Defrosting in Miami

Written March 24, 2007

This edition is dedicated to Phil – a beautiful soul who left too soon.

Faced with an ever lengthening list of dot points to include in my next diatribe, the prospect of doing so is daunting. So if this edition is paired somewhat of my usually delightful imagery, do feel free to insert it yourself, providing all publishing income is filtered to me.

As I was drawn closer and closer into the bubble mirage, to a point where the soapy glaze began to appear involuntarily, I realized I had to get out of State College. And so I did, for the weekend at least, to the bright lights of New York City, "where the grass is green and the [boys] are pretty".

The triggers, insignificant as they may seem, were two-fold. Firstly, the quantity of food ceaselessly left on plates in the dining commons, and secondly, the widespread frustrating ignorance typified by PhD wielding Professor's claiming to have no idea about the population of the U.S.

The Chinatown bus was 'a callin'. Armed with little other than a Lonely Planet, I followed the call. As I warned in my opening, the following will be a seemingly unrelated list of observations from NYC that I think you'll find far more interesting than a regurgitation of my minute-to-minute movements:

- The bleak post-apocalyptic moonscape of industrial Newark and Jersey City; the engine room of NYC's manufacturing industries. Strewn tankers and burnt-out factories lay next to billboards for expensive watches and Manhattan condo's,

- Seeing "Perfect Crime" (www.perfect-crime.com); Broadway's longest running show, a play that has had an almost unbroken run, and indeed the same leading lady (!) since 1987. I'm yet to fathom how someone could possibility find freshness in and detachment from a role they've inhabited for that long,

- Meeting Elizabeth, a middle-aged nurse from Brooklyn, in the half price theatre tickets line. If I asked you to tell me about a typical New Yorker, it would probably be her. A brash optimism and infectious delight in discovering new things; responding "Isn't that something" to almost any detail about Australia,

- Chatting to Alex, the young Aussie actor trying to make it big in the City, who is (for the moment) flogging tickets to *other* people's shows and considering whether marriage is an unreasonable proposition to facilitate a visa extension,

- The sound bites afforded by a wander down the street, as if a breath of wind allowed ears to tune to the radio frequency of a parallel universe. Case in point: the decidedly random response of a man to a well dressed elderly lady who refused his request for money: "I'll suck your dick darling",

- Meeting (if ever so fleetingly) David Hyde Pierce (Niles from Fraser) after seeing him in Curtains (www.curtainsthemusical.com), his new Broadway show.- The marble expanses of the Metropolitan Museum (www.metmuseum.org), with knock-your-socks-off modern art and sculpture.

- The perplexing plethora of medical offices that dominate the Upper East Side; street after street of the things. It's still lost on me.

- The architecture and staircase exhibits of The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (http://ndm.si.edu) – well worth a visit if you're in this neck of the woods – and the hilarious dialogue of an older couple in response to some new fandangle plastic furniture: Him (attempted embracing of concept) – "See, you iron it together", Her (with skepticism) – "What happens to your iron?"

Reassured that there was indeed life outside of State College, I returned home ready for a week of exams before the promise of sunlight during Spring Break.

And boy did it live up to that promise. It was to Miami that I set off with friends Tomo, a Japanese exchange student, and Audrey, a French exchange student. The slovenly excesses of the next week left my stomach feeling bloated and skin just a little browner.

Without boring you with what would be a deserving tirade against staff of a particular U.S airline (though there appears to be a wider trend at play), suffice to say that I eventually arrived in Miami, sampling virtually every mode of transport on the way.

Looking very much like the backpacker, I could immediately distinguish the locals by their copper tanned skin and bright white teeth; even the homeless appeared to have a healthy glow (I don't mean to be facetious, this was striking). As I made my way into Miami I remember the irony of moments like sharing a driverless monorail carriage with two guys who were deaf (they were s signing to each other) on my left, while being bombarded with a cacophony of sound from another guy's boom box on my right. Like the territorial but motherly bus driver who dictated who sat where, yelled the coordinates of every stop, and kept the spring break-ers in lock step.

Staying right on Miami's South Beach, Tomo, Audrey and I enjoyed the beach by day and the bars by night. With temperatures around 30 Celsius, my loins enjoyed the heat of home, and they didn't even want to leave. Traveling with two fluent trilingual's can be just a tad humbling – Tomo and Audrey not only spoke perfect English, but dabbled in Russian and Swedish too. Tomo's local friend JK showed us the local nightspots, inducting us into the Miami shown in calendar's and time-share seminars.

Other highlights included the World Erotic Art Museum (www.weam.com - created from the personal collection of an elderly Jewish grandmother, the third richest woman in New Jersey), and Vizcaya House (www.vizcayamuseum.org), the 19th century winter home of James Deering. After touring, I don't know why I bought the place.

Miami is a city of contrasts; it's proximity to Cuba and the Caribbean has seen it develop into a virtual set of nations, and while physical borders don't not exist within the city, class and religion-based ones do. In a typically American way, nowhere are these distinctions more evident than on billboards – a bus ride through Little Haiti revealed "cash for blood donation" and abortion billboards which would not, I'm sure, exist in nearby gated Coral Gables.

The week ended as it began, with cancelled flights and delays; but this time I was joined by several thousand students feeling as unamused as I. A day and a half later I finally boarded a flight bound for the cold of New York City, confirmed by the chilly irony of snow covered beaches as we came in to land. As our plane plunged through the clouds I saw they offered a rare reflection; I saw the plane's shadow, clear as day, encapsulated by a circular rainbow haze that reminded me of an angel's hallow. Probably sounds bizarre, but it was beautiful.

On the other side of the clouds I was met with reality – the weather, the New Yorkers, the prospect of returning to the books. The first week I've been happy to ease back into it, escaping for some cross country skiing through deserted woods with my mate Keveau, and to the Hookah smoking bar with Corey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookah - mango and peach were the flavours of choice).

Just as I discovered in China, the variety of life in a country the size of the U.S is more like that seen in an empire, and leaves me reflecting that while I'm sure the case is the same in our own country, as desire for the foreign means that few of us discover.