discoveries

discovery most wonderful: my back yard. it was a very lazy weekend, spent indoors attempting to do work, catching up on sleep, talking little walks in the dying sunlight. on saturday i walked out for a bit to get a panini, and instead of going straight back to read henry v i went into the little park that is in front of our converted nurses' dormitory, langton close (ie, it used to be a home for little nurses...we are right next to a dental hospital...all very odd). but this park, i always think it is dead, probably because there is a large ugly building on one side of it and i have a very low tolerance for such monstrosities next to precious green parks. it is a very tiny park. but when you sit within the park, especially as the light is fading and sipping your espresso, it is absolutely perfect. i felt so excited as i sat on my park bench, watching the sun dip in and out of clouds, the light shifting on the orange brick of langton close. it was cold, but not freezing -- that cold where you feel perfectly awake, and the espresso and the gauloise only heighten that sensation of consciousness. i did not want to let the moment go, because i knew if i listened to reason, and slowly dragged myself back to my stuffy room with my stuff books, i would just be sad that i was missing the dying light in the perfect cold in the tiny park. but i finished the espresso, and the cigarette was gone, and i reluctantly went back to reality. but when i found my two french suitemates in the kitchen, and that same light was pouring into the room, with the window pane casting shadows on the wall. it was heaven. also, my gigantic gigantic "biopot of strawberry yogurt made the situation more glorious.

discovery most 80s: roller discotheque. in a large wharehouse behind kings cross. three rooms with great lights, and 70s, 80s, 90s music (each room, different era etc). very intriguing, but after about ten minute that novelty fades and it becomes a loud boring club but on rollerskates (i.e. kate flirting with death by rollerskate collision while other people dance/skate to the music and exhibit extreme grace/coordination). very fun in the beginning, but inevitably not the ms. klutz scene.

discovery most filled with sundried tomatoes: la provence. bakery/sandwich shop down the street. got yelled at for wanting to throw away my banana, calling it "garbage" instead of "rubbish." delicious paninis with sundried tomatoes, mozzarella, pesto, olives. everything else looked wonderful too. but got panini for lunch on saturday and sunday -- yes, it is open on sunday, what a concept to the english. was probably also drawn into the shop due to allusion to french countryside.

discovery most tasty: wagamamas. delicious chocolate cake with wasabe icing. couldn't breathe. will return promptly to try more tasty main course dishes, and to sample every single desert. because they were obnoxiously tasty looking.

discovery most *possibly* lucrative: i got a job as a caterer. the training was obviously embarrassing for kate, as it included learning how to hold multiple plates in one hand, serving people with a fork and a spoon (one-handed again), holding heavy trays, and being coordinated and elegant on the whole. so, i'm hoping that after my first job i don't get sacked, since i envision me serving some rich well to-do-banker his chicken, and accidentally knocking over the wine, and the chicken then flying on the lap, and then tripping someone with a tray as i run back to the kitchen to get napkins to dab the wine that has spilled on an unfortunate area on the well-to-do banker, and having wives screaming and bankers frowning and babies crying and me out on the street with no pay and a pair of ugly funeral black shoes that i had to buy for the job.

discovery most comforting: my suite. apparently all of my suitemates are absolutely wonderful. they ask me why i do not cook, and what exactly i have been eating, i reply that i am inept at life. i then realize that i have been starving myself for two weeks. it is apparent from this post that i am very obsessed with food. the suitemates pointed out that we have a goerge foreman grill, something was has clearly proves that i am very blind and very silly. this goerge forman grill made me extremely happy. indeed, i think that i will call it

discovery most awesome: GF grill. because it is. the revelation that there is said george forman grill (think, paninis, think, anything i can think of that i can simply take out of a bag and smush in the george forman grill) will possibly help kate to better taken care of stomach, which has been very much abused the past few weeks. yesterday i went to market with my suitemate sean, and eyed him as he picked out basic foods. learning how to take care of oneself, v. important.

