Yesterday, I told y’all about how the buildings in the Big Apple are BIG, how you have to bend over backwards and do a headstand to look up at them, and how the magnitude of it all was enough to make your head spin…wrapping up the whole thing with a very cute “No place like home” conclusion.

Today, I’m going to share with you another head-messing moment I found in New York City.

Anybody been to the Grand Hyatt recently? If you have, you’ll know what I’m talking about, so don’t spoil it for everyone else and save your comments for the end of the lecture. If you haven’t, let me explain—When you walk into the hotel from East 42nd, you will find yourself staring up at what looks very much like a megalithic artifact from a Sci-Fi film. And it looks like this.

Okay, so do you see it? Pretty creepy, huh? Not what you were expecting, huh? If I may, I have to say, first of all, an enormous marble head staring at you as you walk into a hotel it pretty scary just like it lies. Like was it supposed to be a welcome? The statue was simply a woman’s head carved forever into a block of stone. Not exactly bearing the mystery of the Mona Lisa, or the agony of The Scream, or the anything of anything. It’s kind of plain and straight-forward.

“Ok, JP, so…what’s so head-spinning about this? I’ve seen hundreds of giant stone heads.”

First off, let me say, if you’ve seen hundreds of these, I’d really like to know where you’re hanging out. Wait, no—on second though, I don’t.

The real head-twisting part is that those pictures you see above, I edited. Yes, I fixed the proportions. In reality, it looked like this.

So, yeah, she’s pretty creepy! I have no idea whose idea it was to stretch her poor head out vertically to 200%. But standing there, in 3D, right there in front of the spooky stone stare, it literally threw my eyes out of whack. My brain was trying to distort the rest of the room into proportion, trying to make this stretched out head work, trying to make some sense of it all.

My poor, poor mind.

As I said yesterday, New York City is BIG. Fortunately, since the whole city is basically a huge grid, it’s not easy to get lost. Well, I mean unless you are me, in which case you’ll wander for a while trying to find Fifth Avenue from 42nd Street. (It was right there the whole time! Should’ve taken a right. I knew I should take a right, why didn’t I take a right?…)

THERE'S Fifth Avenue!

One of the beautiful things about New York City is all the old buildings. Sorry but I really didn’t dig the new ones. They were basically on-end glass shoeboxes. My host said that architects sometimes didn’t have much respect for old beauty and would tear down old buildings to put up a new one. Sure, the glass is shiny, but it really doesn’t compare to some of the older stuff.

Out with the old…

In with the new! EEEWWW!!!

I think it’s a shame how people trade in little details for BIGness. And not just in architecture either.

New York City is so big it will literally make your head spin. Something about the city makes your mind say, “This really shouldn’t make sense. It shouldn’t. Why are you seeing this, JP? Where on Earth are you?! Go back to Smalltown!!!”

But now I am back in Smalltown, where I can see the same faces every day, where the streets actually have names, where my library is easily navigable within a day. Smalltown, where I don’t have to cross my eyes to look up at the buildings, where I don’t have to squint to see the end of the road.

P.S. One of my commentors wondered if I would be posting a picture of my “So-far-anonymous mug.” Well, you all know how apprehensive I am about posting my picture online. But, since someone asked for it, and since I’m becoming more comfortable with the internet, here it is—a picture of my mug from New York City.

The conference ended with my head in a fog. It was good information, it really was—but there was SOOO much of it! My brain felt five times heavier.

Stepping outside onto East 42nd Street, the world around me was equally as overwhelming. In my home town, Main Street is pretty much what it says it is: A street. East 42nd Street? Not so much. It’s more like East 42nd City. As I explored the city a bit, I got the sense that I had lost between my last trip and this one: New York City is BIG. And I don’t mean Boston big, or even Los Angeles big—I mean New York Big, which doesn’t even need a comparison, that’s how big it is.

First stop: The New York Public Library! (This one’s for you, T.S.!)

Got this picture from The Wikipedia…so that would explain the green tree. I mean, we've had a weak winter year but not THAT weak!!!

