New York excursus 2

Dream 2: 
When I finally come to New York it is not at all like I have imagined it. It is just like Stockholm but somewhat bigger and with more limited options in terms of small shops.
    I am desperately looking for a Monica Zetterlund record (Swedish jazz singer), and when I finally get to the jazz section it turns out it is sorted according to composers and not performers, so maybe I could find some of her Bill Evans recordings but not anything by internationally obscure Swedish composers. Instead I look at dvds and find that there are plenty of more or less new science fiction films about alien fleets arriving in New York with allegedly diplomatic missions and ambiguous implications. All these small planes accompanying the big spaceships among the clouds over New York. That is more like a real imaginary New York.
    But I am hungry and have little money, I have indeed bought a hotdog but I didn't get any bread with it. Eventually I find a free table, just abandoned by some family who have not eaten much of their servings, so there are plenty of sausages and fries and things around, and I am thinking whether I should eat it all or not. I pour out a substantial slab of Dijon mustard on the table (I seem to be carrying Dijon with me at all times) and realise that there is still no bread.
    But I am leaving town soon, for a week-long trip a bit to the south, some localities in New Jersey I need to visit and then Philadelphia. I will have to be back in a week because I remember I have been booked for a poetry reading at an obscure New York venue at that time. And when I am packing my stuff, I suddenly remember Paul M (of surrealist nyc). I need to see him when I am in New York! Why had I forgotten? And there is no time to contact him now. Might he possibly be informed enough about what's going on on the New York poetry scene that he will see my name even though the venue is obscure and might just turn up?

Postscript:Then when I actually went to a Swedish second-hand recordshop and bought me a Zetterlund cd, it had a version of Take Five with Swedish lyrics, as "I New York"(In New York). I wouldn't really call this a coincidence, I probably listened to it as a kid and had just forgotten all about it... But then, what is a coincidence concerning New York at all? A city that has marketed itself as the cultural and economical world capital for many decades will show up everywhere. It is more a matter of seeing the layers of the city, and look for only the particular new york which is the "surrealist NYC".

Dream 3:
And this morning, I was back in New York, but couldn't find my way to a hotel. I was taking leave of my parents who were in one hotel, but as I was finishing their dishes and wanted to throw away all the tomatoes and badger hairs (from brushes) that were piled up in the sink, they said that it's only certified newyorkers who get access to a compost, just like in the case of phonebooks and libraries, only for certified newyorkers. I thought I might not need phonebooks and libraries to get around, as one of my surrealist "superpowers" were that I often find books and maps in the street, extract the information I need and then leave it for someone else to discover (utilising the particular method called "the floating library" by our friends the Kalvarium group in Malmö). But even if I do find some books in the New York street here, I still have no idea where I am, and I get completely lost when trying to move in a circle and get back to my parents' hotel. In fact I end up in what looks like an old hospital garden and the path ends blindly at a stone wall. I look over it, on the other side there is one pair of turkey vultures and one couple of humans making out, with a metro bridge and far away the sea as a backdrop.


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