evening

Finally settled into my new apartment on York Avenue on the Upper East Side. I'm in a 5 story pre-war walkup above a place called "The Saloon" and a cute little Ethiopian restaurant with yellow painted french doors. I am also very happily situated next to a flower shop, fish market, bodega and szechuan restaurant. There is sushi nosh and a charming book shop across the street. On the weekends, my block is the hot spot, and I can feel the pulse of electronic beats through the heat pipes in my bathroom. If I sat on my fire escape, enveloped in darkness and obscured by the tree in front of my building, I could drop water balloons onto debonair men and stiletto heeled women all flustered and flirty after a couple of cocktails.

School is great and busy. I love what I'm studying. Philosophy, history of costume, design. My critical theory professor is very bohemian (a la european) and wears dark red lipstick, graphic dresses and kelly green ray ban wayfarers. She admits to having purchased a Dali signature on the street when she moved to New York from West Virginia at the age of 16. She helps to explain Kant and recommends Simone de Beauvoir films at La Maison Francaise. Exhibition design is the best. I review a different show each week, and like never before, have been critiquing every conceivable intricacy of how a show is curated and displayed. I spent an hour and a half doing an analysis of a show at the Met last week... Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe.

I'm about a 10-15 minute walk away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim. Carl Schurz Park is a hop, skip and a jump away, and the East River esplanade is perfect for long strolls, morning runs or sitting on a bench by the waterfront with a book. This area reminds me of a mini Central Park.

I like walks around the city in the evening most of all, before the blanket of darkness envelopes Manhattan. I like the air with a tinge of gray, crisp in its transition from light to dark after the sun sets. The other night I discovered a little pickle and olive shop on First Avenue. Heaven.