discovery most proud of: my ability to have a day filled with meaning after not sleeping for god knows how many hours. at school, my sleepless nights usually end up in me passing out long before i should, therefore missing class or going through the day so discombulated that i should have just surrendered to bed and pillow. but yesterday - ah. i knew i would make it through the night after moses' life was complete (big fat american men jump on other big fat american men, and moses' bfams were triumphant, after a long streak of being very un-triumphant). but it was shocking that the day was so good. at 10am i had modern literature, in which a old british woman talked about philip roth and his "jewish-american sensibility." very odd. then a lecture on as you like it, then one on camus (dizzy kate listened to bald lecturer: "sometimes you are riding on the early train from brighton to london, doing your crossword, and you look up and think: this is absurd. i am going to die. the question is, will you go back to the crossword, or will you make more of that moment"). but the great part of the day came with my shakespeare seminar, led by gautam's old tutor, the great paul davis. sitting in that room with ten other brits (and three absolutely silent americans) made me realize once again how absolutely horrendous columbia education is. for the most part, there was actually a lively discussion for a full two hours. and rarely was there one student who would put forth a self-important load of bullshit, but they were actually engaging in what they were reading, and actually paying attention to what the person who came before had said. now maybe this was all a dream, and i was simply over exhausted delusional and too hot (the room was SWELTERING and in a basement, and i refused to take my cashmere sweater off because i felt like i would be too awkward. seriously.) but i sense it was real, and that the columbia english department has failed me. well i mean, duh. that and we were talking about henry v, so what COULD go wrong (columbia would make it go wrong. they would fuck up speghetti).

anyway after not sleeping for 30 hours i passed out, still in my cashmere sweater, waking up a sweaty and confused mess. this was a very mundane post. but it is because henry v / a supremely long day has sucked all the life out of me. apologies.

tate.

i went to the tate today, somewhat in search of rooms that looked exactly like those in match point. i continue to be slightly haunted by that film, and would also like to find the part of the thames bank where we wait to see if he will be lucky or unlucky in life. ha! one other funny thing, for those who have seen the film, is that the theater where "woman in white" is playing now has huge placards outside that say "ALL BAGGAGE CHECKED UPON ARRIVAL" -- i suppose they got a bit nervous when they saw the way the film treated their security system. anyway,, i did not find the specific rooms i was looking for, because it is a movie not reality. but still, i like to make myself believe that such talk is nonsense -- movies are real!

but the tate was wonderful. it is a huge daunting warehouse, much darker and grimmer than the comparatively lithe MoMA which remains my favorite, no question. while i was weaving in and out of exhibits, i saw this girl dressed in light brown and black, wearing a thoroughly old fashioned straw hat. she seemed to be defiantly standing in front of a jackson pollock painting, the colors of which were pointedly similar to those of said young, odd girl. she was still there after i had walked around the exhibit, and so i felt obligated to give into my urge to take a somewhat cliched photo. as usual, i was awkward and bumbling about, unable to catch "the decisive moment". but yes, i felt compelled to put it up here in le blog, because i am a silly little one, who likes when dull colors and dull girls align perfectly. the girl was a bit of a loon i must say. half a moment after i took the picture, it was as though she knew that my shitty little camera clicked, and after her ten minute reverie in front of her painting, she and her color coordinated hat took off and walked to a painting filled far too many colors to bother with a matching outfit. i think she came to the tate to have a tourist named kate take a picture of her and mr. pollock.

the other great part of the tate was this installation by a woman named rachel whiteread. there were lots of white boxes and it was fun to walk through them. as you can see, i am a connoisseurr of art. here is a picture from the ground level. it was very large. the man in black scared me.

also i have been finding these postcards of adorable bunnies doing odd things. i learned the bunny's name was miffy and that i was not the only one fascinated by him. i will be collecting postcards of miffy and friends while in london, mostly because i am mentally challenged, and actually six years old. supposedly miffy is a universal phenomenon, and miffy travels the world. i hope to one day meet miffy. my life with then be complete. okay enough with this fucking obsession with the links and miffy. also, miffy is a girl. as she wears a dress.

that said, yesterday i had a nervous breakdown, but i am slowly recovering. and that said, i will probably have a nervous breakdown tomorrow. also, my kitsch class instructor has the surname of "nim-rod" and sadly his teaching style corresponds to his most unfornate name. but whatever, my friend and i have decided to say fuck you to his twit-esque teaching style, and continue forward with our orgasmic reading list. that said, i have done no reading and find that if and when i am in my room, i waste my time writing silly writings on this godforsaken thing, OR planning my many escapes from london in the cheapest ways humanly possible. and THAT said, i need to get a job, because london is ripping holes in all my pockets and the money is disappearing at a rate unknown to humankind. and that said, i will smoke a cigarette, which will cost me about 45 cents (per cig).

