Manhattan Overture

In the morning, I meet Sam's sister, Sheree, who has a tender friendliness and who, with my enormous gratitude, lends me her car, which happens to be the same make, model, and year of my car in California, for the time that I am in New York. Sam, Sheree, and I sit at the kitchen table and eat heaping spoonfulls of ripe papaya before Sam departs with her cousin for her next cross-country voyage, and I make my way up the Jersey Turnpike to Manhattan.

During my first week in New York, I practice one of the best team sports ever invented: couch surfing. I feel like such a winner, as I get to stay with Hila, Kyla, Sarah, and Malia, in whose homes I spend several blissful nights sleeping on the best pull out sofa bed ever created. I spend time playing with toddlers (babysitting, but who ever wanted to sit on a baby?); I get free vegan pizza downtown at two a.m.; I am greeted by Dennis and the Barnard community and allowed to use the computers and phones as an office base (It seems that I am a technically “homeless” person with homes everywhere.) I get to attend a class in the newly created Wellness course whose syllabus was largely created by Molly and I. I get chocolate covered strawberries at Café Lalo and befriend Orange, who is interested in CodePINK. My cell phone dies and I am forced into several days without the little vibrating gadget constantly dangling from my pockets, which in the end is rather pleasant, though it is difficult work-wise. The week is a chaos of action and sights and sounds, a slow settling into the peace manhattan has to offer.