Preemptive Retaliation

I have returned from New York the same person – albeit humbled and jet-lagged. I traveled the streets of Manhattan, a tourist in every sense of the word; I took pictures, I marveled at the structures and sites, I had a selfie stick poised in my hand and an unmovable smile on my lips. At one point I was drinking an Old Fashioned out of a tea-cup, listening to a jazz band play in a repurposed speakeasy hidden away in the East Village, and I kept saying to myself “I’m in New York!” in a way to give myself context, to remind myself of the absurdity I felt in being there.

When we were walking down Fifth Avenue, the Empire State Building on our right and the skyscrapers of Manhattan all around us, I couldn’t stop thinking about this old poster for the Flying Scotsman. This poster used to be in my aunts house, and I remember thinking about how huge the train looked, how the little girl was dwarfed completely by its wheels. Walking down Fifth Avenue reminded me of that little girl. I was an ant scurrying in between these behemoth structures that cared not if I was there. The street disappeared away from me like some teenage perspective picture, and I actually felt a dizzying sense of vertigo at the sheer size of the place I was in.

In New York we visited quite a few famous sights. We stood outside the house the main character stayed in in I Am Legend. We had a frozen hot chocolate in the cafe from Serendipity. Anna grinned gleefully from Carrie Bradshaw’s steps from Sex in the City. I refused to dance in the fountain from the beginning of FRIENDS, but gladly whipped out the selfie stick for the apartment they lived in. There was something wholesome and reassuring about seeing these places, all the sights we had seen mirrored on television and film . We also took part in a literary pub crawl through Greenwich Village, which only visited three pubs and one drink in each, so I wouldn’t call it a pub crawl and more a walking exercise with refreshments. Anyway, in each bar we visited I could feel my chest swell. In the past, where I was drinking was frequented by Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S Thompson and more. The wood and glass had sat them during their heydays, and (although it is unlikely they actually wrote in those bars) I could feel their presence and history in the air.

Before the trip I started reading a good book bought for me by a friend, but I shamelessly abandoned it to reread The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster in the run up to my honeymoon. When we were in a quiet moment – sitting in the sun in Bryant Park, leaning against a tree in Central Park – I would take it out and read as much as I could. Auster is one of those authors whose writing I love immensely, but I can’t really fathom. His words teeter on the cusp of thoughtful and pretentious, so when I begin to understand what’s going on I feel frustrated when the rug is pulled from under me. This is the second time I’ve read the book, and the second time I’ve felt that I’m so close to understanding what the author means, only for it to be just that little bit out of reach.

Still, I enjoyed reading it immensely. The writing shares an intimacy with New York City, with its vivid, heartfelt descriptions of its streets and denizens. As Auster took his characters from place to place, I felt as though I was walking the pavement with them step by step. He captured the city in the only way he could; as someone who loved it. It filled me with joy when I read about places in the book that I had read on street signs the day before. Addresses were mentioned and I used my finger to trace them on my tourist map. I thought about awakening Anna from her afternoon park doze and suggest we visit the apartment Auster placed himself in for one of the stories, but decided against it. It felt good, almost powerful, and affirming, to walk the streets that Auster had walked and examined and write about.

And, here’s the thing, I don’t hold Auster in a high regard. I love his work, sure, but I don’t see him in the same light as I see other legends. His words are incredible, and awe inspiring, but he doesn’t have the measure that I gave writers in my youth. The ones I idolised, like the way some kids put pictures of actors or footballers on their wall. For Auster, I hold the respect I have for professors and professionals – experts in their craft, well earned and well deserved. I don’t feel as though as I am sitting in his shadow, like the other giants whose outlines I constantly look up at.

When we were walking around Central Park we stumbled across a carousel. It was spinning away with a few kids dotted here and there, and we watched it twirl. I was hit with a sudden feeling of recognition – not quite déjà vu, but something almost like it. I looked around, and over the treetops I spotted the Museum of Natural History that we had visited a few days before, where I had secretly searched the banisters for a hidden FUCK YOU. I realise that the carousel I was standing in front of, watching go by, was unlikely the same one that Holden sat in front of in Catcher in the Rye, very unlikely, probably impossibly, but at the same time it felt as though it could have been. This could have been the very carousel that Salinger had written about, with its symbolism and its steadfast message. 

New York was nothing short of incredible for me. I saw the sights, I ate the food, I drank the cocktails, but for me the real journey was that spiritual one. To feed off the sights and buildings that millions of others have before me, and to drink in the ones that have inspired greatness. I said before that it was my Mecca, which is hyperbole for one thing, and yet so utterly, hopelessly accurate. I felt touched by that gargantuan city. I felt as though it was everything I had hoped it to be, and more.