual words. He must have been talking about travel, for the individual words I did pick out were Italy, Paris and Senegal. The infection settled somewhat in my urinary tract (I think) and so every pothole was jarring. It was good to be in New York, and I was glad theater tickets did not allow me to huddle in my tiny room and sleep, as I wanted to do. Early, of course, I stopped at Dave’s Irish Pub on 9th and had a cider. Felt comfortable there. Once I was in, I remembered I probably do the same thing every time I come to Theatre Row.

I went to the Acorn on Theatre Row to see Atomic, a musical about the Manhattan Project. Though heroically performed, it was flawed in ways that I would think someone could have told the authors before it got this far. It didn’t decide whether it was about an event or a person (Szilard, not the intuitive choice) until far too late. It relied overmuch on an audience’s engagement with nuclear physics, but when it departed from that into an intimate or personal moment it was false and sentimental. The actors were forced into innumerable bellowing tutti, I suppose to inject excitement that was not in the material. Manufactured excitement is boring, The show had one great and hilarious character in Enrico Fermi, but dropped him as soon as he did his lovely number about concupiscence. The set was glorious. Randy Harrison, the blond boy-lover from Queer as Folk played Teller, about whom there could be another whole story. He and all the actors acquitted themselves as nobly as they could.

The theater was on the third floor, and I was amazed how weak and tired I felt climbing. Even rising up to let other audience members to their seats was so taxing I went and stood by the wall until I was sure everybody was in. The walk home after theater, which I normally love, was all about getting there. Last night’s sleep was without hallucinations, and the one dream I had–that my computer had been stolen from my office at school– was mundane. At waking I don’t feel 100%- let’s say 75%. I’m glad my room is small and dispiriting, so there will be no temptation to stay here all day.