The Persistence of Memory

The view from my first bedroom window in New York.

When I was a teenager, I would look out to the mountains holding my small hometown in place and I wondered what my life would be like beyond them one day. I imagined big moments and monumental events in a “grown-up” fantasy that would play out somewhere else. My life experience was measured out in weighty milestones, like school years, driving tests, unrequited loves, summer jobs and college applications. Foolishly, I thought those were the things that would stand out in my memory and define the epoch of my adolescence. After all, everyone around me was placing such a high value on them.

Now at 30 years old, I can’t remember who spoke at my high school or university graduations. I don’t remember what scores I received on my college entrance exams, nor do I remember which awards were doled out at assemblies or who wore what to the prom. I do remember the purple silhouette of the mountains as the sun came up in the early mornings on my way to school. I remember the albums I listened to and how I felt when I heard them. I remember the posters on the wall and the placement of the furniture in my best friend’s bedroom, even the smell of the candles her mother would burn. The memories easiest to access are made up of all the little things that were just ordinary pieces of life, things that didn’t draw attention to themselves at the time.

After living in New York for more than half a decade, my mind has simmered things down to a similarly nuanced reduction of memories that bring together the essential flavors of my life here so far. Of the jobs, apartments, friendships, triumphs and tragedies that the city has rolled out before me, it’s the “insignificant” moments that have stayed with me more than the bigger ones. As one chapter of my life in New York recently came to a close and a new one began, my mind has gone back to many of these tiny threads that have woven themselves into my consciousness. 

• • • 

My first bedroom in the city was a nameless polygon shape which had one window that looked out at an angle to the air shaft between my building and the next. There wasn’t much to see aside from the bricks of the other buildings around me, and a gangly little tree that poked out of the concrete ground below. My first summer in that room was hot and humid, and being new to the city without a steady income, I couldn’t afford the luxury of air conditioning. By necessity, that window was opened as wide as possible all the time, which did little to cool the room, but it occasionally welcomed a hot sweaty breeze that did little to cool anything. What the room was lacking in terms of the view, it made up for with its colorful soundscape. Every night I would hear varied combinations of arguments in Spanish, scratchy salsa music playing from a blown-out radio, an aspiring opera singer practicing his baritone melodies, the college girl one floor below calling her boyfriend across the country (and the inevitable break-up that ensued), and a violinist repeating his musical progressions late into the evening. Sometimes I felt lonely, missing friends in far off places, but the chorus of neighbors who I never saw would make me feel less alone. Often, I’d play my guitar and look out into the air shaft, never seeing their faces. Now I wonder if my contribution to the soundscape meant as much to anyone else as theirs meant to me, or if it just became noise in the background.

• • • 

There is a quiet winding street that hugs the western perimeter of Morningside Park, perched on the top of a steep cliff that looks out over Central Harlem and the narrow park below. This rocky precipice is one of the few natural features in Manhattan that never bent to the will of greedy developers. There is a stone wall alongside the path with look-out balconies every so often, each offering a different vantage point of the cityscape beyond. At night, a series of street lamps cast a warm glow through the tree branches which transfigures the pathway into a theater of light and shadows. I’d walk along this route as often as possible, seeing how the shadows would change as the year progressed. I memorized the placement of the trees and the names carved into the stones of the stately apartment buildings across the road. Most often, I’d walk this path alone, but occasionally I would share the experience with worthy companions. It was a wonderful place to go if I was sad or anxious. For a while, it was a connecting line between various pieces of my life, many of which I can’t recall specifically now. It is a place frozen in time, in a dreamy quiet way that makes one feel timeless along with it. I’ve moved three times since then; experienced the charms of other neighborhoods, but that little street in Morningside Heights has stayed with me. 

• • • 

The Hotel Fane is a dirty run-down brownstone on 135th Street with a rusty red sign displaying the establishment's name, hanging precariously one floor above the street. It is three or four doors down from an apartment I lived in for two years, and I’d pass by it almost daily. If you happen to look inside as the front door swings open, you’ll notice a tired wooden staircase that is well-worn and in need of repair. Outside, on the concrete stoop of the building, there are always several fatigued women, usually smoking cigarettes, and often recounting the struggles of their days to anyone around to listen. Their faces are strained with worry and their laughter is infectious. Each day that I lived on that street brought a new crop of these ladies, but each day was the same. Weary women in transition were the only guests of the hotel, which I later found out was a halfway house for folks getting their lives back together after whatever struggle had come before. There was something comforting about knowing they’d always be there, even though they were always different. The smells of their cigarettes and the sounds of their chatter were something I could always count on, and I loved them for it, especially during times when my life seemed anything but stable. I regret to admit that I never took the time to know any of these people, but even still, they were important to me. The residents of the Hotel Fane, though ephemeral individually, as a group made my little stretch of 135th Street special. It’s funny how people you never speak to and see for only a few seconds at a time can become part of your identity, but that’s how it was. Someday soon, when all of Harlem is nothing but high-rent condos and boutique hotels (as the rest of Manhattan has become), I’m sure the Hotel Fane will be another casualty of gentrification, lost to memory, but I’m grateful that it will always be part of mine. 

• • • 

Jones Street is a mostly un-noticed street that only extends one block between Bleecker and West 4th Streets in Greenwich Village. It’s usually very quiet and is home to some of the last remnants of the old Beatnik New York, which has otherwise been consumed by Starbucks franchises and Chase Banks in the rest of the neighborhood. It was the backdrop to Bob Dylan’s album cover for “The Freewheelin’” in 1963, and the backdrop to many days in my life for a couple of years a few decades later. It’s a wonderful street to walk down early in the mornings, shortly after the sun rises. On one end, you’ll pass by Caffe Vivaldi and see the chairs neatly stacked up on top of the tables and the glasses all collected behind the cozy bar in the back. Even though the musicians have all gone home, you can almost hear the tones of their nightly performances, still hanging in the air around the piano off to one shadowy corner hidden from the morning light shining through the windows. Across, you’ll see the bottles glistening in the windows of Jones Street Wines, and subsequently, many empty discards from that point of origin already stacked up in the trashcans of buildings along the street. A little further down, a combination dry cleaning and consignment clothing store is perched above a narrow green staircase, with displays in the windows that harken back to a bygone era. A bit further down, you’ll hear the noise coming from the Florence Prime Meat Market as the trucks are unloaded with ominous packages of frozen animal parts being carried into the basement. Old timers in the neighborhood will tell you that Jackie O. used to buy her Sunday roasts there every week, but there are few left who would have witnessed it. And just next door is a window full of 33rpm Album Covers, showing off copies from bands like The Rolling Stones, The Sex Pistols or the Talking Heads. Although the exact nights I spent on that street with someone dear to me for a while all blur together in a haze of memories, those morning walks to the subway along the uneven pavement of Jones Street were a pleasure of their own. It represents a time in my life that brought many happy moments. Sometimes, when I'm in the neighborhood, I'll take a detour through Jones Street and transport myself back to those mornings which have since been tucked away in my mind.

• • •

As I look back on these things, I wonder which of the innocuous moments of my life now will make the grade and become part of my future history, and which things will fade away.