The Earth Room in The City and The Ghetto Menorah

S and F were in back in town and took A and I on a whirlwind winter gallery tour---this one being my favorite. A room full of earth. You have to be buzzed in and then go up to the second floor and get to peek in (but not touch)---the same person has been raking it since it opened in the 70's. There was something about the smell--murky and whole---the same effect as being outside and hiking. But here were were, huddled together in a Soho building and sharing memories of being outside. It's funny how much this one installation brought us all together, after not seeing each other in so long, we all spend the day walking around and looking at art, but we don't really talk until we're in a room full of earth. And perhaps this is the point of what an installation is all about. To bring people together. To think and reflect, to create a new sense of space, not just physical, but a plane of memory and imagination.

They also introduced us to a new bakery on Sullivan Street, which used to be called Sullivan Street bakery, but then the couple that owned it divorced and this is hers---I think it has the name of a flower now--he got the name and she has the recipes. I think that also happened to Little Red Hen/ Lady Bird (home of my favorite muffins and scones). 

A and I got to revisit the neighborhood of our first date and have an espresso and pastry with S and F before they did their own going back to favorite places. 

And all of this gets me nostalgic---though it could be this time of year, but thinking about all the rad dates (boating in the park/RAD date/classy bastard date) and the thoughtful gifts---notes at the bar, the eggling when I was blue, the Junior's cheesecake when I got poems published in Alimentum, I'm realizing what it's like to date someone who gets you in that little way to be gotten. Or maybe it's the beginning where everything we create is good. Or maybe it's about the creation of it. Of going in as partners. Of really trying to get each other.

Tonight, he put on his kippah (that he packed in his bag) before we said the blessings and he helped me construct the ghetto menorah. Shamas, totally his doing. But he makes what I do, better.