Okay, so THIS picture was taken on my trip. Hence the dead, scraggly twigs of January.

Walking into the library, you get the sense that this is not just a library. No, it’s more than that…It’s a book castle. Let me just say, that if there was ever a nuclear war, or tidal wave, or some other disaster, this building would be one of my first choices for safety. Most of it looks to be solid marble, and you walk away with that nagging thought, “Why don’t they build buildings like this anymore?!?!?!”

Inside the library was even more incredible. To keep it simple, the entry way was impressive…

Ascending one of the solid stairways led you into the various reading rooms, of which the long Rose Main Reading Room was the most smallifying (What does smallifying mean? Well, stand in the middle of said reading room and tell me how YOU feel!!!). The ceiling looked like the painted Sistine Chapel, and the room must have been like a quarter of a mile long. And I’m not exaggerating.

Photo by David Iliff. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

I could only spend about an hour and a half in the Library, then I had to go and join my host. Quite honestly, if it were not for my the fact that I was only in New York for three days, I could’ve spent an entire morning, possibly an entire day inside the library, just looking around.

I would’ve loved to wander around all day and sketch, write, photograph all the little details everywhere. You could tell they put a lot of thought into everything about the library.

So if you ever have a morning to burn in New York City, I highly recommend stopping into the public library. You won’t regret it—Unless of course, you have vertigo and can’t stand looking at awesomely enormous things, or you have an aversion to too much marble. Or maybe you are allergic to books—in which case, avoid the library completely because there are more than 50,000,000 items in the NYPL system.

One of the Library Lions.

A doorman hailing a cab from the Grand Hyatt.

So, this small-town bumpkin hit the Big City last month, for the SCBWI 13th International Conference at the end of January. Going to a Writers’ Conference has been something I’ve had in the back of my mind for months. It’s like a writer milestone…that one thing that every writer has to do at some point in his/her life.

The event, hosted by the hilarious Lin Oliver, took place at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan. It ran through a Saturday and a Sunday, and by the time it was over, my head was soaked in good information about publishing and writing. All in all, it was inspiring. Met some writers from my district, saw some published authors (Brett Helquist, Cassandra Clare, Jane Yolen, Chris Crutcher, Peter Brown…), and even saw Henry Winkler. Go figure.

The last keynote I found extraordinarily fascinating and helpful. It was by Kathryn Erskine, and it was about FOCUS—Heh heh, we could all use a little more of that!  Read about it here and get writing!!! (After you finish reading this blog post, of course!…)

All the people!!!

My thanks to SCBWI for putting together such a nice conference!

This week I’m planning on putting up some more bits of my trip. So look forward to pictures.

Okay, NOW get writing!!!

The secret language of the cashiers!

For these second time in a day, I found myself at the same grocery store, with the same employee at the same register. Usually this happens at Wal-Mart if anywhere, but today was somewhere else and I was feeling like having a bit of fun with the cashier.

I tried out this line: “I feel like I live here.”

The cashier laughed, and said, “Buchu kharat bakh!”

I smiled and laughed along, having no idea what on earth she was talking about. Was that English? Sounded more like Arabic, or Babylonian, maybe Cuneiform or ancient Assyrian. Maybe if I recorded it and scrambled the syllables around, it would actually mean something.

But, still, I pretended to understand. Because, sometimes it’s just better if we fake it.

Later it dawned on me that she was saying, “Put your car out back,” in reply to my comment about living there. Ok. Now that makes a little more sense.

I am really not a fan of English. If languages had shapes, I would assign springs to Chinese, solid blocks to Russian, swirls to the Indian languages, and curves to French. When it came to English, I would say it comes in bulky corners and awkward loops.

Which is why, sometimes I agree with those people who think they would sound better in a different language.

In other news, sorry I’ve been so absent lately. I’ll be trying to put up more soon, as my work schedule is changing. But now, work is overwhelming, as well as school, and on top of that I’m trying to finish up a revision on a novel. Hence, blogging is nearer to the bottom of my list…

But it will be a nice day when I can finally come back on here with all of you people.

Until then, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, adios, and Buchu Kharat Bakh!