Familiar faces, different places

Mimi called me this morning. She asked me what my plans were for the day. I told her I was going to Chelsea to look at some galleries. She asked me if I were hungry. I said I could eat. She had just dropped off a jacket to be tailored on the lower east side and had an hour to kill. We agreed to meet at Cafe La Palette.

The place was packed, but by the time Mimi arrived we had a table. We ate crepes. I ordered jambon et fromage; she had the strawberry Nutella. After lunch we walked back to the lower east side. Just past Broadway we saw a little girl standing by a pool of water. Her mother quickly ushered her along. "We don't want to jump in that puddle. We don't know what it is."

In Nolita we stopped at the designer's showcase. I had mentioned losing my change purse (which I had bought in Thailand). Upon entering the gym I saw one I liked by Yukiko Sato. Mimi recognized the label and said she had one by the same designer. I didn't have enough cash on me and so she bought one for me. I picked one up and Mimi said it was too girly. I ended up with a different one. It's grey courduroy with a purple label. It's called Silver River. The lining is beautiful and I love it!

While crossing Allen I mentioned a Japanese place I had always wanted to try, but is never open when I go. She asked me if it was Homey Japanese Food. She said we should go by to check out the menu. We stopped in front of the restaurant. A girl waved to us from inside. We walked in and I saw Malin, cell phone stuck to her ear. She had just come from yoga. I had run into her last night at the Angelika, where we both had tickets to Gunner Palace. She asked me if I had been following her.

Mimi and I decided to get cupcakes. She recommended Podunk, on 5th Avenue. She knew the woman who ran the place after having waited there an hour for a friend. We ordered cupcakes and asked Elsbeth to recommend a tea. She fixed us a pot of organic coconut. Everything was delicious.

We took the F train to Chelsea. Mimi went home, but told me to call her when I was done with the galleries. I started at Max Protetch, where the walls were covered with Marjetica Potrec's drawings of cities matched with her handwritten commentary. Next, I stopped to watch Sarah Morris' Los Angeles at the Friedrich Petzel Gallery. Shot the week leading up to the Academy Awards, Morris creates a dynamic visual document of the city set to an original score. From there I went to PaceWildenstein for its retrospective of rule-based art, where I refamiliarized myself with the work of Donald Judd, Josef Albers, Sol LeWitt, and their contemporaries. I then backtracked to the newMuseum and their retrospective of East Village artists before calling Mimi.

I stopped by her apartment. She was watching a National Geographic special on babies. Computer-generated fetuses were shown winking at the camera through their amniotic sacs. We flipped channels for a while before she settled upon The Daytrippers, a film starring Liev Schreiber, Parker Posey, and Stanley Tucci. The film was almost over. The characters drove towards the conclusion of the film, stopping their car at 79 Thompson Street. From her apartment in Chelsea I sat and watched a film shot in 1996 and saw my front door. The lead actress stopped in the doorway of the building next door and was buzzed in.

After the film, we were starving and so set out for dinner. Our first two options were full. We walked south to Suenos. On the corner of 18th and 8th we ran into Li-Ting. She introduced us to Dylan and led us to the restaurant before bidding us good night.

In the restaurant, Mimi expressed surprise at the coincidences of the day. That in the few minutes of TV that I had watched this week I saw my apartment building filtered through the lens of an indie filmmaker. I said I was surprised I had run into people I know. I told her that I often feel I don't know that many people. She brought up the two today. I said those are the only people I know. Posted by eku at March 12, 2005 10:58 PM