OFF THE LIMOUSINE 20
... NJ/NYC ... KLIKE ...
DAY3
On that day, afternoon, the World Cup Final was taking place: a soccer match between Chelsea London and Paris Saint-Germain (3:0, goals: Cole Palmer ’22, ’30, Joao Pedro ’43) and not only streets were empty. The same coast from yesterday was almost completely deserted. So… you could feel the difference between a picnic day, where everyone has fun separately, celebrating and feasting but alienating each other group as much as possible, and a day where only a few individuals move along the same paths or spaces. In fact to the so-called STRANGER Individuals pay more attention to each other, as if they were guessing or surmising that perhaps, in this certain decision’s natural selection, we are connected by something more. Does this fact make a big difference to a STRANGER, or can it be emotionally stronger than the credited ‘cursed’ ethnic / national identification, i.e.
It turned out that there were a few people at the hotel to talk together: Sunlee, a 60-year-old immigrant from India, an IT specialist in the US for 30 years; Willem, a sports psychologist from Austria on a road trip across the US; Ana and Maire, Brazilian women working at the hotel arranged through the Workpack platform. All middle-aged, with a different history of hardship. We discussed various topics in the evenings. For example, Willem told about how difficult and specific is the approach of a coach/psychologist to the child’s father in training. How psychologically wise, clever, and provocative at the same time, both in relation to the child and the father. In the case of a child, if he notices paternal deficiencies that generally affect training / performance in the discipline, so as not to damage the relationship between the two, and on the other hand, to the father, to explain/force him to change his behavior, without replacing the father/figure for one or causing unnecessary toxic / narcissistic jealousy about authority or his own child for the other. Willem took his first separate vacation as a married man and did a lot of sightseeing and took photos with his phone of everything that interested him, which he showed with undisguised satisfaction in the evenings. From which we all obviously gained information.
Maire ran an online English school for Brazil students and claimed that the standard of English teaching there was terrible at the very least. She stubbornly tried to obtain some kind of guarantee/diploma/certificate from an American university after completing this online teaching course in order to get a professional internship here, but she was constantly unsuccessful. She believed in a combined theory of the 4 Heavens woven from various religions. Ana with a physique made for dancing samba didn’t treat reading books as useful thing, either AI – “brain lost.” She was divorced after a 9-month marriage to Adam, a Polish soldier serving in the Canada, whom she saw only once a month, including the first whole real one. She separated because her husband drank. Sunlee, a PSG fan, came to the game. Divorced twice, he prided himself on his online dating expertise. He tried and is still trying unsuccessfully to bring his current wife to the US. He stopped working in the States because he somehow lost his motivation. He talked about how he had watched the decline of this country for 30 years, which, in his opinion, will never recover. After the match, he gave me his scarf as a gift.
DAY4
Sunlee has a specific brain for coding. He also has a hobby of professionally designing license plates for cars. You approach him as if he were a gypsy fortune teller of sorts, telling him what you consider most important in your life or/and the life of your car, and Sunlee, using various alphabets of letters and numbers, their specific markings / ‘thinking,’ put together this puzzle / mystery / recipe or some kind of fortune telling. As if he were doing you and your car a favor for the future / or simply giving it a NEW lease / NAME on Life. What to say… completely / significantly ~ extraordinary.
SOUTH NJ
Southern New Jersey. Over the course of several days, I heard a few times that this was the neighborhood to which black people from Brooklyn had emigrated, in quotation marks, “under duress.” Well, I’ve heard also: “That’s why there’s so much work for dog walkers in Brooklyn, because gay people don’t have children.”
I tried to enter the church, but the guard/religious goods salesman said “No.” I asked how this was consistent with the normal treatment of a Christian, whether he could be denied access to a Christian temple, after all. I heard one word again: “No,” and saw an outstretched hand as a sign to “Stop.” I asked if their God was different from the one I know. And again, the word with the hand: “No.” No means no.
NYC
I have spent time in many different seasons in the desert without any problems, but this was the first time in my life that had happened to me this. As I crossed Manhattan heading north, I began to see flashes of light in my eyes. It was as if the sun was trying to tell me that either the darkness here was too hidden/strong, or that this was/is/will be a hidden desert, or both. The clouds of steam rising from the surface did nothing to dispel these interpretations. UberWord.
