Last Tuesday, I set foot in Manhattan for the first time in over four months. Reader Rick Mullin invited me to a reception for an exhibit of his paintings at the Cornelia Street Café in the Village. I was onsite in Jersey City that day, which is only a couple of stops on the PATH and a few pedestrian blocks away.
The London bombings had happened only days before, and were very much on my mind as I crossed under the river and then emerged into the humid Manhattan evening. I wasn't quite prepared for the degree to which everyone I passed on the street seemed to look like a target. I felt disassociated, surreal, adrift in a sea of anonymous faces, any one of which could have the life blown from it in an instant.
I felt, I realized, something like a suicide bomber must feel before he sets himself off: surrounded not by humans but by things, the only difference being that I was myself one of those things, a target like the rest. I was relieved to step into the cool interior of the café and sit down in the white - painted brick alcove, surrounded by Rick's exuberantly colored canvasses.
The paintings in this exhibit were derived from sketches he drew while in Istanbul for a friend's wedding in 2004. He uses thick pigment that makes the colors seem edible: cream clouds above a blue mosque, minty leaf - greens on the hills between Topkapi Palace and Sultanahmet, a citrus sky above the Hagia Sofia and its berry - red cherry juice vendor.
In addition to being my first trip back to the Island for awhile, it was also my first social event in quite some time... I've become such a hermit, out here in the semi - country isolation of the Lower Hudson Valley. I was reminded of the things that happen in the city that don't happen here: I learned that a Muslim bachelor party can involve a trip to the Turkish baths; I met a Category 3 bike racer from Pennsylvania; I met a Russian artist with deepset eyes, an accent that lived deep in his throat, and a tremendous amount of chest hair that puffed out from his island - print shirt; I met another artist who made a 100 - foot scroll from her junk mail and sold bits of it off by the inch.
A had only one more glass of what Rick called the Cheap Wine than I should have, thus avoiding my particular social curse. There were no politics in evidence, and I managed to make conversation about the smoke - and - mirrors of the insurance business with the bike racer. I remember only one name: Sascha, who was a friend of the Russian artist. I'm terrible with names like that, and I've got no idea why I remembered Sascha's... we didn't even speak beyond cursory introductions.
And then, at 7:00PM sharp, I said my good - byes, thanked Rick for the invite, and headed uptown to the 9th Street PATH station. As I crossed over Greenwich Avenue, I suddenly asked myself: how much longer are you going to be afraid of getting blown up? The reception suggested other paths to me... paths that involved other people, connections, synchronicity. For a few minutes, as I walked, I considered what it would be like to live in the city again, with places like the café a short bike ride away, with events full of people happening all the time.
There's alot about the London bombings that brought back memories, like little punches in the gut: footage of the friends and relatives of the victims, holding photocopied MISSING flyers, the profiles of the dead that showed up in local papers in the following days. The only difference was the scale: a dozen flyers on a wall, instead of hundreds covering the walls of Bellevue and the news trucks in front of it on First Avenue; two or three profiles of victims with New York connections, instead of an entire section of the newspaper with bio after bio next to small portraits.
The answer to my question remains: awhile longer, yet.
