New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.
– Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
In July 2008, an American Airlines flight arrives from London Heathrow into New York’s JFK. Onboard, a future American visiting the United States for the first time.
In December 2021, a pandemic rages - ebbs and flows. An American visits New York. The first visit since a pandemic devastated the city in spring 2020. Does the city feel different?
It’s a mild early December morning. The Amtrak journey from DC ends at Penn Station, and I’m thrown into the morning in Midtown Manhattan. I head to the Upper West Side to Zabar’s - the Jewish emporium and deli - for a bacon, egg, and cheese, drip coffee, and a bagel with scallion schmear. I put the bagel in my backpack for later. I’ll return later for holiday gifts to ship to Europe.
Today, in this city, I have nowhere to go or be. No base in the city, and no one to meet. In Central Park, I am detached, for a brief moment, from my life in DC. I feel anonymous. I wander through Egypt, Greece, and Mitteleuropa at the Met. There is not one artifact I’m searching for; I’m simply being in presence of centuries - millennia - of world history.
My final stop: Lower Manhattan.
Washington Square Park with its smell of marijuana, skateboards, chess and checkers players. The purple of NYU students, street sellers, and artists and creatives.
I eat a short walk from Washington Square Park at Veselka, the Ukrainian Diner that opened in 1954.
Borscht, schnitzel, sauerkraut, and mashed Potatoes.
I wander through the city, a balmy evening for December on the East Coast. Can or Should I enjoy these mild winter days in the face of climate change?
