hey y'all. i'm officially back at school, which is 100x more exhausting than i had remembered. my mind is still in america, ambling around brooklyn and manhattan. there are so many pictures/feels from new york, so I'm doing a separate post just on Afropunk. here are the inbetweens - the part i fall more in love with every year.
crazy crazy day - went to an insanely hot coney island briefly in the morning but couldn't bear the heat for long. after walking along the boardwalk for a while we ended up in a very Russian cafe (terrible pop music and all) before driving back to cool off.
we made our way to port authority with a trip to k-mart and party city (lol) to buy presents. hellish but fun in its own American way. people are so ridiculously nice here - today i have been blessed for sneezing by a complete stranger and had a conversation with a Trinidadian woman behind us in the line of party city. people talk to each other here, which is such a taboo in London.
on the street a group of 20-somethings were doing crazy yoga moves. down to the hot humid subway and saw Alok from DarkMatter! what are the odds? in New York it all can happen and I'm falling in love again. we were talking about Alok, who probably heard us - wanted to clarify we are fans but i am just a white cis liberal after all. this is all surreal and all beautiful. in a week i will be back in london but this bubbly wonderment makes up for it all. i could uproot everything and move here in a heartbeat.
had a very wonderful, Brooklyn day. these short notes will not be able to take me back to now but are important for me to process the present. went to the Brooklyn museum and saw a basquiat exhibition of his diaries and various other works, as well as a very extensive exhibition about the history/cultural significance of trainers. one diary entry had only the words 'bit too bitter' written on it, which unsurprisingly resonated with me. basquiat is an artist whose mind is impenetrable and slightly twisted but beautiful. debated whether to buy some earrings of his crown motif, but decided against it. consumerism is what he denounced - what is consuming us.
it seems alien that i will be back in a week. i haven't really thought about it in a literal sense of 'i will have to drag my ass up at 7am every day in a week' and i am so so so not ready. summer doesn't feel like an end to anything anymore - just a short hiatus. but this happens every year (i got that summertime, summertime sadness).
the weather was gorgeous so we walked along the highline, soaking in the juxtaposition of plants and city. near the end I bought a delicious coconut Mexican style ice lolly which I dripped everywhere in the new york heat but was incredibly satisfying.
this is not the average teen dream - I am deeply infatuated with this city. it's the terrible confusing train lines, the unbearable heat, the strange segregation of integration, the bugs, the smells. but also the good things - the people, the food, the views, the culture, the museums. it's insane and wonderful and infuriating and breathtaking.
-hannah
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