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- Fantastic!
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- Later Meryl Streep stands by herself on the stage and sings an Irish ballad a cappella, So beautiful and so moving! I get paid.
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- And later Meryl Streep stands by herself on the stage and sings an Irish ballad a cappella, So beautiful and so moving! I get paid.
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- 2/11: Home alone in our tiny Manhattan studio I watch boats on the Hudson River and think serious thoughts. It’s snowing outside. I play my fiddle.
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- 2/19: Mayrvo and I take the A train from 181st st. downtown to 34th st/Penn station. When we walk out of the subway at Penn Station there are lots of cops. Something is happening. As we make our way through the police and the rush hour pedestrian traffic we pass a happy dog with a badge around his neck. Within moments several large black suv’s with smoked windows take off down 31st escorted by several NYPD motorcycles and followed by a NYC ambulance. We walk across town and meet our Irish-American nephew Keith and his Puerto Rican boyfriend Andre for dinner at Bistango’s on the corner of 29th and 3rd, one of our favorite Italian restaurants. When Mayrvo was fighting for her life in Beth Israel at 14th and 2nd I’d often go in and order a meal for her and sit at the bar over a glass of wine while I waited. After dinner the four of us walk back across town to see “God of Carnage” at the Jacobs theatre on 45th st. with Jimmy Smits, Christine Lahti, Annie Potts and some British actor named Ken Stots who is friggin brilliant. We’re in the third row center and waiting for the play to start. About 10 minutes after the scheduled start time the entire theatre suddenly erupts in applause. We turn around and about six rows behind us on the aisle is Joe Biden in a seat not as good as ours but perhaps chosen with different considerations. I’ve read that he commutes by train from DC to his home in Delaware.
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- 3/4: On my way to work I stop in the pedestrian tunnel between the Port Authority and the Times Square subway stations to see my elderly little Chinese mother. I always find her in the same place, sitting on the floor against a wall. We’re friends in this little New York City underground neighborhood. She’s frail and very sweet and I always give her money when I see her. We don’t share our spoken language. We share love with our eyes. I haven’t seen her in three weeks so I give her $40. Today she forces me to take a sandwich, two bananas, a pack of graham crackers, a fruit punch and a bottle of water, all given to her, I imagine, by people walking by. I keep protesting, laughing with her, but she won’t be persuaded. I’m stand there juggling all her gifts with some difficulty. She gives me a plastic bag to carry it. As we say goodbye she takes my hands in her so soft hands, pulls them to her cheek and then she kisses them. My dear little Chinese grocer. When I get to the Times Square end of the tunnel there’s a black man with an amazing baritone voice singing opera. He’s filling the subway station with profound beauty as I wait for the shuttle to Grand Central. The shuttle arrives and after I arrive at Grand Central I stop for a few moments by a young Asian guy who is playing beautiful complex flamenco on his guitar. In a few moments I’m up on the street and I glance up at the Met Life building towering over Grand Central and framed by the pale blue winter sky. I turn right down Park Ave, threading my way through the tourists at the airport shuttle busses, then a left turn down 41st towards the gothic back entrance to Cipriani’s. I walk into the cavernous room. Riggers are pre-rigging lighting and projection trusses. I don’t know yet what the gig will be but I know my job and I’m working in the center of the universe. Yes, I’m so grateful to be a very lucky man.
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