Just yesterday my mother asked me if I missed New York City. I think she was expecting a different answer than the one I gave her. I miss it every day. I don’t even need to close my eyes to see the busy streets, the lights, the people. I often recall where West 47th, 7th Ave and Broadway coincide… Most people call it Times Square, it is really Father Duffy Square, that more famous space connects to it and is within sight to the south.
A few blocks west for me was safety, warmth, security and…now, only memories. The apartment, ours for nearly 20 years, has been remodeled and re-leased, a part of the continuing cycle that is New York. Still in some deep recess of my mind it is my home. I didn’t get to leave New York under the circumstances I had always imagined… I was torn away, unfinished, unresolved. I left there with so much more to do. There was unfinished business, a relationship with a place left hanging… I wonder if that is the way of that city, it never resolves, it calls you back, it will not let go. There will always be incompleteness there, maybe because the city is always changing, and it is difficult, and so very addictive, to always try to get a solid grip on something that has changed by the time your fingers close around it. Your hands close and you are left with a momentary sense of satisfaction that quickly fades. And then the addictive excitement of the new, but somehow familiar, washes over you again.
Top: Street scene on 5th Avenue at 46th Street in Midtown Manhattan, when I lived there in 2012. It reminds me of the famous work (pictured above left) “The Fourth of July, 1916”, oil on canvas, by Childe Hassam.