There was this supermarket we used to pass by in East Williamsburg when we lived there in 2020, with an enormous pixelated and blurry scene of the two bridges over the East River on its storefront.
Today we went on a long walk around that area, and Sydney took a photo of us enjoying the giant sticker a lot. It is melancholic and scrappy – the storefront, the Broadway subway entrance, the gas station and auto repair shops next to it.
Yesterday we were walking around Brighton Beach and Coney Island, and Sean was talking about a book he had bought, written by a Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, called A Coney Island of the Mind.
Perhaps, that pixelated storefront in Williamsburg is A New York City of my mind.
We are leaving it, at least for now. A new chapter is beginning! And I don’t want to sound too nostalgic, but what if I am already very nostalgic and I will miss it very much.
It is not really about romanticizing this city, although a great deal of romantic and memorable moments of my twenties have happened here. Being in New York during the pandemic felt insane, stumbling upon subway crime scenes on a daily basis was upsetting, and the list goes on and on. I am not sure where this train of thought is taking me to.
I guess, I am trying to say that many things, cities included, are multidimensional, complex. More complex than the pixelated sticker with the Brooklyn Bridge on it.
I guess, sometimes one can be content with just A New York of one’s mind.
People are a different story. Although I’m not sure it is very different: take my mother, whom I haven’t been able to see for 2.5 years – in comparison to her very familiar face in a Zoom square window, to whom I talk to almost daily. Do these two have anything in common?
It is all very new to us and very universal at the same time.
Anyway. Here is to a New York City of my mind!
And to yours whatever-place-you-wanna-be-in-but-are-not-there-now of your mind.
PS. I haven’t read Ferlinghetti’s poems! Neither had Sean. Let me know, if you have. Maybe the book has some answers to our shared questions.
— Dinara
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