Window Watchers

Where is she going? I wondered, staring out the window of my living room as I ate my breakfast this morning. I don't usually have time to ponder the comings and goings of my neighbors in the mornings, but Thursdays are the exception, as I don't have class until the afternoon. So, I make myself some eggs over easy with a toasted English muffin, sip my hazelnut coffee, and stare out of our windows.

Our apartment complex isn't the most action-packed scene, but I've gotten to know the cadence of our little community over the past couple of months. The various dog-walkers are the most common players on our grassy stage--and, how exciting when more than one dog enters a scene, barking, sniffing, pulling along their masters with the vigor of a squirrel-chase!

Children and their parents are another common scene. When the weather was warmer, there were two little girls who would drag out an elaborate collection of bubble-blowing devices, running across our lawn to generate as many bubbles as possible, then giggling madly as they proceeded to destroy their creations. Some of the bubbles survived the massacre, floating serenely to the height of my third-story vantage point.

I learned that plumes of smoke billowing in front of my windows were not to be a cause of alarm, but rather indicated that the man with the little Weber barbecue pit was out again. During the warmer weather, he was out there at least twice a week! I contemplated sneaking out there to roast marshmallows when he went inside to eat his steaks, but I was never so bold.


It is more difficult to peek into the windows of our neighboring buildings, as most people pull down their blinds, to my dismay. When the blinds are up at night, I can mostly make out the ever-changing illumination of television sets. My apartment doesn't have a television--perhaps one of the reasons that I stare out of the window.

In the dorms last year, my view was of I-395, which sounds boring, but actually offered some interesting scenes. Most memorable was the time that I was awakened at 2 a.m. to the sound of a car crash. It appeared that the two cars knew each other, as the people from one car all quickly emptied the contents of their trunk and piled into the other, speeding off, abandoning not only the car that had been rendered immobile, but also one of the passengers! He ran after the car for a little while, then gave up, instead being forced to deal with the police, who showed up a few minute later. Shady, indeed.

The most common view was that of backed-up traffic jams in the evenings, but there were other, more curious sights as well. There was the man who screamed about salvation into his bullhorn. When the Barnum & Bailey circus was in town, I watched elephants parade on 3rd Street after a show. During the G-20 summit, I saw many motorcades. Being on the 8th floor, I had a great view of many storms. Perhaps my favorite view was the day of the Inauguration, when they shut down the freeway for pedestrian traffic, which was a very bizarre sight to behold:


This post was prompted by an article in today's New York Times, Window Watchers in a City of Strangers. I agree with the premise of the article, that, in staring out of my window, I feel more connected to my community. What do you think? Are you a window watcher? What have you witnessed?

Keen in Study

Oh, goodness, final exams are in six weeks. As always, the semester has flown by with remarkable speed. I feel pretty good about this semester, academically. I'm up-to-date on all of my reading, and I understand the topics that we've covered. I'm a bit nervous about my Transnational Law seminar paper, though, because our first draft is due in two weeks and I still have a lot more research to do, let alone writing 6,000 words. All in due time, I suppose.

The summer job hunt has been fairly productive the past few days. I attended the Equal Justice Works career fair on Saturday, and conducted a great screening interview with Bay Area Legal Aid. This afternoon, I had a second interview with the National Housing Law Project, which went well. I need to keep applying, though... It is so easy to ignore applications in light of all of the other work that I have to do, but the economy has made the 2L job hunt very competitive for all of us, so I must stay on top of things. Anyone want some accountability in their job search? We could call each other to check in on our progress each week. Just a thought.

Earlier in the month, I raised the question of how to establish a more consistent prayer life. Chris suggested that I pray a novena. I've never prayed one before, but my basic understanding is that you devote yourself to daily prayers for nine consecutive days, modeled after the disciples' prayer between the Ascension and Pentecost. Well, Chris has piqued my interest, so I'm going to try one starting tomorrow. There are tons of novenas out there, but I immediately felt called to focus on St. Thomas More, the patron saint of lawyers, because his biography always encourages me, especially during challenging points in my legal education. Indeed, the name of my blog is taken from a prayer written by More, which you can read in the right-hand column of my blog. A quick Google search yielded this novena, which resonated with me as I read it over. So, please keep me in your prayers over the next nine days, and I'll let you know how the novena goes!

Wow

Today at Mass, there was a little girl, maybe 3 years old. She was oblivious to the custom of silence observed by everyone else during the Liturgy of the Word, chattering rather audibly to the chagrin of her mother during the readings. Although I found her to be a bit distracting while I was lectoring, I must admit that I enjoyed watching her attempt to sing the Gloria. She studied her hymnbook with aplomb and--although it was evident that she could not read--sang nonsense words with a gusto that praised God in her own little way.

