Headvoice

Welcome back... sigh.

Back from a week's vacation and life moves on. Work is clicking along nicely, I am going to be doing more guest lecturing at the University of Toronto, and have renewed at least a half a dozen good friendships in the past month. We are both healthy and productive. So, why should happiness look and feel mundane?

Deli Memory

Can I post the worst picture of me ever taken? Sure! Other bloggers show off their ripped and bulging biceps. Here we have saggy man titties and a gizzy to revel in...

Get a load of the fat man in the green shirt waiting for his otherworldly pastrami at Katz's deli on the lower east side in early august of this year... thank god I have lost a little weight since then. And no, I am not looking at the asian woman's ass. As if.

Back in New York City

What a long time it has been. Everything has changed since I moved out of the New York in August of 1999; and then again nothing has changed. The energy. The crush of people and the density of buildings. The combination of enthusiasm and naiveté. There is no other city. This is the place I became myself. It is the place where my heart lives.

But then there is that new hole is the skyline, and you can feel it reflected in the lives of friends and family that have been here since the terrorist attack last September. There is a distinct penetration of that infamous New Yorker brashness. The shell was cracked on that clear sunny morning last September when thousands of people were ground to dust as the towers fell. Even though the scar is healing the wound is still palpable.

We drove around the city today, since it was swelteringly hot. And when you are paying $39 a day for valet parking in the hotel you might was well use it, eh? First stop was at ground zero, which understandingly has become a tourist attraction complete with hordes of impromptu souvenir stands and an unending procession of solemn observers.

I can remember making lunchtime trips down to the twin towers to visit the massive Border's bookstore at the base of the plaza. We would run up our expense accounts buying geeky books on database web applications and such, and then enjoy a leisurely lunch outside. The cafe we frequented backed right against the tower, and it provided an otherworldly presence as you enjoyed that eight buck turkey sandwich. The scale was so strange... sitting right at the base it stretched to the heavens and it's twin stood close enough to complete the surreal picture.

All that came to me today, when faced with the huge crater that is all that remains, is the curiosity of what it must have been like that day. The shock and horror. I had worked downtown for a couple of years, so I knew the vibe... and I scanned the storefronts and the faces of the locals for some clue as to what had happened.

Steely determination and resolve is what I saw in the eyes of the locals. And it made me feel at home again. After living in Canada for the past couple of years I have a new perspective; unfortunately one of vague disappointment. Toronto can't live up to the legendary New York; I understand that. But the citizens of that town can't seem to come to grips with that straightforward assessment. Instead they sublimate it and chew each other up. This surely must be the result of continually looking over a border at the rich expanse of opportunity and experience that lays to the south.

Know who you are and act on it, honestly and genuinely. That is my simplistic, but heartfelt response for Torontonians. As if they would care to ask, or even more surprisingly, to understand.

And what about Manhattan? Does a wildly vacillating stock market and the lingering effects of 9/11 on the tourism industry make for a bad short-term forecast? What will happen here in the next couple of months? I care more now, because that is where I live in my heart.