~autumn in new york ™~
October 8th, 2008
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My my my. New York put on such a glorious show today. After yet another dress fitting (still feeling like a chiffon asparagus) I headed into Central Park to find the spot I reserved (from Switzerland) to get married. The Ladies Pavilion is a Victorian cast-iron structure designed by Jacob Wrey Mould in 1871 to serve as a shelter for trolley passengers at the Eighth Avenue and 59th Street park entrance.
It’s now tucked on the lake shore at Hernshead, an area so named for the bedrock cluster which resembled a Heron’s head in the minds of those fanciful defenders of public lounge space Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted.
Walking into the park from CPW and about 76th Street, I was immediately greeted by an ambassador squirrel who after a stand-off decided I was kosher and galloped right up to me and then over my foot. Most auspicious.
I’ve been alone in Manhattan for a week now, and though I am quite used to my solitude in Switzerland, it’s a different creature here. Why is this? Well, for one thing, most can understand me when I speak my mother tongue, which after nine months of French is…relaxing. Still, at the end of the day, it’s just me, a nomad lady in her last bachelor days and parallel universe apartment with much reflection going on.
I had imagined I’d be busy socializing during this time, but the physical and emotional stress of planning a wedding and two receptions has really done a number on me and so upon arrival in NYC I promptly became sick. Tra la la.
Yet there are celebrations to be had on two coasts–one in ten days, one in sixteen–and so the days are full of to-ing and fro-ing to visit sites and getting nine-month overdue haircuts and taking care of subletting details and making reception gifts and buying champagne and tripping on misplaced carpet and flying through the air, landing in a puddle of smashed bottles and bubbly. Good thing my dress covers my now purple knees.
Some days though, it is heaven, tripping not on carpet but on the fact of just being here. Today was one of those days.
In Central Park a musician played guitar and sang–yes, the Piano Man, because you can’t be in New York for fifteen minutes without hearing number one son Billy Joel, just as you can’t be in Jersey and escape The Boss. But people sang along–da de da de de daaaa–no kidding, and I was moved somehow, by the openness of it.
The whole park was in love, holding hands, in tweed. It was earnestly roller boogieing or gathering to watch those who do. It was reading a book while tucked under a tree, eating apples. It was tossing a Frisbee to a black Lab. It was playing Judy Garland songs on alto sax under the bridge. It was a 1970s movie of itself and I was falling all over again.
If I had gone to China Town for soup dumplings, I think I might never return to Suisse.
But! I know that Autumn in New York ™ is magical in part because it is fleeting. Everyone knows we are experiencing a collective savoring of a fleeting moment made all the more delicious for this fact. Rather like life.
I reminded myself also that I am currently a tourist in my own town–or what was my town–and the experience I am having is not exactly Life in New York, or not the one I was having when I left it burning, anyway. I recognized this fact, and then let it pass and bought some candied peanuts.
When I finally found the Ladies Pavilion a wedding was about to begin, between an American woman and a German man.
In sixteen days that will be me (the chiffon asparagus).