Karma

Three years ago, on a Metro-North train, I sat next to a frazzled businessman. He got off a few stops before me, and a few minutes after he left, I noticed that he had left his wallet behind. I considered giving it to a conducter but when my stop came and one hadn't walked through my car, I decided to take the wallet with me. When I got home we googled the guy's name from his license and found his number. When we called, he hadn't even noticed that it was gone. He showed up at our house in half an hour and gave me $25 for my trouble.

Since then I've lost a lot of things: my passport, my cellphone (twice), and last Saturday, my wallet. Each time, I wonder when I'll get my karmic payback and have my lost item returned to me, but each time, Karma didn't smile upon me.
This past Saturday, after a disastrous and fruitless trip to a T-mobile store, I realized that my wallet was gone. When I went back to the store, the salespeople claimed not to have seen anything. It had my credit cards, my bank card, cash, and my ID. The only card I had at home was my frequent buyer card from the liquor store, oddly fitting. I cancelled my credit cards and chalked it up as lesson.

Today when I opened my mailbox, I noticed that my new insurance card had come, and that there was a large manila envelope in the mailbox too. "I'm not expecting anything," I thought. Then as I clutched it in my hands, it dawned on me that this was wallet. A little thinner, all the cash, even the change was gone, but everything else was there. So thank you, nameless Samaritan. You have restored my faith in humanity. Almost.

My first papparazo sighting

Earlier this evening, I went to Shalom Auslander's book reading at the Barnes and Noble in Chelsea. I got there late, and the crowd had already spilled over into the aisles and stacks of books. Auslander read from his book, "The Foreskin's Lament" which details the terror he experienced growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family. The crowd, mostly apostates looking for absolution or at least commiseration, laughed at the most heretical parts. People from other parts of the store kept drifting over but didn't seem to get the dead baby jokes. The archetypal crazy cat lady found at all New York cultural events hovered around the edges of the crowd.

Finally, during the Q&A a Euro-looking guy loped in. "Who is this?" he whispered excitedly to the man standing behind me. "Shalom Auslander," the man answered annoyed and a little embarrassed.

"WHO?"

"Um, he's a writer."
"Like a, like a novelist?"

The man standing behind me shrugged his shoulders and exhaled loudly. It was only when he turned away to talk to the cop guarding the door that I saw the camera with the 70mm lens. Are they going to let him take photos in the store?, I thought. All those times I've walked around Soho or the Upper East Side and this is the first place I see a papparazo?, was my second thought. The papparazo came back with a handler whose was brusque and accented. "Excuse me!," she said while shoving me out of the way to show the pap the promotional poster.

"Oh." The paparazzo was disappointed and headed out into the night to stalk more famous prey.

Breakneck Ridge

Did I go rock climbing?





On Saturday, I took the train up to Breakneck Ridge, a mountain between Beacon and Cold Spring right on the Hudson. It was the perfect late summer/ early fall weather for hiking. The views were beautiful, but in parts the hiking was much more like rock climbing. I wasn't sure what to expect on the way there, but the hiking was both fun and challenging. Scrambling over boulders 1500 hundred feet over the Hudson was a little nerve-racking, but the views from the top were totally worth. I still have bruises three days later! At the summit, I sat with my feet over the edge and watched the hawks gilde over the river. It's a really great day-trip from the city that I definitely recommend.