Clareified

“Why does the feeling of emptiness take up so much space?” - De La Vega

Karol invited me to come along with her on a walk of museum mile today. After confirming that I would not actually have to go inside any museums, I agreed and my friends, romans, countrymen. I found so much more than whiteypolooza — though I found that too — I found my guru, my mentor, instiller of my worldview. De La Vega.
OKay, I found him and then I lost him amid some racist homophobic fish, but that was much later.
I walked over to fifth avenue, Karol said she was going to meet me on 86th street, but, I got there and there was no sign of her; nor had she texted me. I called her to get an update on how exactly I had managed to make it to the appointed location from Brooklyn while she failed to get crosstown?
See? These are the timelss inexplicable impossibilities that set me on the path of needing a spiritual advisor in the first place.
I finally found her in the sea of white people, standing on the corner wearing her hand tailored jeans, a shirt and flip flops.
“Hello, Dawn”
“Why, hello, Karol.” The one said eyeing the other suspiciously.
“I have to say, I’m liking the look. Though that shirt is redder than I would like.”
“Really? I like the red, but not so much the shirt.”

(Karol calls this our one picture a year where we pretend to like each other, but later in the day when she thought I was about to step off the curb in front of a speeding truck, she urgently stuck her hand out to stop me and cried “Noooo, DAWN! A TRUCK!” So I suspect she likes me quite alot, even though I don’t think of her that way. Or any way at all. As she is horrible.)
Anyway, for those of you who don’t know. In th emiddle of Manhattan is an avenue called Fifth. The northern end of Fifth avenue is peppered with museums, like the MET and the Guggenheim and some other crap ones. We started to walk North when Karol said, “wait, should we go back and see the Met?”
“No. I am not going inside any musuems.”
“Well, I want to at least go inside the Jewish musuem. C’mon you like the Jews, show us your star.”
I pouted.
“Fine. But then we’re going to a black museum too…is there a black musuem…hmm…fine, we’re going to the Latino museum.” HA! Got her good.
But then she says “Oh, great! El Barrio was the other museum I wanted to see!”
Everything always works out for Karol.
We’re walking along and all these people are writing with chalk in the street.
“UGH,” I snorted, “my tax dollars are going to have to pay to clean this crap off the streets!”
Karol and the other hand, said “ooh, I want chalk!”
We eventually found some chalk and then we spent the next ten blocks of our walk thinking about what we’d write.
I was determinedly above it, until Karol squatted down and wrote
“I love New York More”

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I thought she was going to write “More than You” and so I was instinctively ready to write “No you don’t” — I had my chalk all ready and everything, but then she went in another direction and simply said “than ever.” Lame. She then dusted off her hands and announced that that was all she had to say and threw her chalk away.
Of course, my chalk writing fingers were already locked and loaded, so I had to write something.
So I did.
Got Chalk?
But I had tasted desecration of public property and I liked it! I just couldn’t stop.
I was soon writing rap song lyrics and pop song lyrics and
well, and this:

Hello my millions of new readers!
We finally made it to the Jewish museum and Karol spotted a guy wearing a Scottish soccer shirt.
“OOh, he’s wearing a Scottish soccer shirt!” she said already halfway across the road toward him. She stopped suddenly and returned to my “halfway-walking-in-the-opposite-direction” side and said “I guess I shouldn’t talk to people I don’t know, huh?”
“I can’t even imagine that is a thing you’d have to remind yourself of out loud. I don’t even want to talk to people I do know.”
Very different people we are, she and I.
She doesn’t say hello to the Scottish soccer shirt guy even though he is directly in front of us on the line to get into the museum. The place is packed. I don’t know why exactly but I am suddenly very nervous and uncomfortable. I start facebooking on my phone until I get yelled at by a guard. Karol is pretty much immediately bored and announces that we’re leaving. On the way out we see an exhibit devoted to African-American/Jewish relations.
“Hey! That’s us! That’s us!”
We hit the streets again and start making our way to the Latino museum.
This is where I begin to see sayings from De La Vega. The emptiness quote from above had piqued my interest and then I saw this quote:

“Better to get rid of someone with the truth, than keep them with a lie”
And that was it! De La Vega was my new religion. I eagerly looked for his sayings on the street: There was a scrambled message that said “the world doesn’t always make sense at a glance,” which made sense because all the words were written backwards.
And another with the picture of a man’s feet that said “this is what happened to my friend Jesus when he tried to walk on water.” Pronounce it Hey Zeus and you’ll laugh.
I skipped along happily until there was this picture of a Jay-Z fish, which had pronounced lips.
“What the hell?”
“Black people have big lips,” Karol shrugged.
“No we don’t!”
“It’s like Jews have big noses.”
I was quiet.
“Yeah, see? That one’s true and hate to break it to you, black people have big lips.”
I glared.
Then there was the picture of “Gay Fish” which I won’t even describe and I went back to being a Catholic again.
We had walked like twenty blocks and no museums were to be found. Had we missed it?
“Oh well, no Barrio for us,” Karol said.
“Oh, there will be Barrio and we will spend eight minutes there” (The same amount of time we had spent at the other museum.
“What is it with you and equality?” she yawned.
We finally found the Latino museum and went inside. Since we had started at the fourth floor in the Jewish museum, I told the elevator lady to take us to four.
All we found were classrooms and a vending machine.
“What zee hell, man? Why are we in a school?”
I dunno…maybe this is how we trick the latino kids into learning? Hide the schools in a museum. I was perplexed.

That’s my perplexed face.
We walked down a flight and that was also a school. So, we left.
“Well, you have four minutes…want to try to find the black museum?”
I laughed and shook my head no. I went to go get free cotton candy and when I came back Karol was no where to be found. On such occasions, I have taken to shouting out for her in the crowd.
“Ugly girl?! UGGLLYYY GIIRRRLLL!!! Where are you ugly girl???” This always results in dozens of people looking around at me, pretty much everyone BUT Karol.
I finally spotted her a few inches away.
“Dude, you had to have heard me calling you! Why didn’t you answer?”
“Dude, when you start saying “pretty girl! Where are you pretty girl? I will happily say “hi! hello! Here I am!”
She’s so vain. She probably thinks this post is about her.
I wrote some more in chalk. A phrase which means, the latino museum sucks.
She then took my chalk and wrote “Reagan ‘08.” I then took the chalk back and drew an arrow pointing at Reagan ‘08 and wrote “NOT.”
We then finished the walk back chanting
Reagan ‘08.
Not.
Reagan ‘08.
Not.
Reagan ‘08.
Not.
Really, not even in the top ten of our most memorable street theater though.
On our way back we spotted a sign that said “Race advisory” which we took as a warning that black people may be in the area.
We then spotted a chalking that said “there is no such thing as race,” which I assumed was written by a white person.
We saw another chalking that said “A man torn between two women, will lose them both.”
I raised my eyebrow and said “that is so not true.”
Karol then said “they forget to write ‘in the white community.’
Buuuurn. Who is the most racist person in the post? That’s right.
Whitey.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 12:27 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.