but yes, i plan to visit paris and prague and venice and vienna and madrid and amsterdam, and maybe some more. i do not know where i will stay or how i will survive, but i will have to find a way. because i think i love to travel, i think that is clear. and so, i have decided that this friday i will take a trip to the cliffs of dover. perhaps on my trainride i will see some sheep dotting the countryside. as a new yorker, sheep are not often seen. they are not really in kansas either, which i suppose is suprising. only cattle, waiting to be slaughtered and sold to mcdonalds. ick. i have been wanting to see some innocent sweet sheep for a long long while.

brilliant

"pretty isn't beautiful, mother. pretty is what changes. what the eye arranges is what is beautiful."

today i was overwhelmed. perhaps it is because i am easily overwhelmed, perhaps a bit overly emotional. and theater--really great theater that is--can really REALLY get me. bad theater therefore utterly destroys me, and i usually sink low in my seat and start reading the program to try to forget the screeching going on the stage in front of me.

but this was certainly not the case today. sunday in the park with george, one of stephen sondheim's many great musicals, is in a limited engagement at a fringe theater (better way of saying off-broadway) in london. i think that most people at columbia are not familiar with my obsessive love for sondheim, or the theater at all really. after my acting days were abruptly cut off when i entered college, i sort of put those past interests to the side, only rehashing them when i was lucky enough to see a spectacular performance (and therefore spiralling back into hyperbolic admiration for said composer/playwright). well lucky me, here i am in london where the west end provides more opportunity for overwhelmed kate rather than sinking in seat kate. and getting chills at the theater is really just the best.

but back to this play. sunday in the park with george is a musical about georges seurat's painting "a sunday at la grande jatte", which hangs in the art institute in chicago. many of you may remember it from the venerable film "ferris beuller's day off" (cameron stares at the painting, and the camera cuts closer into the painting until you see each dot). anyway, the first act is seurat painting the picture, with characters standing in for each person in the picture. his lover (aptly named dot), the two young girls sitting on the lawn, the old lady, the soldiers, the dog, the servants. it is perfect. at the end of the first act everything comes together perfectly--"composition, order, design, harmony" are the four words seurat repeats throughout--as georges arranges each actor into their perfect place in the painting. this production was very bold in its creative use of digital technology, which helped to create a more complete realisation of this very complicated, but brilliant vision of transforming a piece of art into a piece of musical theater. there is really no purpose in trying to explain, but by the end of the first act, when everything came together in such harmony, i could do nothing but bawl. ends of first acts in sondheim usually do this to me, granted (i was a wreck in sweeeney todd as well), but god. i mean, simply breathless. i had to run out immediately to find the bathroom, so that dear old dad wouldn't have to look at me crying over people singing on a stage (actually, i think he expected me to be overly emotional, and that is probably why i bolted to the bathroom...he would smile in an i told you so sort of way and take away from my need to step back from all of it. so i reflected sitting on a toilet seat...very lovely, but very kate). the second act is about seurat's great-grandson trying to find his way as an artist in 1980s america. it is very good, but not as unbelievable as the rest of the play.

i do not cry when sad things happens in plays or movies. people die, and i blink. i cry when everything comes together miraculously, when i witness this perfection, when it is simply too much to bear. this production was far from perfect. the problem is of course that i adore mandy patinkin and bernadette peters as george and dot. they were the originals, and like any enthusiast i have basically memorized every detail and nuance of their performances from recordings and videos. perfect! this dot was really mediocre and then the poor georges--no one can do it like mandy (who was by the by, "my name is domingo montoyo, you kill my father, prepare to die"). but anyway, all the performances slightly lacking, probably because this is basically still in workshop--they will probably move to the west end in a few months, and then hopefully to new york (the production of sweeney started here too). but the flaws and the bumps did not matter--there were the essential moments of utter perfection. the set design and the innovative use of digital images really had a lot to do with it--which is a surprising thing for me to say (usually i think such fireworks are usually stupid)--but it comes down to sondheim. really the man makes me sob. more just in the theater than listening to the recording, but that is the magic of the stage translating the man's genius into a living reality.

