Saturday, October 19, 2019

Ride Through the Woods





I tried to head to bed early.  I had my standing call at 2:00PM China time to rise and shine for.  I wrote my colleague who miraculously reminded me that I’d missed the memo:  this week’s call’s been cancelled.  Oddly, I still rose just before 2:00AM, and pinged one or two people to confirm.  It’s confirmed. 

I ride left or I ride right.  Yesterday had been a southernly ride down to Phillies Bridge Road.  That’s the point I usually mark as sufficiently far to justify a turn around. Today I rode up the other way to the Walkill River crossing by Route 7.  The ride through the woods as one approaches the old iron bridge are particularly beautiful.  There is one big tree I stop and look at every time.  I think it’s an oak.  It must be at least three hundred years old, this remarkable pre-Revolutionary War tree. 



I had Brahms “Sonatas for Violins” on, playing out of my phone in the pocket of my wool vest from Gilgit.  I cannot listen to him without thinking of a quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein: “Even in Brahms I can begin to hear the noise of machinery.”  Like so many things Wittgenstein wrote I don’t claim to understand the suggestion as he might and yet it sticks and can’t but place Brahms in some imaginary, fragile place between the romantic era and the Gatling gun, the shop factory. 



“What do you want for dinner?”  “Korean.”  Did I need to ask?  We have tried one Korean restaurant that is a thirty mile drive to the west in Pine Bush.  Tonight I suggest I pick her up and we head to Newburgh to try “Seoul Kitchen.”  And I met her and we punched in the address to Waze.  It directed us along, all the way to Beacon.  There is no Seoul Kitchen in Beacon.  Don’t let it happen to you!  So we carried on to Liberty Street in Newburgh.  A polite young hipster took our order.  The older Korean woman behind the counter came and explained that she could provide soy sauce for her kimchi dumplings, but it wasn’t necessary.  And we were thrilled.  The food was splendid.  I’d come here again. 



Friday 10/18/19


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