The best part, however, came during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Fr. Alexei said the words of institution: "Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you." He then elevated the host for us all to see, at which point the little girl remarked in a stage whisper, "Wow!" As I inclined my head to bow, I caught the eyes of some of my peers, and we all shared a smile at the sincere wonderment that had been expressed upon observing transubstantiation. "Amen," I thought to myself, my mind jumping to Luke 18:

People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them, and when the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. Jesus, however, called the children to himself and said, "Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it."

Ah, that we all might cultivate such childlike wonder.

NYC, Part IV

Ooh, David posted photos from the trip! Here are a few of my favorites, to supplement my posts...

In front of the Guggenheim. It was windy.

In the lobby of the Guggenheim.

We found bears at the Met! Go Bears!

The obligatory Wall Street bull photo.

A view of the city from the Staten Island ferry.

NYC, Part III

Sunday morning, David and I made crepes with Nutella and strawberries. I used to make crepes a lot in high school, so I was delighted when David made the suggestion. Mm, Nutella.

We had intended to go to Mass at St. Paul's, the Paulist church in NYC, but the subway failed us, so we ended up going to a service at St. Patrick's. During the collection, David and Daniel were chosen to be ushers, which was rather bemusing.

David and I then went to the MoMA. I was really excited about the MoMA, because I love modern art, but I was not terribly impressed by the first few floors, which featured the contemporary and special exhibits. Part of my displeasure resulted from the decision of the installers to cluster a variety of works by different artists on each wall, creating a collage effect that made it all but impossible to view any one piece independently. It was too distracting. The fifth floor was the best, as it had paintings and sculptures from the 1880s to 1940s. So much good stuff: Picasso, Miro, Matisse, Mondrian, Rothko, Cezanne, Chagall, Dali, Magritte, etc. Oh, and van Gogh's Starry Night is there, which I didn't realize. I was nearly dumbfounded when I saw it, since I wasn't expecting to see it there. It was much smaller than I would have anticipated.

After MoMA, David and I got some dinner, and then he walked me to my bus stop. We said our good-byes, and I took a wonderful nap on the ride home. The weekend was exhausting! It was a lot of walking for someone with a cold, and pretending not to be sick is not the most effective way to heal oneself. I'll probably pay for it this week, but the trip was well worth it. It was a legitimate miniature vacation. There is something refreshing about a change of location, even for a little while. Hm, perhaps I'll have to do some more exploration of this coast.

NYC, Part II

David and I began Saturday morning with some delicious blueberry pancakes and coffee. We then set off for a day of museums! To get to the proverbial Museum Mile, we walked through Central Park. The park reminded me very strongly of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and made me feel a bit nostalgic for California. It's too bad that DC doesn't have something akin to Central Park. The National Mall is just a bunch of scraggly grass... Though, I guess the monuments make up for it.

Our first museum of the day was the Museum of the City of New York. As with other museums, I was duly tagged. Honestly, the museum wasn't breathtaking. However, the Legacy exhibition afforded me a different perspective of the city, as it was a photographer's examination of the wild side of the city--that is, its parks. I don't think of greenery when I picture NYC, but it really is more than skyscrapers.

My absolute favorite museum that we visited was the Guggenheim. Wow! First off, I loved the design of the building. One of my biggest pet peeves about museums is when their floor plan doesn't clearly lead you through the exhibits. I hate worrying about missing something. Well, no such issue with the Guggenheim, which is one big upward spiral! It was a bit tiresome to shuffle up a ramp for seven stories, though; by the end, I really wanted to be on level ground. The perpetual balcony created some great people-watching opportunities, as well.

The current exhibit at the Guggenheim features the life works of Vasily Kandinsky, one of the first modern abstract painters. He is fantastic. His use of color was mesmerizing. He had a fascination with the parallels between painting and music, a synesthetic inquiry which resonated with me as a color-graphemic synesthete (I see numbers as having very specific, consistent color associations). For example, Kandinsky apparently associated bright yellow with the blast of a trumpet. As students, we got the audio tour for free, which really enhanced my understanding of his works. The exhibit was set up chronologically for the most part, which allowed us to see the progression of Kandinsky's works, not only through his own biographical story, but also through different periods in history--especially, the world wars. Seriously, check out the Guggenheim's online exhibition.

After a break for lunch, we tackled the Met. Oh, my gosh, the Met is huge. We spent several hours there, seeing everything from African masks to Roman statues to Picasso paintings. It reminded me of the Louvre--the attempt to see everything was futile, but I felt a drive to attempt to see as much as physically possible, to the detriment of my comprehension of what I saw. The Met is a good museum for locals with a membership, I would imagine, but it seems to be a nearly hopeless endeavor for visitors with a limited amount of time.

