i first saw New York when i was eighteen years old. a woman who was not yet my lover lived on Long Island, in the same small fishing town where Jack Kerouac lived after achieving his celebrity. at the time i had not read Kerouac, and his eventual, looming presence was wholly absent from my mental geography.
but this is beside the point.
the point is that i was more concerned with other imagined shadows, and i went searching for them in the alphabeted streets that run parallel to the East River. this romance grew over the coming years, and in keeping with my own mythology, i moved to New York immediately after graduating university. in time i would come to know that what seemed like fate was nothing more than the tired pull of the city, the cliched story of town and country, the familiar parable of innocence, disillusionment and returning to the places you thought you knew. last week, and the photo essay that follows, were/are precisely that:
(apparently) i (don't) love New York
(any more)
day one
my yin and i arrived on a Thursday afternoon, and traveled to the Lower East Side to peruse the galleries that have popped up in the last decade. on the walls i saw portraits of ghosts i chased fifteen years ago:
R.I.P. Joe Strummer
somewhere in the back of the mind i couldn't help but smile at the memory of myself in the fall of 1995. the extent of humanity's collective hubris is truly amazing, but nowhere is it so pronounced as in the self-concept of an eighteen year old male on the precipice of a new romance. it became difficult for me to separate the city from the woman, and ironically enough i would find myself making the same mistake four years later. this, too, is beside the point.
my yin and i strolled onward, and one of the great joys of New York, then same as now, are the absurd promotions and storefronts. for example, where else but Manhattan would it ever be appropriate to use the following images to advertise a children's hospital?
people send their children there?
in other places we saw instances of accidental profundity, which happens to be my favorite type:
the awning makes a valid point
we also came upon one store in which my yin will never be allowed to set foot:
never, never, never...
these charming curiosities begin to lose their luster, however, when one begins to look a little closer:
day two
my yin and i took the train in from Scarsdale on the second day, transferred at Grand Central, and finally came above ground in Union Square. throughout the summer Miranda July (one of my favorite Renaissance women) has had an installation scatted along the park:
only in New York would a 2:1 concrete to grass ratio be called a park
her work, as usual, was simultaneously clever, accessible and interactive:
approximately true
others, while not as sophisticated, were nonetheless entertaining:
hopefully, that is...
after perusing the art we headed to the
Integral Yoga Institute, where my yin used to volunteer and eventually took her teacher training. we took part in the midday meditation and then sat down to eat lunch with a very skinny swami. although i had heard rumors that the IYI served nothing but brown food, the meal was quite delicious, especially the red dhal.
moving further towards the Hudson River, my yin and i took a stroll along the High Line. in spite of being full of tourists (like us), the old abandoned train line has been turned into something truly unique, allowing visitors to gaze out on some of the new condos that sprung up as part of the previous decade's real estate boom:
curvy building
angular building
and groovy windows
when we finally came down from the High Line, we strolled through Chelsea to check out the sundry art galleries that have dominated the New York art world since the Nineties. the best among them was not a gallery at all, but this building:
150 W. 17th Street
which houses all manners of Himalayan art. among my favorites was this statue:
and these costumes, which my yin and i may use as inspiration for our respective wedding attire:
his and hers?
day three
our third day began in Brooklyn, where my yin and i had spent the night with a friend from her Williamsburg days. after a tempeh breakfast bagel, we headed over to PS 1 and saw a lousy exhibit entitled "Greater New York":
"Lesser New York" would have been more accurate
that night we met an old friend of mine from North Carolina. although we hadn't seen each other in years, his assistance some time ago made a great impact on the eventual direction my life would take, and after a(n unbelievable) meal at
Zen Palate i had an opportunity to thank him, something i had been meaning to do since 2006. unfortunately, our post-meal constitutional ran later than expected, and my yin and i ended up missing our train back to Scarsdale by approximately ninety seconds:
by the end of the day, my yin and i were exhausted
day four
museums. museum. museums. we started our fourth day at the Whitney, using the member cards loaned to us back in Westchester. an entire floor was devoted to the work of Christian Marclay:
thank heavens for free passes!
although i had never heard of Marclay, his whimsically indeterminate composition methods astounded me. my yin and i ended up staying for two separate performances, and unbeknownst to me, my yin took this groovy picture while i wasn't looking:
me, with graffiti score in background
to top it off, Marclay is still alive, which is more than i can say for most of the artists in the next museum on our list:
the Metropolitan Museum
the place was an absolute madhouse (it was a Sunday afternoon) and our entire reason for being there was to check out the bamboo on the roof:
much better than steel and concrete
sadly, the skies were overcast and threatening, so my yin and i had to sneak up a half-guarded stairwell to even get a peak at the installation. a sign said that 5000 bamboo poles were used along with miles and miles of nylon rope:
allegedly this ramp can hold 400 pound visitors
afterwards, my yin's photographer friend met us outside the Met, and the three of us took a bus downtown to Alphabet City where our journey began. she showed us pictures of a haunted house in Michigan and told us about the hoarder who was renting her apartment. ironically, none of the pictures from that coffee shop came out, and the only explanation that comes to mind is that my yin's friend is some sort of photogenic black hole, literally distorting the camera's optics so that she can later use and redeploy it to her own ends:
i
m
age
miss
in
g
after this encounter we all took the L train to Brooklyn once more and had dinner with my yin's cousins and their respective mates. the six of us shared a fantastic vegan dinner, and aside from one carnivorous New Zealander, everyone went home smiling, happy and full.
day five
our final day in New York was rainy and, appropriately, fell on a Monday. we went into the city early and milled about Greenwich Village, idly talking about what it would take for us to live in New York again. it was a strange feeling because we both want to want to live in New York – but we don't.
the city has lost its sheen somehow, and i don't mean in the typical "good old days" nostalgia. the city has changed, undoubtedly, but not nearly as much as me. whereas i once saw only excitement, now i cannot help but see all the anxiety and agitation that masquerades as creativity or mania.
the one image that captured it most clearly for me was walking up the ramp form the Metro-North in Grand Central Station. the people all piled on top of one another, pushing and bumping their way towards the exit. they looked exactly like cattle lined up in a slaughter house, and it made no difference if the person was headed to Wall Street or the Bowery (except, of course, the Bowery is no longer the Bowery). every one of them was caught in the same game, stuffed into one metal tube after another and whisked around in the bowels of the city.
we went home early that day and had a quiet meal in Scarsdale with our hosts. we talked about the city, about art, about history and the upcoming wedding. we talked about so many things that it was soon approaching midnight, and my yin and i excused ourselves to go to bed. she fell asleep before me that night, and i lay awake in bed wondering if perhaps we should leave immediately instead of in the morning.
it was a foolish idea, an idea that i would have followed ten years ago, and that is precisely the difference between
the me i was
and
the me i am.