but this is not something that only happens in theater. i am sure that others have explained this all too human feeling far better than i, this way in which one can sense something great before them. it is a purely personal experience, it is something that you do not want to share with others (here i am typing up about it), but really, i cannot come close to saying what i felt. oh whatever. i will stop my nonsense. i think i will never become a critic simply because i am too swayed by my emotions. especially sitting in a theater of any sort. about thirty minutes in, if the play is successful i have lost all my cynicism and i am ready for my mind to be molded by the artist. and then thirty minutes out and i am usually back to making criticisms, but so many times they are not even good because the memory is hazy from my frolicking in the world of wherever i just was.

on another note, maybe i was just emotional today, because before the show i burst into tears at pretty much the drop of a hat. it was a very crowded and tiny theater and i was sitting in the middle of the row, and naturally i had to get up to pee before the show started. Because i am kate and do not think to do things before i sit in the most inconvenient place imaginable. well, i am the least graceful person i know, and some snippy brits did not help at all, and i was pretty much falling over everyone around me--like, this was a scene out of Larry David. Almost falling on someone's lap, tripping over my knee. but the icing came with dear ms. british snotty whore. after managing to go through four very nasty people who refused to budge, i finally come to her. Any moron would notice someone is coming down the way, i assume she has moved her legs, FORGIVE ME. but no. so the least graceful trip comes, and the old hag says in the NASTIEST WAY "well you COULD wait until i uncrossed my legs." i should have said "well, you could take less time just standing up than uncrossing your legs for five minutes" but instead i tried to apologetic route "oh i am terribly sorry" to which she looked to the side like "well yes i should be apologized to". and that point i looked at her with pity because i always feel that is what would make me feel worst about being a whore to a stranger. and then while walking away i burst into tears because i feel so bucking frustrated with people like that. Looking back on it however, i think that i have a lot of untapped anger, and that i really wanted to start cursing and batching her out at the top of my lungs, and that i let this suppressed aggression out through tears. pathetic. i need to be ridiculous and more Larry David next time instead of cursing her, again, in the bathroom stall.

also, sometimes eating really good food can make me feel more emotional/human/alive (i haven't been eating very well...). my dad took me to nobu, a restaurant i have wanted to go to since, well birth, and yea. it was worth the wait. dear lord. my mouth was on cloud nine, it has not yet returned, it does not want to be sullied by the earthly food that is not from nobu. sadly i am not a duke and therefore my mouth will have to return to the seventh ring of hell. so sad.

but then again, even with the nobu lunch and the snippet British lady in mind, i do think that i was not alone in my reaction to the show. the play begins and ends with the words "white: a blank page or canvas. the challenge bring order to the whole through design, composition, tension, balance, light and harmony. so much possibility". the set is completely blank. it is remarkable. an elderly british man sitting next to me, who apparently came to this saturday matinee on his own, took my arm after the lights went down on the blank stage said to me "wasn't that just, brilliant." i could sense that he said it because he felt the tears already rushing to his eyes, and he felt compelled to find someone who felt exactly as he did at that moment. i did not know how to adequately respond to this stranger's heartfelt words, so i smiled back at him and nodded furiously, murmuring through my tears, "brilliant, brilliant".

left right left

everyone knows that in england, the british like to be ever so slightly different. they like to have their own obnoxiously expensive currency. they like to have tea and crumpets (and sometimes trumpets) at very certain hours of the afternoon, and they like to say rubbish instead of trash. because they think they are special. fine, i will give them these things, even though they are not special in any way shape or form. but why must they insist on driving their cars on the completely wrong side of the street? they cannot say that it is the "right" way, because the rest of the world, THE REST OF THE WORLD, says no, you snooty english bastards, you are just doing it to once again say "yes, indeed, we are much better than you. pffft to the world and their 'normal' driving habits." now really, it is fine, i am getting used to it, mostly. but not really. what is most frustrating is that i am sort of a moron. because you see, the english at least try to make sure the visitors to their island do not get mowed down by speeding red buses or insane taxi drivers, by writing on the sidewalk "look left" and "look right." sadly, being a moron, i cannot tell left from right. this is one of many reasons the drivers license has not been obtained by ms. katherine peterson hurwitz. you see, parallel parking was rarely my problem--it was mostly the "please turn left at this-----holy fuck watch that truck" and then a miraculous death defying swerve, and then the look of despair from the poor instructor. i try the whole putting up my two hands and making the l, but really i feel embarrassed because i am twenty, not four (although some would beg to differ). so i have come close to death about, well, everytime i cross a street in this wet town. today was most terrifying, because i thought i had the street free and clear to myself, and i was so proud of looking the right way when, i hear a loud loud honk and two lights coming straight towards me. i let out a might eep and then jumped directly into a puddle, which let me tell you is not as fun as mr. gene kelly makes it out to be.