We gave ourselves a brief reprieve at Starbucks, where we met up with David's brother, Daniel. We were debating between walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and taking the ferry to Staten Island, and the ferry won out. I had a delicious pumpkin spice latte, my first of the autumn season. It was in the 40s and raining the entire weekend, which was not ideal weather for traipsing across the city, to say the least. However, there is something refreshing about this type of weather, and it added something to the tone of the city, with everyone bustling about in their winter coats.

Before we boarded the ferry, we walked down Wall Street, where we saw the New York Stock Exchange, Federal Hall (the first capitol, where George Washington was sworn in), and the Wall Street Bull. It was a little surreal, to be honest. Seeing the NYSE was kind of like seeing the Capitol for the first time--one of those, "Wow, really important stuff happens here" moments.

The Staten Island Ferry was great. We took it round trip without doing anything on Staten Island. Our main purpose was to catch some great sights of the city at night on the water. It was great to see the Statue of Liberty, and we all made jokes on the return trip as though we were immigrants coming to America for the first time. But, seriously, it made me stop and think about the experience of my Polish relatives as they came over. Wow. Here's a video panorama of our view from the stern of the ferry on the trip to Staten Island:

NYC, Part I

I took a bus to New York City Friday morning to visit David at Columbia. I was very excited about the trip, not only because I hadn't seen David in over a year, but also because I'd only been to NYC once before. That trip was centered around visiting law schools, and allowed for only a whirlwind look at the city.

I've been meaning to take advantage of my proximity to other East Coast cities. Indeed, taking a Chinatown bus to NYC has been on my DC to-do list since last year! The bus ride was pleasant, speedy, and uneventful. For those of you who watch Conan O'Brien: We passed through Newark, and I think that Conan's critiques are well-founded.

My bus let me off near Madison Square Gardens. David met me there, and we went for a walk, checking out Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. At St. Patrick's, we accidentally attended Mass... It was just starting as we arrived! We later realized that it seems that they do Mass continually, because another Mass started up right after ours ended. I enjoyed the atmosphere of the church, because there were a lot of people there to visit, which made the place feel like a community in a way that I haven't seen other cathedrals accomplish. Then again, a guard searched my bag at the entrance, which was a bit of a detraction from that feeling.

It was great to walk through the city. David has a very good grasp of the important buildings throughout the city, and gave me an informal tour as we explored. The tone is very different from DC because the buildings are so much taller; in DC, nothing is allowed to be taller than the Capitol (roughly 12 stories). The pedestrian traffic is more... Intense? Bustling? I can't quite put my finger on it, but there seems to be a sense that everyone has somewhere important to be, and they're nearly late. Basically, it is a city full of rabbits from Alice in Wonderland.

David and I took the subway to get to Columbia. It's not as nice as the Metro, because it is dingy, and seems to have quite a learning curve. I just blindly followed David as to where to go. I'm glad that my daily Metro commute isn't like the subway here.

Columbia has a nice campus. They have a statue of Alma Mater, and she has a little owl hiding in the folds of her robes! I am perpetually surprised by how small some university campuses can be, but I suppose that Berkeley's gigantic campus is the exception, not the rule. The law school building is very nice. They have a lot more random study spots with cushy chairs scattered throughout the building than we do at Georgetown. Their lecture halls are prettier, too. We have a better cafeteria, though, and a nicer campus overall, as our three buildings have grassy quads between them. My California sensibilities still prefer plant life to a formally urban landscape.

David and his brother Daniel have a pretty cool apartment in the grad student housing. They painted some of the walls burgundy and taupe, and have lovely furnishings to complement the color scheme. They're on the first floor, though, which I wouldn't like, because of street noise and such. The apartment layout is a bit odd... Very closed. We were discussing it, and determined that a modern apartment would never be designed like this, as people have such a preference for open spaces.

Friday afternoon, we visited the Studio Museum in Harlem. It is located across the street from the iconic Apollo Theater. The Studio Museum features a contemporary collection of works by black artists. I really liked their Hurvin Anderson installation, which examined the varied use of the space of a barbershop. This was the first museum that we visited, and it taught me a couple of things. First, museums in NYC, unlike museums in DC, are not free. And, second, museums like to give you little buttons or tags to wear, as though you are an animal that they are studying and then releasing into the wild to continue to track. Very strange.

We attempted to visit Grant's Tomb, but it was closed. I was bummed--now I'll never know who is buried there! Instead, we strolled about the city for a little while, then reconvened at the apartment before attending vespers at the Church of Notre Dame. The church had a beautiful grotto (check out this virtual tour). We finished our evening with dinner at a diner, and then watched A Beautiful Mind back at the apartment.