I experienced the most terrifying live concert of my life last night. John (in his ever-hopeful mission to convert me to hip hop and rap music) invited me to join him at a concert by famous Cypress Hill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_hill). Same scenario we had with the previous hip hop concert (the Roots, remember?), just this time I at least knew one of their tunes. It goes a little something like this: Insane in the membrane, insane in the brain! Insane in the membrane, it’s in-sane, in-the-bra-in…

I should have known…

So our tickets said that the show started at 7pm. Last night being a school night, and keeping in mind that I have not had a quiet night at home doing nothing in over 2 weeks, I was quite keen on getting home around 10. With good intentions and positive vibes, John and I bagged our IDs, earplugs (we had learnt our lesson at the previous concert) and some $$s and set out for Times Square. We got there around 7.45 only to be greeted (again!) by a queue that stretched around the building. We asked around and got told that a well-known hip-hop DJ would be playing until the main act came onstage at 9.30pm (there goes my idea of an early night!). So we skipped the DJ, got some Starbucks and played tourist-tourist around Times Square until 9.15.

The band finally made their appearance at 10.15. By that time we’d spent 45 minutes on our feet, inhaling so much second-hand weed that I wasn’t sure whether my head was spinning from the bass (earplugs or no earplugs), from all the blood dropping into my toes, from being pushed/shoved/stepped on by stoned concert-goers or from me being second-handedly stoned. As the band came on, a surge of people ran towards the stage and three mosh-pits developed right in front of us. According to Wikipedia, ‘Moshing is a type of dance characterized by audience members aggressively pushing or slamming into each other’. Now keep in mind that I am still just a girl from Africa and had yet to experience this type of aggression right under my nose. My personal climax was when the overweight girl in front of me got moshed into and crunched (with full weight) onto my right foot. Ouch! That was that – I had had enough.

John enjoyed the rest of the show on his own at the edge of the moshpit while I perched myself on a barstool outside the venue and watched the drunk/stoned/fighting/vomiting concert-goers being herded out the doors by the security guards. That was much more fun.

And maybe I’m a nerd, but today that doesn’t bother me so much. Give me opera over hell any day.

Two weekends ago John and I took advantage of the last summery days by (finally!) going up the Empire State Building. The arrow points to our apartment!

Wednesday is October 31st, which means one thing – my first Halloween in the States! We were lucky enough to get our names added to a club entry list (this is a thing that does not happen in New York…there are ALWAYS lines outside clubs and only if your name is on the magic list will you be lucky enough to be granted access…!) and were excited to go. John often complains that we had not yet been clubbing in New York, so this was to be our first real NY club experience.

Of course a vital part of Halloween is dressing up. We’ve had three friends from Sweden staying with us this past week and simply never got round to going shopping for Halloween outfits. With the party starting at 10pm, the only chance we had was after work on Friday. Bad idea 1. John and I met at his office and sloshed our way through the rain to a huge fancy dress store in that area. Bad idea number 2. My leather boots (the same ones that got ruined by snow 6 months ago) quickly became drenched in the pouring rain and from stepping in countless ankle-deep puddles. We finally arrived at the store, drenched, hungry, cold and tired after a full day’s work. Enter HELL.

Club-sized speakers blared out evil sounds (screeching, creaking floorboards, slamming doors, bats, yelling – you imagine it being evil/horrid/wicked-sounding, you can bet it was being pumped at maximum decibels into my brain) and the two floors of costumes, make-up, props, hats, wigs, shoes, masks, vampire teeth, false nails, plastic rats and bats, scary clowns, fake corpses, skeletons, vomit patches (also fake, thank goodness) and musty smells were all overpriced, overstocked and over-hyped, if you ask me. After about an hour of changing my mind on the perfect outfit based on budget, colour coordination or mood (thus, every 5 minutes) I was about ready to cry or die. John had decided after about 10 minutes to just buy an overpriced wig and dress it up (down?) with a bling belt buckle and his sole suit. Easy. Not so much for me.

I swung between being catwoman (too uncomfortable with a face mask) to being a sexy nurse (been there, done that), to being a baseball girl (USD85 for the outfit) and ended up spending 40dollars on a pair of black wings. Don’t ask me what the theme was, but after 90 minutes of pure hell I thought black wings would fit my mood perfectly. Needless to say I took them off about 5 minutes after arriving at the club (they cut the circulation to my arms off) and have lost half the feathers, despite checking them with my coat (that’s about USD20 worth of black feathers lying across Manhattan!).

I have high hopes for Wednesday night’s Halloween parade, but think I might leave the dressing up to those more qualified to do it… I’ll just eat some pumpkin and look at the dressed up crazies with an evil eye. That should suffice.

On the 6th of November I would have been in New York for a full 8 months. Wow. That’s 245 days since I last saw my friends, my beloved Cape Town, LeRoy Brown (my ginger cat), owned a car… 245 days have taught me so much. The world is so much bigger now than it was 8 months ago. There’s so much to be done, to be seen, to experience. Good food to be tasted (in various different cuisines), amazing people (with incredible stories) to meet, exotic (and less exotic) places to travel to… It makes me realize that I’ve only just scraped the top off this experience – and I’m not yet ready to return to the life I lead before this.

