"Next Fall"

I love when a play opens with silence. The lights dim and the actors enter, the stage lights come up and... silence. I always wonder, how long can the audience take this? And the more they do, the more the play wraps me up and immediately carries me along. The first moments of a play set the rest of the evening in concrete. For the actors, for the audience, for the stagehands. "Next Fall" opened with silence, a beautifully-staged moment between two people waiting in a hospital. The opening line, finally, was, "funny, isn't it?"

"Don't you just love good theater?" My mom said to her crying daughter on the phone hours later.
"Yeah," I whimpered.

I am someone who doesn't cry during, but (truly rarely) cries after. But there was one moment this evening, during the play, that got to me deep in my throat; it overcame me so quickly that it gave my heart a start. Again, it was this silence. Two actors on stage, and one of them implores the other to just try praying, just once. We don't know in the audience if praying is indeed what he is doing, but the silence was so powerful. Turned fully toward the audience, sitting on the back of a couch at a 90-degree angle, his eyes only closed and opened. The most beautiful thing about the exchange was how long the audience stayed with him. There was not a sound. And he held us with him for so long.

For the rest of the play I had a lump in my throat and that squinted-eye, knotted-forehead face of concentration that only a good play can bring.

I walked outside the theater when the play was over and immediately speed-dialed my mom, like I always do post-theater. She didn't pick up. But I needed to speak to her right then, while the evening was there in my mind and the colors of the play still in my eyes. I needed to just talk to someone about what I'd just experienced, while watching the audience I was so proud of pour out of the theater. I dialed again, and she picked up on the second ring.

"You've got perfect timing!" she said.
"Yeah? What are you doing?" I asked, my voice already shaking.
And that was all I had in me. I was suddenly a wreck, not just crying but sobbing on 44th Street. The audience members of "Phantom of the Opera" streamed by me; one mother-and-daughter team even stopped and asked me if I was okay.
"Yeah, I'm fine..." I managed to scrape out of my throat. I pointed at the theater across from us, with "Next Fall" emblazoned across its front, as though that would explain anything to two tourists leaving "Phantom." They carried on, as did I, huddled into a nook in a brick wall.

I pulled myself together after a few more minutes of crying to my mom's silence on the other end of the phone. Which was really all I needed, just silence to share a little of this experience with me. I walked through what seemed a melancholy, sepia-toned Times Square with a bright red face, mascara all down my cheeks, and probably the most furrowed eyebrows I've ever worn. I don't think my face has pulled itself to normalcy since this play began.

"Next Fall" closes on Saturday. I am so, so glad I went. This may be the best theater experience I've had in New York.

Day One

Summer rain. It sounds like a cliche, so many songs, the opening to a middle-school poem. But the intensity of the summer rain in New York is a force of weather unlike any I've experienced. The skies darken dramatically, flash with lightning, and rain absolutely pounds the pavement. New Yorkers always carry an umbrella. Coral hasn't learned this lesson yet. It's my first day alone in New York, and the merciless heat has lead me to Rite Aid to buy a fan. I am lugging it back to my apartment for a little longer than I expected when I realize I'm lost. This, coincidentally, is when the first boom of thunder alerts me that New York does nothing half-heartedly.
I've never truly been lost before. But I am in beautiful old Park Slope, wandering my way past brownstone after brownstone, each older than the last. New to Brooklyn, it entrances me, that I live amongst this history. The sudden rain is my reminder that my life in New York may indeed resemble a movie. Here I am, sweating in my strapless dress, lugging a fan larger than myself, lost in a thunderstorm on my first day in New York.
It's all too perfect that this is my first experience hailing a cab. Well, I thought I did a bang-up job and had cemented this day in movie-worthy history. As an experienced New Yorker I now look back on my first hailing and berate my lack of self-assertion. I've gotten better with experience, but I still have miles to go.
The cab did pull over, but only to let another passenger out, and when I ambled inside, fan-first, the cabbie was as surprised to see me as if a large Great Dane had decided to hitch a ride.
"I thought you were his friend," the cabbie said to me in the rear-view mirror, alluding to the man who had just exited.
I was so unsure of what I was doing I could have thrown up. "17th Street and 6th Avenue?" I said, basically asking him where I was going.
"That's not on my route, but I'll take you since it's so close."
And within minutes, I had a new best friend. Simply telling him that it was this California girl's first day in Brooklyn led to a history lesson on each of the buildings we passed by. He proudly told me of his experiences in Los Angeles, and I shared my few experiences in New York.
He pulled up to my apartment and I awkwardly maneuvered the fan out of the cab and back into the pouring rain. We each said thank you to the other and I climbed the stairs to my front door. I was visibly proud of myself, and bursting with excitement over being in New York and having hailed my first cab. The rain continued through the night and, combined with the humming of my new fan, provided a new soundtrack for sleep.

Summer in the City

Summer has a personality in New York City. I feel her wafting through my open window right now; this season is a force. Summer seemed to arrive overnight, as though everyone in the city knew the exact moment when Spring held its doors open and Summer slammed them shut. The heat is almost tropical, so too are the huge purple flowers in my backyard. The heat storms come with the warning of a single flash of lightning before baring down loud, oppressive rain and ear-shattering thunder. And without letting up, they're gone.
Everything in a New York Summer happens in an instant. A dog is let outside, he barks, and is shushed back inside. A mosquito lands and its business is done. Sunset is a quick affair, making room for an even hotter night. Sometimes I am so taken by the dappled light of an oak tree's shadow, and I remind myself that in no time at all, those leaves will be dropped, brittle and crunching, and then they will be gone.
Yes, fall is always just around the corner, as we receive shipment after shipment of wool sweaters at Anthropologie. I am excited, though, for wool sweaters are one of Anthro's highlights. I can't wait for it to be just crisp enough outside to wear layers of wool that match the leaves. I can't wait for my first pair of tights, my first donning of boots, the first twist of scarf around my neck.
But I am somewhat ashamed of myself, to be looking toward a new season when the glorious one we've got has hardly started. I'm not ready for summer to be over, just perpetually thinking about what comes next. For now there is outdoor dining to be done, Central Park's concerts to be heard, long walks through Prospect Park and rooftop exhibitions at The Met. I'm going to bathe myself in this New York City summer, so that I'll have no regrets when the air makes its turn toward fall.