8. Déambulations : Spring

Coming up from the subway, I stand on 7th avenue and 12th street. I was just there, and now I am here. Thrust into the ongoing momentum of the city, once again. Was I ever really there? Yes, I think so. Rue des Écoles, the red potted flowers on the balcony, that man carefully repairing a clarinet. I don’t know when I will go back, but for now the streets of Paris, well, they are ribbons tucked in and around my ribs.

My feet stand firmly on the pavement of my city, while in my mind and soul many places exist at once, even the forgotten ones. And as I stand here, feeling tiny on this never ending avenue under the wide blue sky, the American interior slowly replaces the French exterior, but the line in between isn’t so clear, anymore.

I take it all in. The new AIDS memorial. Men working for GrubHub sitting on the benches, laughing and eating sandwiches, their bikes resting on the ground. The usual cars and buses driving by. Breeze gently caressing flower petals, hair and skin. An assortment of trash coating the sidewalk: five shrimp tails. A white plastic coffee lid. Four cigarette butts. A plastic knife. A freshly tossed piece of chewing gum, lime green. Half of a pizza crust. A condom, still wrapped. Headphones, one earbud crushed, the red, green and blue wires gushing out like a flower bouquet.

An elderly woman finishes the long journey across the street with her walker. Honks echo down the avenue. Time is forced to slow down. Finally the engines roar. She pauses a moment on the sidewalk to catch her breath and continues.

I walk. Heel toes, heel toes, heel toes. With daffodils in bloom, the sidewalks are sparkling yellow and New Yorkers smile again. I don’t have a plan. I made time for this walk. I want to force it a little, at first. Recreate the wandering sensation of my trip. To delight in each step and each new observation. It takes time to transition from a purposeful city walker to a flâneuse, a drifter. To let go of yourself and your decisions. A shift has to occur gradually in the mind and in the body, as the city sinks into you and your intuition, your feet and your surroundings embark on a kinesthetic dance.

I venture down 12th street first. Down in between brick and wooden houses, small shops in basements and restaurants and I reach Abingdon square, hidden by trees at the intersection of Hudson Street and 8th avenue. Three teenagers sit there side by side scrolling on their phones. An older man sits alone. He eats an ice cream, slowly, and looks around him. Another woman sits alone, next to red tulips and a ballet of butterflies, and she reads. The look in her eyes is curious, timid, reaching. Her wonderment is almost crafted, necessary. As if right on the other side lied despair and regrets. I take out my notebook to jot down a few observations. Like Trigorin in The Seagull, I start keeping track of ideas for short stories. Then I keep going.

I remember Nina’s thoughts on solitude: “Moments of ecstasy and ‘overflowing of the soul’ always occurred in solitude. Life bared its essence gradually to me(...) Nothing hung in mid-air without contact with what surrounded it, all was bound by threads, every part with the whole.”

And so, on my own and at my leisure, I twist and turn and peek in windows and tucked away courtyards and houses. Wondering who gets to live here, secluded from the whirlwind of this city? Did they make it? Are they happy? Do they ever worry? I look at painted wooden doors, vines growing along the sides of buildings. Blue firescapes. Old stables turned into extravagant homes.

I find myself on Charles St. I didn’t know it existed before today and for a while, what feels like an eternity, I recognize nothing. Not even from distant, blurry memories of nights on the town years ago. I keep going to see where I will land. I secretly hope this lasts, that I won’t suddenly find myself in a place that I know. Deliciously disoriented in my own city.

I walk by a man repainting a yellow wooden house a brighter, fresher yellow, one strip at a time. His back hunched over, his hands stained and rough.

Then by another man sitting on the step outside a restaurant kitchen, the cigarette in his hand making elaborate pirouettes as he talks animatedly on the phone.

And then a group of friends, in their sixties maybe, sitting on benches outside a quaint cafe. They’re talking over one another, then they fall silent and just observe the people passing by. Me. Observe their street.

One street, many lives.

I hear the bells ringing, marking the hour. And though it must have been a staple sound in this neighborhood for decades, for me the church bells will always remind me of home. The brass melody echoing across the rivers of Lyon.

Through this sound, layers of memories and sensations intersect. As I continue traveling down this unknown street I journey through many facets of myself unraveling inside me. Place Bellecour, Midtown East, Rue Bouteille, Morningside Heights. Heartbreak, yearning, mind racing. New people, new ideas, new questions. Discovering Moscow, San Francisco, Berlin. The apartment dinners, the terrace drinks, deep house beats until dawn. Books read on Manhattan subways, Paris park benches, Lyon river banks and Brooklyn coffee shop tables. Dreams achieved and dreams forgotten. Rue de la République, 7th avenue, Boulevard Saint-Germain. Empty bank accounts and big checks to deposit. Butler library, marble and glass hedge fund halls, theatre studio floors. Receptionist, artist, language enthusiast. Fragments of thoughts and ideas strewn over the pages of many notebooks. Hungarian Pastry Shop, Café 203, Café de la Rotonde. Dating men, dating myself. With others, alone, alone with others and with others alone. Walking down Charles Street on a beautiful spring afternoon.

And suddenly it happens, the street comes to an end, interrupted by Greenwich Avenue. I know where I am again. I recognize my surroundings and I recognize myself, fragmented, contradictory, complex, whole.

To my right is 6th avenue, and the back of that odd looking church with red bricks and a tall clock tower. I have walked by it so many times and I always slightly wondered about it, but then I would just put a pin in it until our next haphazard encounter. I walk towards it. Why not? Today is as good as ever to finally check it out.

Behind it is a lovely garden and I stop to say hi to the volunteers near the entrance. Maybe they know more about the church? Oh, that’s not a church. That’s the New York Public Library. Really? I never knew that. How long has it been a library? Well, it used to be a courthouse, specifically a courthouse for women. And instead of this garden there used to be the Women’s House of Detention which was built in 1932, in art-deco style. Some of the most well-known inmates were Polly Adler, Dorothy Day and Angela Davis. The women often talked to relatives or passersby on the sidewalk, and some New Yorkers would sit nearby and listen, like street theatre. The center was overcrowded and inhumane and it finally closed in 1974 and now here we are! Wow, thank you for sharing this history!

I venture into the garden, I find a bench. I google “Women’s House of Detention” and as I try to read in the sun, I feel the echo of the women’s voices around me. Their struggles, their battles, their sadness, their small moments of joy and connection. Factory workers, sex workers, activists, revolutionaries, exceptional women, ordinary women, exploited women, lost souls and so many more, often arrested in the street and dehumanized in this art-deco building. And me sitting on this bench today, after wandering the city for hours, freely, as a privileged, white French-American woman of the 21st century.

I sit. I look around. I breathe. I don’t know if I will become someone, what I will create, where I will live. But I am here, for now.

I take out my latest book and I read, next to purple flowers and a ballet of butterflies.