The world is fast becoming a place I do not feel close to. I am up late and looking at googled photos of New York. They’re doing something to Lexington Avenue and I can’t figure out what. Expanding the subway tunnels maybe. It looks major.
I am seeing night scenes of 42nd Street and Grand Central and the Chanin Building where I worked. Actually I have worked in several of the buildings in that area. When you live long enough, your history is everywhere. And that’s why, although I think I would love to be able to stay in New York a while every year, going back is getting harder because of the memories. And what a shame to be there and know fewer people since my friends are scattering and I am losing some of them.
When I moved to New York on my own when I was 24, I knew a few people and they connected me and I got work and everything was fresh and new and I was forming memories and a history. If I were to be there again, on my own, I would have to do that all over again and without the vigor of youth and the promise of tomorrow. There is nothing lonelier than knowing when you are out and about, that when you go home, no one will be there. I remember thinking, after Jay died, that no one was waiting for my call. I walked home from wherever I had been, sometimes 40 blocks or more, thinking, thinking.
Maybe I think too much.
xx, Teal