Last week I took the extremely unusual step of jetting off to New York for a single meeting. What the heck? Suffice to say this is not my usual mode of being and made me feel terribly fancy and important. I've also, over the years, grown to love New York and how it looks. Long ago, before I'd ever been there, I had some dreamy romanticized notion of how it would look, based largely I now see on Nora Ephron and Woody Allen movies. And when I first finally got there I was not so much disappointed as just entirely overwhelmed, confused, and mystified. Where was the beauty I'd been expecting? There was no beauty here! Just a million little crappy bodegas and pizza joints and key-cutting stores block after block after block. It took another half dozen or so trips before I was able to clear the cobwebs of preconception and disillusionment from my eyes and see the beauty that actually is, rather than some imagined notion that was not. Perhaps that's the way it is with all fabled locales--you have to move the legend out of the way so you can see the actual thing (except for Paris, of course, Paris whacks you over the head with its relentless beauty like a ton of bricks, creating its very own special brand of gobsmackedness. But I digress). Herewith, a few glimpses from my trip.
PS: Only after having written this whole post did I look back through my archive and realize I said something similar (and honestly, said it a whole lot better) after my last visit to NYC this past Spring. Not to mention, I'd originally (or, I should say, un-originally) titled today's post "New York, New York" a title I've used not once but twice before, for crying out loud! Jeez, Watson Payne, get an editor! However this sentiment remains somehow of interest to me, so I'm letting the text of today's post stand, just changing the title to earn my editorial keep. One of the great things about having a blog, I find, is you get to do just whatever the heck you want. So there. xoxo b
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