At the moment I find myself somehow in transit. I’m on my way to becoming African-American, I no longer convert everything I buy into Rands (and shiver at the cost of it – I mean, I now even pay $4 for a cup of Starbucks without flinching – that’s R30 for a cup of coffee!) and I am pronouncing things slightly differently (fall is now said as faaaall instead of foooooall, laugh is pronounced as laaeef instead of loooouf – you get the drift – what it takes for us South Africans to be understood in this country…). I still haven’t quite figured out the metric system yet and often find myself wearing a jersey on a warm day, simply because 68°F doesn’t mean anything to me (that’s 20°C, by the way) and for me to walk 2 miles is nothing like walking 2 kilometers – it’s more accurately walking 3.2 kms!

But the one thing this experience has thus far driven home for me is that we’re all pretty much the same. We all need to feel important. We all need to be loved by someone and we all want to know that we belong – wherever we want to belong to. And that knowledge makes the world even more of a village.

Annie and Sam (our weekend-trip-New-York-friends) are getting married in Cape Town in 2 weeks’ time. Similar to John and I, this will be their second wedding (sounds so saucy!). I spent most of last week organizing a surprise bachelorette party for Annie, this Friday evening. Everything was planned down to a ‘T’ – Rose’s house was the party venue, a USD1 shower curtain got tailored into the wedding gown, all the girls from book club (and Justin, of course!) got invited and we had devised a clever plan to get Annie to Rose’s apartment without her expecting a thing. Of course when we all jumped out and yelled ‘SURPRISE’, Annie responded by saying ‘Surprise for what??’ – not expecting to have another bachelorette, just because she’s getting married again.

In my humble opinion, the highlight of the evening (which only ended at 4am and involved dancing to Madonna and Abba in a dingy gay night club in the East Village) was probably a dvd which John and I had made for the wedding couple as part of the wedding gift. Sam came over for a Q&A session last week Wednesday evening and John then turned it into a very professional movie – have a look:

Sam and Annie leave for a month’s wedding and honeymoon celebration on Wednesday – and I can’t help but feel slightly jealous… For many reasons (summer in Cape Town being just one of them!) – have a great trip guys! New York won’t be the same without you…

There is nothing quite like getting a personal letter from someone far away. Ten years ago I’m sure this would have only referred to a mailed (snail-mail!) letter, but these days a text, email or phone call is just as precious. Today I was blessed to receive long newsy-letters from Cape Town, George, Namibia and Sweden. Seeing that new mail in my inbox releases a flutter of butterflies in my head and stomach – it’s great!

Unfortunately I haven’t been that good in always responding on time. Life has just gone so crazy all of a sudden. To think half a year ago I was desperate for friends, events, anything that would constitute any resemblance to my old life, and now, after seven months in New York, I’ve gotten too busy to regularly update my blog! (Never mind write personal letters…). The book club is such fun, I’ve become friends with truly amazing people and I feel much more comfortable living in this crazy city. It almost sometimes feels like home – I know! That’s huge!

That said, I definitely have Africa in my blood. John and I went to see Dispatch at Madison Square Garden a while back and they were raising funds to benefit the people of Zimbabwe. To kick off their concert, the Zimbabwe Children’s Choir perform a song with the band members joining them in this traditional African song. By the end of the performance I was so overcome with emotion! Gooseflesh and tears after 5minutes of an African choir made me realize that I will always be a child of Africa. And soon, once that greencard comes through, I will truly be an African-American!

About 45 minutes by train outside of New York lays Greenwich, Connecticut. A town so stereotypically ‘Desperate Housewives’ it’s actually quite funny! Huge houses are situated on sprawling lawns with 5-door garages and ‘maid’s quarters’ in the back. This lush town is where John grew up and lived until he was 15 and moved back to Sweden. The reason for this trip? John’s 10-year middle-school reunion. Middle school is the equivalent of Grade 6 – 9, I think, so in the US they have three levels of schooling and not just primary and high school like we had back home.

We left the city on Friday evening and arrived at John’s friend, Chase’s dad’s house where we spent the weekend. It was so strange for me to realize that there are people whose parents still live in the house they grew up in! And how strange to imagine now staying in your room that still has crazy teenage stickers on the drawers, still has some high school pictures in frames, still has your childhood bedding on the beds… It made me feel quite sad to realize that most of my teenage things have been thrown out, painted over or lost during all the many moves my family has made in our many separate directions.

On Saturday we went to John’s childhood home and found that the owners had just arrived home at the same time we pulled into the driveway. John went up and introduced himself and they offered to show us around the house – the basement still had this old television built into the wall – the same one on which the Sjolund boys had watched TV growing up! John’s face kept lighting up as he recalled where they hid keys (or beer in later years) and where the switch for the pool pump was located and how huge he remembers his bedroom being, even though it’s now quite small in comparison. Talk about a trip down memory lane!

