April 21, 2010
Off to New York City tomorrow; a quick trip engendered by a wedding that wasn't; a long tale and a sad one with a silver lining (i.e., the wedding that wasn't a good idea). Tickets bought, hotel reserved, what the heck? It's been over a year since I was in the City, and I'd not gladly miss a chance to visit, especially with no agenda more complicated than eating, walking, eating, visiting museums and eating. My wife Ann is coming with me and hopefully we will rendezvous with other family non-wedding orphans. We'll celebrate, sort of. Toast fate and folly, that sort of thing. With luck and a little determination, fun will happen.
It strikes me that I've had very few quintessential New York experiences, despite my many visits over the years--no Broadway shows, no Staten Island Ferry, never seen the Cloisters, no Statue of Liberty or Empire State building (beyond the lobby, that is). Then again I've never seen Underground Seattle either. I visit (and enjoy) cities principally for the food and the walking, and New York has to be in my personal top three for both. (Paris and San Francisco come to mind.) It frequently astounds me how many of my fellow Seattlites. native and otherwise, have never been to New York--not as peripatetic college students, not on their way to Europe, not for a field trip or a funeral, not once, not ever. And more baffling, how many of them seem to recoil ever so slightly at the notion, or assume that I must be visiting under some sort of professional or social duress. Then I remember that I am on the left-hand coast, after all, and how, as an Ohioan growing up with Atlantic ties, I similarly resisted the thought of, say, Los Angeles as distant, suspect and likely superfluous to any of my interests or attractions. (I doubt I knew where Seattle was until I was well into high school. Of course folks here were still living in caves and chewing on sea lion blubber back then, years before Kurt Cobain, Frasier and Ken Griffey turned quizzical heads this direction.) "But," I tell the incredulous,"you have to go sometime...take the kids, spend a week, find a cheap hotel, ride the subways, see Central Park, hear the languages, dodge the traffic, ride the taxis, see the neon, gawk at the buildings, eat real pizza..." I seem never to convince anyone. Sometimes I get a perplexed and indulgent little smile, as if I am trying to sell a spaceship to an Amish farmer-- yes I'm sure it excites you very much, but we people just don't do such things you know...
Regardless, off we go. It will be nice to get away from Houdini Pie for a few days (despite not having remotely tidied up yet from the weekend festivities). I get pretty twitchy being the center of attention, at least for more than the length of a fiddle tune. A whole evening about me (or at least my book) on Saturday made me as tired of myself as I suspect everyone else was by the end. In New York, I'll be invisible. Or rather, just one grain of sand on a big, big beach. Sweet anonymity. And food. Lots and lots of food.
