"One foot up and one foot down/That's the way to London Town." I had a very nice few days visiting my friend's family in London, finally meeting toddler Anselm, no longer a baby but walking and talking and loving being silly. Audrey and I enjoyed some decadent pub lunches, outstanding choral music, and the best filter coffee ever. In this bizarre warm-and-cold winter, crocuses were already up, and a variety of goslings and ducklings skimmed frenetically across park ponds.
And then to cap off this long journey I stopped in New York and met up with my ex-husband. Doing such a thing isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I was glad (and, well, somber) to once again see in person the face I smiled at daily for thirteen years. It relieved somewhat the feeling of being a ghost, checking on the places I lived and worked and sought fun and refuge in hostile and promising Manhattan. My private sense of unreality compounded with the post-covid depopulation and unnatural quiet that has befallen the city -- the hustle and bustle is decidedly diminished.
But some things stay the same. Visiting lovely friends in a small park inundated by recess-berserk teenagers felt more like it. And three successive souvenir vendors on the Brooklyn Bridge blasting Alicia Keys' "New York" on seemingly endless loop; a rent-controlled apartment with 8,000 coats of paint on the clanking steam radiator; a dude at a bougie bakery talking loudly into his phone about flying to LA to produce a play; and me speeding down the block counting how many flashes are left on the crosswalk signal, trying to get wherever I'm going.
