Monday, March 31, 2008

All's quiet on the blog ...

... and I will use this uncharacteristically monastic pause in our verbosity to thank publicly the many friends who made the Cohen family trip to NYC so enjoyable: Karl, Alison, JKW, MKH, and Liza. Many sights were enjoyed. Much food was consumed. Embarrassing photos were snapped (a certain medievalist sitting in the Bug Carousel of the Bronx Zoo -- in a seat shaped like a brown ball, pushed along by an enormous dung beetle; Karl in a large turtle shell; an odd fellow with the ugly head of a doll belonging to his daughter peering out of a coat pocket, making him look like a demented marsupial). None of these images will -- alas! -- appear here at ITM, but if you use your imagination you can almost picture them yourself. Almost.

A family moment that will stay with us for a long time: clichéd as it was, we took a night ride through Central Park on horse-drawn carriage. Snuggled beneath a velvety blanket, watching shadows move through trees and listening to the clop of the horse, coming across those tableaux that seem made for maudlin films but are the inventions of a moment: a raccoon engaged in treetop ballet; two lovers sharing a single iPod headphone, dancing awkwardly to music heard only by them; a skating rink with solitary figure gliding; the yellow lights of distant windows. The carriage's driver, a taciturn young man from Poland, was so touched by the almost-four-year-old Cohen that he let her feed too many carrots to his horse. As we said our good-nights to him, the driver leaned down and gave Katherine a small kiss on her cheek. The dreariness of carting tourists along the same circuit through the same park all day and into the night had lifted, and for a moment all was right in the world.

4 comments:

Karl Steel said...

None of these images will -- alas! -- appear here at ITM,

You think so? here's one medievalist, and some lady, and a mysterious set of hands, en-turtled.

And how could anyone not love Lady K? I know all must make way for her turtle love, but we can at least be her attendants. For a K moment that will stay with me (which is not to say there aren't a host of equally ineradicable Cohen moments), I think of her precisely re-enacting the Writing Lesson! At each clipboard at the zoo, she would inscribe--what?--with a twig, playing some game (Fort! Da!) by which she participated in the powers that control/produce her...at day care. Had I not fallen for your kids so hard--they're a hoot!--I would have found the theoretical familiarity of Lady K quite a bit more eerie.

Karl Steel said...

Oh...pork butt.

Jeffrey Cohen said...

Pork butts: Karl loves 'em, the Cohen family loves talking about 'em. THank you, Karl, for devouring that big heaping plate of the things!

Jeffrey Cohen said...

Oh ... and I'm glad you saw some amusement in that clpboard fascination. It took me quite a while to figure out what was going on Lady K's head (those are her hands in the photo). Today, by the way, is her birthday: she is four. No fooling.