Jackie had some travel related business in NYC, and as much as I wanted to stay home, she enticed me with a couple of free nights at the Andaz Hotel East, so how could I say no. We drove down to Poughkeepsie and took the Metro North into Grand Central Station.
It still grand and evocative, and as things continue to go down hill in terms of the city turning into a theme park, all condos, clothes, cuisine and cute, it quickly becoming the most authentic thing left. As luck would have it, we got there for its 100th birthday!!!
As I mentioned, we stayed at the Andaz on the corner of 5th Ave and 42nd Street overlooking the New York Library, with the Met Life Building in the background. It was kind of rainy, but that is the best time to be in Bryant Park, right behind the library along Fifth Avenue.
Looking at this photo reminds me of a poem from my first book written in the mid 1970's when I was still very much a part of the city. and was actually on the way to the wedding rehearsal of a good friend getting married at the Plaza on a gray and dreary day that somehow felt perfect to me, at least, walking through the city with my tux over my shoulder and anticipation in my heart that obviously inspired poetry. Feel free to skip it if it bores you...
Determined gray and silver towers
thrusting through thick skies
extending earthward
touching me with its damp presence
reaffirming pledges of youthful fancy
made amidst the clutching hands and
frenzied banners of causes
long ago celebrated.
Alone now on that suddenly desolate street
moving more and more swiftly against
the pulse and swell of nighttime armies
of menacingly yellow taxis...
I am full of a city
that no longer understands the gentle lover
trapped inside a body
rigidly braced against uncertainty.
More slowly now along
quiet and somber gray rain washed streets
as if all roads lead to the park
whose glazed and solitary benches
recall many a soldiers kiss
as if it were the last...
silent conspirator in dreams stillborn,
we meet once more to recall
our moments of undisciplined passion,
as always, in the silent embrace
of city rain.
Back to the present. The weather cleared the next day and I took the subway at 23rd Street down to the lower east side to do some shopping, Yonah Shimmel, Russ and Daughters, Gus Pickles, et al...
and was met by some pretty scary people...
and rode for about 20 blocks standing next to this painfully attractive young woman, one of those chosen few who seem to carry their beauty as a burden they bear in the otherwise gray and mundane world of us mortals, who both feed and offend them by our lustful, furtive glances. I did not take a picture for obvious reasons, but as always, a haiku was on my lips...
Such a cross to bear
carrying that harsh beauty
all over your face.
But at the end of the day it is always reassuring to know that Tom Cruise is there to save us from the impending oblivion that will consume us, although I fear that it is already too late for me, as I haunt the city like a ghost looking for memories carried in the bits and shards of the city I grew up in.
The sign is there on the lower east side, but no Schapiro's, long gone .
Even the urban wall art has morphed into a new kind of wall art these days, paper cut outs pasted on walls seems to be replacing the spray paint , so as the sign at Bowery and Rivington Streets says, in spite of it all, I'll be back for more. As you can tell I haven't got much to say anymore about New York. The forces of evil masquerading as progress have won and I have been reduced to taking pictures of pictures of pictures...
Like Picasso in his later years, who just kept painting the same picture over and over and over again for an adoring and wealthy clientele, I feel like I am falling into the same pattern, but where are the adoring and wealthy patrons when I need them?
Pablo
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