I accompanied John to the actual reunion cocktail party and dinner on Saturday and here the strangest thing happened – John’s first girlfriend (from when he was three – always was a ladies’ man!) was the date of one of his old school friends. The two of them had not seen each other since they were five, but figured out that they had been neighbors twenty years ago. How strange?

So we had many glasses of wine, I got introduced to many 25-year old bankers, lawyers and other daunting professions and we left the party quite late Saturday night, promising to hang out in New York. (That’s the other strange thing I found – not many of these Greenwich kids had ever moved too far away from home. Most of them work in the city and go home to their parents over weekends. Definitely a different lifestyle to the one John and I are leading…)

The best part of the weekend, however, was spending time away from the noise and pollution that is synonymous with The Big Apple. And while my love-hate affair with this city is diminishing, it still is nice to sometimes wake up, smell the coffee and hear some birds.

Last night I went with Rose to see the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, on the edge of Times Square. After seeing this show (and lovinh it) in Cape Town, I was terribly excited to see it again. And again Christine, Raoul and The Phantom did not disappoint me.

That said, I do feel that Phantom spoils the whole Broadway experience for you once you’ve seen it, because no show can ever be as dramatic, as intensely beautiful or as heartbreakingly sad as this one.

I have been unable to get one tune out of my head since last night (singing it in the shower this morning, annoying the people around me by humming all day – in my best F-grade opera-hum…). So I looked up the lyrics and have to share these with you.

No more talk of darkness,
forget these wide-eyed fears;
I’m here, nothing can harm you,
my words will warm and calm you.
Let me be your freedom,
let daylight dry your tears;
I’m here, with you, beside you,
to guard you and to guide you.

Christine
Say you’ll love me ev’ry waking moment;
turn my head with talk of summertime.
Say you need me with you now and always;
promise me that all you say is true,
that’s all I ask of you.

Raoul
Let me be your shelter,
let me be your light;
you’re safe, no one will find you,
your fears are far behind you.

Christine
All I want is freedom,
a world with no more night;
and you, always beside me,
to hold me and to hide me.

Raoul
Then say you’ll share with me one love, one lifetime;
let me lead you from you solitude.
Say you need me with you, here beside you,
anywhere you go, let me go too,
that’s all I ask of you.

Christine
Say you’ll share with me one love, one lifetime.
Say the word and I will follow you.

Together
Share each day with me, each night, each morning.

Christine
Say you love me…

Raoul
You know I do.

Together
Love me, that’s all I ask of you.
Anywhere you go let me go too
Love me…

that’s all I ask of you.

I went with some of the book club girls and Justin last night to see the movie The Jane Austen Book Club. An absolutely fabulous tale of a book club borne out of desperation (sounds familiar?) to meet new people, share sorrows and joys and have a monthly night of fun with the girls, which is the total embodiment of what book club has become here in New York. We eat (too much), drink (too much) wine, discuss our books (never enough!) and leave with arms stuffed with new words to devour. Books are truly the connection between us – not just in book club, but in life. You can tell so much about a person simply by looking at the books on their shelf.

Similarly, I look back the phases of my life and these are measured and tracked by the books I bought or read at that specific time. My first couple of months in New York will always be referenced by the bunny-eared guides telling me where to find the latest hot spot, where to shop/eat/sleep/drink/party/meet people/buy books or coffee from and I have now, seven months into this adventure, reclined back into a less informative genre of reading materials. During months three to five of living in New York, I focused on heavy books that would be sure to transport me out of this world, into a fictional one that was a bit less tough to get used to – reflecting on my feelings about living in the Big Apple at that time. It’s funny how you (and by you I mean I, because let’s face up to the fact that I am a bit special when it comes to reading…and by special I mean compulsively obsessive!) tend to be drawn by certain styles of writing during certain events in your life.

I remember shortly after my dad died I focused on self-help books, musings about what happens to the soul when the body dies; trying to find out if there is life after death. For months I spent countless amounts of hours pouring over books that promised to enable me to make sense of things. I don’t really know if they helped, but I do know that these books formed a foundation and have helped me make sense in many other aspects of my life. Some people turn to other people, some to drugs or alcohol, during times of adversity – me? I turn to books.

My love for books is quite complex, though. It’s a bit like a relationship with a human. Sometimes you just click and you love spending time with that book, other times a book may look fabulous (judged by the cover!), but once you start reading it, you realize that the content is basically only hot air. Other books look like nothing at first glance – some don’t even get great write-ups – but once you start reading it, you realize that you just cannot get enough. These are those books (like people) that you just want to never end. You want to always keep it close and read little chunks in order to preserve it for as long as possible. I love those books!

I used to love going to Exclusive Books in the V&A Waterfront – it’s like a little quiet retreat amongst the sea of people that flock to the mall every day. Here, I find that solace in Barnes & Nobles and also in Borders. I sometimes walk into one of these giant book stores to just ‘have a peep’ and leave hours later, not having purchased (or read!) anything, but just feeling revived and recharged. Is that the power of words?