2003-04-13 - 11:15 p.m.
True to my mood swings, this weekend the sun came out and with it, I found a recipie for springtime contentment, here's part of it:
Make a hummus and veggie sandwiches (blend a can of chickpeas in a food processor or blender with the juice of two lemons, lots of crushed garlic, and olive oil and tahini to taste) and pack your bag with art supplies, journal, polaroid camera, snacks and water. Grab your Brooklyn bike map, pump up your tires and head off to Coney Island via Ocean Parkway.
Sitting on the beach, shoes off, feet sifting through the sand, listening to the waves, staring out accross the atlantic and thinking about how hummus and veggie sandwiches remind me of Jeremy and my trip east (Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine) last August. We packed three hummus and veggie sandwiches each per day of travel and drove for twenty hours at a time. Each bite makes me think of Eastern Washington, Montanna, Wyoming, South Dakota and so on east.
I walk up to the midway to take polaroids of the rides against the spring time blue sky. I think about how if I had one more dollar in my wallet I might consider riding the Cyclone, the rickety old wooden roller coaster that looks like its about to come crashing down at any second. I take a picture instead and spend my $3 on a ride on the scrambler and a lemon ice. I am the only person on the scrambler except for two little kids. I am laughing out loud as it pitches me around, looking up at the sky and kicking my feet. I see strollers on the board walk stop to look- arn't I supposed to be an adult by now?
I decide to ride home via the shore parkway, right next to the bay, under the Verazzano bridge and up towards sunset park.
Coney Island is a collision of carnival, urban decay, and crashing waves. It captures what I love about New York City. For me the magic of New York isn't in Manhattan. It's in these strange, faraway feeling places in the "outer" bouroughs, at the end of the line of the subway trains.
My weekend luck doesn't end there.
Here's another recipie:
Invite your friends over for sunday brunch and make scrambled tofu, hashbrowns, and sweet biscuits (mix 2 1/2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/4 cup sugar with 3/4 cup margarine and 1 cup soy milk, combine gently until "just mixed" and then bake for 12-18 minutes at 400 degrees, serve with margarine, jam or honey, yum yum). Then head out on your bike again, this time towards prospect park, hoping to do somehomework. Instead run into a friend (also out on her bike) at a random intersection, and both head to the park to sun your "fish belly white" arms and legs. Return home, make some iced coffee and now try to do your work.
