VIP at the BMC and Heidegger

I must have had like eight glasses of wine. But, I wasn’t driving so it was all good. I really didn’t even know who was going to take me home, since the new location for The Black Mangrove Collective is so close to my house that I could really walk back if it comes to that. Although, I would rather wait until I buy the pepper spray to walk so late in Wynwood. The truth is that nothing has ever happened to me and I walk more than the average Miamian does in his neighborhood. Except for the occasional story of a tourist getting robbed, or a car window getting smashed for a radio, Wynwood is not as bad as some ignorant people of the area put it.The actual Collective has not been yet open to the public and there will be an official opening, but some of us were invited to the secret VIP party, the first one in this location. Although, it still needs a lot of work, Pat has already a sweet place. High ceilings, some gigantic art work and an abandoned blue convertible in the back. Feb. 8 will be the first official event, so keep in touch.

The “Wine and Cheese Party,” they couldn’t find a more elitist intellectual cliché name, was in honor of Yaniv, a great friend and party soldier who I met through philosophy at FIU. He is gone to New York to intern in communications and we’ll drink for him on Saturday. “I thought it was New Yorkers who were coming to Miami,” I told him. Things are not too great there, nor here, I guess. But, at least here it is not freezing, we don’t have hundreds of Wall Street people on the streets looking for jobs and there are Cuban pastelitos.

Saw J.D. and Robert Samuels, and laughed a lot with both of them. Then had more wine and talked about the play I went to see earlier that day at NOVA’s theater.

“A Report on The Banality of Love” by my former FIU Journalism Professor Mario Diament, a great playwright who has won a couple of Carbonells to mention the least. We were particularly interested in this play because it was about the love affair between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Ardent, and we consider ourselves to be some type of Heidegger groupies.

It was a bit shocking for me to see Heidegger being loving and passionate and caring and playing around in bed with a naked woman, I said to Diament during the post-play discussion: I have read Heidegger’s work but never his correspondence, and the truth is that I had never even thought of wondering how Heidegger was as a person. How did you get to create his personality?
“It is easy because brilliant people always behave stupidly in bed,” Diament said.

I told the anecdote at the party to those who know about Heidegger. Philosophical souls such as Rudo, who graduated from New College in Philosophy. He took me home with Alex who is looking as beautiful as ever. Love makes you pretty.