Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us

[malsperanza]

To make a revolution every day is the Nature of the Sun.

OK, I'm feeling sentimental, because friends of mine got married yesterday, and it was the best wedding evar. They got married on the upper deck of the 5:00 pm Staten Island ferry, with the Statue of Liberty sailing by on the left, and the beautiful, wounded, still-incomparable skyline of lower Manhattan rising behind them into the sunlight. Pigeons and seagulls hanging in the bright air. Commuters eating hot dogs.

About halfway through the ceremony, everyone got a bit carried away and started singing "Sweet Caroline" to the accordion & a maritime cop demanded to see the permit. But it was all good, because they had a permit, and no one got arrested, and the vows were hilarious. And then about 100 of us walked en masse from the ferry terminal up to La Loisaida for dinner, pausing for cocktails on Orchard St.

* * *

This is the second time in a week that I've been in my old stomping grounds on the Lower East Side. It's changed so much. Back in the day, you would not have found this place down there. I have to admit that even though the idea of $5 rice pudding with a name like Surrender to Mango makes me want to run screaming to the nearest grungy bodega to eat morcilla and greasy empanadas, the joint is about as cool designwise as you could want.

And the rice pudding is pretty good, if a bit overproduced.

Here's what I sent my friends for their wedding. Like the two lines at the top of this post, it's a quote from my hero Sir Thomas Browne. This bit is from a letter to his son, who was studying alchemy at the Habsburg court:

Persian Gold I wish for you,
And the finest Alexandrian and Imperial Gold I wish you too.
But look beyond the image to the inside of the metal,
Nor let your treasure-chest be richer than your mind.

Comments

[tipgardner.livejournal.com]

Beautiful words. Your friends are like to have someone in their lives whose erudition is forged with the a beautiful sense of lyrical beauty.

Rice is a funny place. The design is nice, but a little too techno for me. To my mind, it should do a better job of being a clever mockery of the old school ice cream parlor. The last time I was there everyone got overwhelmed, by, I suspect, the pver poducedness of the food as you put it.

Have you read The History of the Siege of Lisbon? I am curious in light of the narrator's profession.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

:-) I am lucky to have friends who throw such brilliant weddings. The view of Manhattan from the ferry is one of my favorite NYC moments, and to see it in the company of 100 happy friends while celebrating a really good marriage was a treat.

I haven't read any Saramago. I bought something of his, but it's buried in the TBR Pile. Do you like him? I seem to have no attention span for serious reading at present.

I give Rice another 18 months before it tanks. I mean, how long can the novelty last? The place looks like the milk bar in Clockwork Orange, which isn't exactly a selling point. You're right: a framed
Norman Rockwell soda-fountain poster or two would not be amiss.

[tipgardner.livejournal.com]

I'm reading a Roy Porter book now, Flesh in the Age of Reason, and he's got the ability to switch effortlessly back and forth between a discussion of everyone from Foucoult or Derrida to ancient Greek philophers and then mix it up with a metaphor from completely contempo, low culture. Your quite the polymath and I'm glad I stumbled on to your journal.

But shameless fanboying aside, it took me a try or two to get into the Saramgo book. It's very dense and very academic. Although a friend lent me Blindness, I haven't read any of his other novels, so I don't know if the style was completely fit to the story and the narrator. In the end, though, Lisbon was a very rewarding read and truly fun in many spots. The reason it made me think of you is that the narrator is an editor (I believe a text book copy editor, but I don't know the niceties).

Rice...yes, you're probably right. They need to widen the menu the way Sweet and Tart widened out from just french toast and almond teas to being a real dim sum ish type of restaurant. I love the Clockwork Orange comment - spot on.

The Ferry is one of the most underrated and fun things to do in New York. It's cheap, you can sneak beers on and the sunset over the water is fantastical in its breathless surreality.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Not that I want to damage my rep or anything, but you know, anyone can look like a polymath online with a little help from Google. ;-)

Thanks for the Saramago recs--I will save him, I think, til the summer. At the moment I seem to be in a totally low-culture mode, watching old movies and not reading much.

*puts Saramago on the TBR pile, along with Brideshead Revisited*

BTW, they do sell beer on the ferry. It's overpriced, though, so sneaking it on in a paperbag is definitely upholding the grand tradition. "Breathless surreality": yes--that is one of the finest sunsets around, with Liberty lighting her one little candle against the oncoming night.

[tipgardner.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the modesty (honesty?) but, let's be realistic, to consistently maintain the knowledge level that you desplay in your posts and comments, one has to already have the smarts and information to ask the right questions. Admit it! You're a rennaissance babe!

I completely understand low culture mode. I've been stalled on the Tim Drum for some time and although this new Roy Porter book is interesting, fan fiction and rereading Martin Amis short stories has somehow ended up much higher on the reading priority list (well that and going out to drink with friends when I eventually leave my office). ;) When I left university, I found myself barely able to pick up anything in textual form that didn't involve pictures and staples. Luckily I was dating a publisher at the time and, no joke, Maeve Binchy and Star Wars brought me back. I got all these free books that Bantam Doubleday Dell were publishing and it was like I was learning to walk again. One day I found myself in the Globe up in Northampton and went on a crazed, book starved shopping spree, picking up virtually every used Vintage Press book I could spot.

Maybe something more fun, but still well written, like Edna O'Brien or PD James would be a good lead in to getting on with Saramago and Waugh.

I didn't realize that they sold beer on the Ferry. That's fascinating. It used to be illegal when I was a young'un stealing some rebellion on the confluence of mighty Manhattan's watery boundaries...ah well...sneaking it on is indeed in the grand tradition.