Modernism

Got up this morning between 10 and 11, left the hotel alone because Byron was already out while Matt and Michael were still sleeping, grabbed some breakfast here in Jersey and took the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) to Christopher Street, reading Above All Men on the ride, then walked through the warm and sunny streets of Manhattan noon towards Strand where I browsed through the cheap used books outside for half an hour, finding a book with two short novels by Salinger for $ 0.48

and Proust's Swann's Way (Vol.1 of In Search of Lost Time) for a dollar, then went inside for more endless browsing through innumerable shelves and displays of paperbacks, hardcovers and collector's editions of nearly everything that has ever been printed, limiting myself to buy Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian for $7.??, got out again and went to Washington Square Park where I intended to flee the rush, grab some sun and sit on the grass reading - an idea that was, however, immediately thwarted when I caught sight of all the commotion happening in the park, all the locals and tourists, the hipsters and squares, the children and parents, the dogs and the pigeons, and most of all by Tic and Tac who attracted my attention just as easily as that of almost anybody else around the fountain by having their drummer play a tight beat and hollering around, advertising their show which was about to begin shortly, introducing Tic's or Tac's young son who was also participating in the shouting, which all eventually led to a great performance that was a mixture of very self-aware politically

incorrect comedy and break dance/acrobatics that elicited much applause from the audience which afterwards dispersed, dismissing me onto a lawn next to those cosplay kids looking weird and acting crazy, distracting me once more from reading, just like this hipster jazz trio to my left that played some really good stuff and kept on going, song after song just as I kept on going from jazz band to jazz band in Washington Square Park, oh and then seeing these quiet introvert indie kids playing songs for a few amazing modern dancers who even incorporated this one monument into their performance and didn't let go, me finally going adrift, walking to the Caffe Reggio on MacDougal where I had been before and now wanted to go there again because it seemed like the perfect place to have a first look into Swann's Way 

because both the cafe and the novel might have been created around the same time at the beginning of the last century, and then I read into it and it felt a bit like falling in love with Proust's very beautiful and sometimes suggestive and elusive prose which makes a (reportedly) difficult book seem easy to read while it doesn't really reveal the direction this might go into and what it is gonna be about so I sat for another minute or two thinking and then left, tipping not too generously because today's lousy and standoffish service seemed even worse in comparison to that very friendly waitress that I had chatted with in January and who was the first person out of a few to tell me about the Strand which had eventually brought me back here today, all before I went back to the 9th Street station to catch the PATH back home because we were supposed to meet at 7:30 in the lobby in order to go to that awesome Indian restaurant here in Jersey not far from the hotel where I and Rene and Paul shared a table discussing courtship and marriage and where I might have had too much food because it was so delicious, after which I finally headed back home finishing part I of "Combray" in Swann which has taught me how to write a long sentence.