J.A.

We met with a friend of a friend this morning at her penthouse on Morningside Drive with an incredible view of the New York skyline.  It was a beautiful space and a lovely morning of bagels, fruit salad, jams, desserts, and tea.  The walls that were not the floor-to-ceiling window cityscape were covered in art, particularly Japanese art.  She had grown up in Japan, and unlike many foreigners growing up in Japan, she had actually attended Japanese schools until she returned to America to go to college.  She had worked as an interpreter, and her passion was art.  And now, after having recently divorced, she is living as much as possible in a beautiful space, in an incredible city, volunteering at several art museums and getting more and more invested in a city that will have her as long as she can afford it.  As she said, she shook the piggy bank and decided to make it work.

I think only the sleeping person isn't displaced.  And even in dreams we can be missing.  What must it be to look out onto the city lights, a childhood thousands of miles away, self-expression in another language, a love had and reconsidered, a grown child unlike you but still you, their own person growing on their own, staring out from walls vibrant but solemn?

This is a beautiful and complicated city.  I think there is a lot of loneliness here that takes comfort in the communal mayhem.  For centuries people have come to this city for opportunity, and no less, for a sense of belonging.