Autumn

Here's the view from my small window.  I don't have a fisheye, so I can't take a photo of the room itself.  I am not made for small spaces.  I could not do time in prison.  I won't stay at this hotel again, though who knows.  There are very few reasons to come to Manhattan for me any more.  The art.  I'm too used to everything else now to get a kick out of it the way I used to.  I remember how it all looked the first time.  I had made it into the movies.  I was on television.  Jesus, everything was so exotic.

Just going into the ground and taking a subway ride was a wonder.  Now. . . I'm as bored as the people who commute every day.  I don't mean that they are not a miracle of sorts.  A wonder, at least.  But my senses aren't as alive to it as they once were.  Perhaps that is because I usually know which train to take now.  In the past, I used to end up in the wrong part of town quite often.  It made everything an adventure.

Maybe it's the time of year.  Yesterday, I went downtown and walked all day long, SoHo, the Villages.  There aren't any tourists now, I guess.  School has begun.  So the streets are emptier and filled with locals.  No New Yorker would say this, but tourists add something, I think.  Certainly they are prettier.

On the last day of summer, it was still summer weather, but people were not certain.  On a warm, humid day, people wore sweaters and jackets and sweatshirts next to people in t-shirts and shorts.  There were no shortage of costumes on the street.  That is a New York trademark.  But New York didn't feel as happy without tourists, and I guess that is to be expected when you are among people who are living their everyday lives, going through the same streets on the same errands, constrained by time.

The city just seemed. . . worn.

It is autumn now, just like that, and I will be inside much of the day.  I head up to the Guggenheim first, then down to the Met.  I want to go to the Rizzoli book store and the International Center of Photography, too.  And after that, I'll surely want to have a drink in the lobby of The Algonquin Hotel.

It is Friday, and tonight the bars will be filled.  What's the famous mid-town bar where the true old Mad Men drank?  I stumbled in there on my first trip to Manhattan so long ago.  What's it called?  They shot that movie there.  You know the one.  P.J. Clarke's!  That's it.  If I had brought clothes, perhaps I'd step back to the El Morocco or the Stork Club or the Savoy.  Way back.  It's too late to even have a martini while listening to Bobby Short now.

Of course, I could always try living in the present.