T.G.I. March 17th tomorrow

(Do you know that it took me ten years to figure out what those letters stood for? Us immigrants are at a definite disadvantage as far as these hidden little meanings are concerned.)

I am not Irish (who is shocked by this assertion?) and so the 17th has no Patty’s Day associations for me. Though I did live in Chicago for a number of years and that city went hog wild over the holiday. I mean, it really was a holiday, where nothing was required of you except to drink a lot and wear green. Preferably the donning of the attire would precede the drinking, but you never knew. This was a city that died it’s river green. You can’t expect great sanity from a city that (at least in the 70s) liked to purposefully dump green die into the already murky waters.

It’s not St. Patricks that I am heralding, it’s the arrival of Spring Break for me. After I teach my Thursday class, I hop on the plane and take my books, my camera and my restlessness over to New York for the week.

A student in my seminar today told me that she was going to Paris with her mom for Spring Break. She asked for tips and ideas and as I told her about my favorite hobby there of people watching, of children-going-to-school-holding-their-rushed-doting-parent’s-hand watching, of older-men-and-women-enjoying-a-late-night-dinner-watching, she said: “yeah… it sounds like New York.”

Maybe. Except there aren’t establishments that facilitate that in New York. [Write and tell me if you know of a café where I can alternate between staring into space and taking in the presence of others for hours on end. Because that’s even better than a day at a spa for me.]

Still, New York is New York and tomorrow night I’ll blog with the inevitable sound of sirens and car horns somewhere in the backdrop. No saffron banners to distract me this time. Only the city there with its New York-ish smells and rat clusters. I can deal with that.