so now i have taken to shaking my head back and forth sort of compulsively to make sure i don't lose my life on a london street, so that passers by probably think that i have some sort of disorder that makes me somewhat twitchy---but really, people probably thought that before i commenced my seizure-esque nodding. i think my inability to tell left from right stems from the overarching inability to make any decision whatsoever. which was brought to a very embaressing forefront today when i had to choose whether or not to be a full english student (taking horrid terrifying classes such as chaucer and romantics, not fun), or some slightly bullshitty sounding european cultural studies (taking a postmodern class and a film class, hehe...oh film). it was a simple decision, it really was, but is anything ever simple with baby kate? no. because she is a baby. and in america, it is okay for her to be a baby, because america babies the children, and allows them to question and wonder what COULD be, and basically kill themselves in the endless process of indecision instead of saying, look. buck up. and decide for gods sakes. well, this englishman, who had a very funny name (bas aarts), said "look, i'm sorry ms. whoeveryouname is, but you will have to inform me of your decision within the hour, so please do so. thank you." i gave him the deer in headlights look that would have worked on any american professor, i seeked advice, but he just looked at me and said "one hour." and i paced, and smoked ten cigarettes, and asked about four poor strangers who happened to be wandering through the department what they thought i should do. i had about a 3 and a half to 2 vote to go for half-half. and then i thought, what the fucking hell is wrong with me, it does not fucking matter what decision you make you are just wasting precisous moments of this day. and then i looked back and i thought about all the time i had wasted not being able to make decisions, and i calculated that approximated that about one year of my life had been wasted by indecision. i regretted this fact, and then remembered that it was not as bad as the 15 years i was skimming off my life by smoking my cancer canes. so, i triumphantly made my decision (i am taking shakespeare, modern lit, european film, and postmodern--which has a seminar about KITSCH, amazing) and then of course, continued to commit suicide avec mes gauloises.

and now, i must go to a bar with some medical students. this is very strange. but perhaps the experience will make for a more interesting blog than the one i have just posted.

une si long post

i believe the time has come to officially start this godforsaken blog. i tried to think about this blog logically, but then i remembered that i am incapable of thinking (or rather, writing) logically, and so this will inevitably be long rambling nonsense. but really, i am just apologizing for myself, which is nothing new. and that is stupid. so here goes, sans apologetics.

i arrived in london yesterday, and i had the same misgivings about the city from the start. i guess it all did not start to well because of the plane ride. sadly i was seated next to a talker---a talker with an annoying lisp. she was a junior at drew or something, studying abroad in scotland, parents were elementary schoolteachers, she played soccer hard core. i learned all of this within about five minutes. obviously i only got the chance to say "and my name is kate" before she launched into the story of her life, and the story of her extended family's lives. and she was offended when i attempting isolation via ipod/nyquil, and the fucking guilt got to me--well that and her continuing LOUD banter. whenever i did open my mouth, she seemed to top me with everything, from silly to sappy stories. my favorite was when the question of significant others came up, and i said how hard it was for me to leave behind the glory of fall semester. before i could utter steve's name, in a chipper voice she jumps in "well, my boyfriend is under water in a sumbarine right now. he has been in the navy since 2000, when we started dating. he works with nuclear reactors. my kids will have cancer. also, my grandfather will probably die while i'm away. so i wont see him again." then she smiles. and then i nod and smile, because from there on out, i was not in the mood to fake suprise or pity. mostly because about five minutes later she told me about her gpa and the exact way in which she got two b's in college.

