Today's lunch at Docs on 3rd, with an acquaintance of 11 years, was both somber and disquieting. John lost his beloved sister nearly two years ago. He stated not having fully recovered from a grueling tour with the light opera company, and requested a rain check for the high line park walk we planned. He also shared a picture of a watercolor painting, a female nude, that won him a prize at the guild.
Somber in that we both shared our observations of how Manhattan has changed. The conversation started with an observation of all the closed businesses lining the avenues and streets of what many know to be the heart of the city's shopping and theater district. John paused at a point and uttered "this is not the New York I remembered moving here for. It is depressed."
During the course of my walk across town, hoping for no rain to come, a reflective mood visited me. At my destination, climbing the steps on W23rd Street for the elevated train tracks and seeing the Hudson river to my immediate right along with the Chelsea piers, a new vista of a familiar area greeted me. Over the 20 plus years of visiting the city, there were feelings of enchantment and discovery.
Something new has sprung in an old place, once invisible to many who never venture across these parts. What some considered as off-off Broadway, the Meat Packing District, West Village and the ballyhooed Chelsea district is in the midst of regeneration. In a sense, a park signals a new area has settled. An urban oasis.
New York over my lifetime, seem to have gone through a renaissance beginning in the mid 80's.
As it became "cleaner/safer," bringing in more tourist; as neighborhoods "gentrified" the lower east side especially near Thompson Square, as the wealth of late 20th Century amassed, the city drew like a magnet those who wanted to live a good life.
Approaching the plateau of what is the mid point of my life, during my stroll memories that are uniquely New York came. Among them the Picasso/Matisse exhibit in MOMAQueens, Suleiman exhibit at the Metropolitan, my first look at the Sargent portraits at the Frick. Yes, I travel for art, the highest of my privileges.
New York museum hops was never a pilgrimage, of sort, bred from excess, more so wanting to recharge in being at a place rich with artifact and pleasure.
I had not stayed in midtown during the summer for many years. Recent visits brought me twice to Brooklyn, once during fall and a winter weekend in Chelsea. Midtown is central with its close proximity of modern walkable New York, the MOMA, Rockefeller Center, museum mile, and Central Park. Places I visited regularly when staying in town.
Can one count memory bytes as signifier for the quality of a life? Perhaps this is a topic I can begin to explore in this very public journal.
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