early winter in new york city

New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.

– Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) 

In July 2008, an American Airlines flight arrives from London Heathrow into New York’s JFK. Onboard, a future American visiting the United States for the first time. 

In December 2021, a pandemic rages - ebbs and flows. An American visits New York. The first visit since a pandemic devastated the city in spring 2020. Does the city feel different? 

It’s a mild early December morning. The Amtrak journey from DC ends at Penn Station, and I’m thrown into the morning in Midtown Manhattan. I head to the Upper West Side to Zabar’s - the Jewish emporium and deli - for a bacon, egg, and cheese, drip coffee, and a bagel with scallion schmear. I put the bagel in my backpack for later. I’ll return later for holiday gifts to ship to Europe. 

Today, in this city, I have nowhere to go or be. No base in the city, and no one to meet. In Central Park, I am detached, for a brief moment, from my life in DC. I feel anonymous. I wander through Egypt, Greece, and Mitteleuropa at the Met. There is not one artifact I’m searching for; I’m simply being in presence of centuries - millennia - of world history. 

My final stop: Lower Manhattan. 

Washington Square Park with its smell of marijuana, skateboards, chess and checkers players. The purple of NYU students, street sellers, and artists and creatives. 

I eat a short walk from Washington Square Park at Veselka, the Ukrainian Diner that opened in 1954. 

Borscht, schnitzel, sauerkraut, and mashed Potatoes. 

I wander through the city, a balmy evening for December on the East Coast. Can or Should I enjoy these mild winter days in the face of climate change?