luckily i was free of her at heathrow, and she probably thought we were great friends. but really, i don't think my fake smile is that good. truthfully that is what i am most worried about here, the fake smile. i really just don't have it down, and i can't tell if that is a good thing or not. because it would be great if people got the hint, but it would also be bad to be stuck drinking in a bar with my one lone cynical friend, whoever they may be. well, not that bad. but luckily, i have met some nice people, and the smiles have been real a good deal of the time. last night was tough, when we had all of that horrible orientation business, and there i was in a room of fake smilers, sitting in a corner looking haggard, unslept, filthy, smelling like plane and absolutely miserable. i realized in my half dazed state that i would have no friends because i looked like the sullen bitch who did not want to talk to anyone, but then i started wondering exactly how bad that would be. as i started looking to a bright future of solidarity, some lovely souls saw me in my isolation and forced me to be social. after a dinner of some very awkward comments (they seemed to think i was a psycho freak when i comically informed them that my friend iggy had (probably falsely) warned me that most baby british boys did not have anything resembling a bris), i felt a little queasy, like i had fucked my chances by sitting there and being glum and kate-ishly awkward. a bumbling mess i was. but then again i also thought, maybe i just made all these people very sad because they realised that those "hot metrosexual guys, omg" were dirty uncircumcised bastards.

so what would such a girl do? why buy a pack of gauloises, of course! bad kate has taken to the cancer cane again---it is as though the warnings in bold letters call me to the cigarettes rather than convincing me that my lungs will turn black, leaving me to die young and wrinkly. but none of that. they taste too good for me to bid farewell just yet. indeed, i need them because i feel like i walk everywhere, and somehow a cigarette feels like a very fitting companion when you are frustrated with new surroundings.

what i do like about this dreary city is the walking involved. i clearly will be taking back those words in about a week after my underslept eyes see the same buildings on the same streets on my 20 minute walk to class each early morning. but truly. i know, i know you walk in new york, but not really. you walk in a basic little grid, and as iggy once said to me in rome, there is no hope for suprise around any winding corners or roads. now london is not rome, and certainly not paris, (poor london got too bombed during the war and sadly did not choose the most...er...charming architects) but i love the tiny streets and the confusion of navigating your way around. perhaps thats just because i am a stranger at the moment---but i really love these first days when i have to really get to know the city. of course some of us are noteworthy navigators of the world/new york state, but for a discombulated baby kate used to simple uptown/downtown and numbered streets, the endlessly changing names and twisting roads is a welcome challenge. sadly, it may become a challenge that does not include the underground (at, ahem, 3 pounds per ride). so, hopefully i will have shitty lungs and great legs by the end of my time here.

luckily my flat mates seem very nice, two french girls and one austrian (or dutch, i got confused as to whether she was telling me her name or where she was from...i think her name is astrid but i thought she was saying austria...), but sadly the bathrooms/kitchens are sort of horrendous. a shower should be a temple of cleanliness, not a hole in the wall that looks more fit for breeding rodents. or for pigpen. he would this shower he would. i thought hartley was bad. i was wrong.

i saw match point tonight once again. the londoners laughed less, possibly because everyone is snooty about their hometown...ha, first time that happens to woody in any city because no new yorker would ever be snooty about annie hall's manhattan for fuck's sake (or manhattan's manhattan for that matter). but it was great seeing in a second time, i was a nervous wreck again--i think i was frightening the newly made friends who were sitting on either side of me. ha, also they had a preview for cache, and it was completely marketed as this absolutely terrifying action packed thriller, with a huge montage at the end only of the little kid with all the blood dripping from his mouth etc. but i guess that is what draws the crowds to such a perfect film. ah, and the theater is wonderful too...it is called "renoir" and it is playing fanny and alexander right now...and it is five minutes away from where i live. it may not be paris, but tis just fine.

anyway, i hate to turn away from this silly post, back to the extremely poorly lit, cold, and shelveless (i am living out of my suitcase) room in which i am living. it seems this post is mostly for me, since i am sure no one cares about these simple day to day activities, and no one is probably reading this anyhow. but you see, here i go with the same old schick. dear old self-deprecation...but we all know the truth behind that one.