I remember years back when I'd go to LA & find some place missing. one time it was the Brown Derby on Vine another C.C. Brown's. it seemd as if that city had no reverence for its past. not like NYC.
well that was long ago. now when I get back to New York I find places gone. Broadway theaters. restaurants. & just this week more sad news out of Manhattan. 2 famous bookstores are in peril. Coliseum Books at Broadway & 57th has filed for bankruptcy. Gotham Book Mart is facing eviction.
3 comments:
Hi, you don't know me — I'm a "lurker" — but been I've enjoying your blog for a while now.
I offer up this excerpt from Colson Whitehead's The Colossus of New York. He has such an amazing way with language and your post today reminded me of the way he described the way a city (in his example, NYC) exists differently for everyone in it, based on how things were when they first arrived, and how, when places close, or move, (or buildings fall down), we carry how it was before with us.
Also, so sorry about Melina.
thx for stopping by Monica. sometimes when I go a week or so with no comments I presume no one is reading.
change is inevitable & not always bad. I think one reasosn I'm struck so hard by discovering missing places in LA or NYC is that I'm not there all that often. whereas here there's as much or more change but we live with it daily.
& thx for mentioning Melina. I'm still keeping as busy as possible. I esp miss her in the morning when I wake up alone.
it's hard to know when to post a comment, especially someplace you've never posted before.
You're right, though. it's the time away and/or the scope of the changes that make it so jarring. This July I was back in Virginia after (only!) a year away, and there's so much different, and it was such a special place in my life.
In our hearts, things and times and people and places we love stay the way the were when we loved them most/best. It's hard when reality slaps us upside the head with something different.
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