dear life 76

dear life,
this is the story of my first trip to New York two weeks ago. it is some kind of a report, it did not came out like i wanted it to, but anway, better than nothing to remember the journey by:

"Ok, everybody knows New York, and everybody whom we know and don't know who has visited the city talks of its strangeness and uniqueness and everybody whom we know and don’t know who has not visited the city dreams of once visiting it. The metropolitan is of worldly fame – some loving it for its artistic venues, some for the night life, some for its money and stock markets, some for the shopping, some for the sake of the famous residing there, some for the towers blown up, some just for the fact that others do so, yet there are just those who can’t stand all the life going on around the city, the population, the uncleanness, the traffic, the noise; however, the point is that you have to see New York at least once in your lifetime – who can decide your view of the city better than yourself?
I was doubting the lovely remarks of the city more and more as I drove toward it, pollution hanging over it like a brown feathery giant spreading its wings over the flesh and blood running through the veins of the city, traffic jam creeping in every lane of the several-storey maze of George Washington Bridge like the thousand-head snake of old fables. We were not sure of the route we were driving in, as it did not match the map we had in hand. Passing underneath several stone bridges which looked like the older segments of a not-so-long- history, with cars congested together in the somber air peculiar to the 21st century, it felt strange, not good strange, but saddening, as when you start to doubt modernity in its whole and feel sorry for the human kind altogether, and of course it felt frightening, being lost in a craze that you don’t know to where is taking you.
To be lost feels really bad, doesn’t it? Yet, there always comes that sign which tells you of your next step and with it, comes that sigh of relief which takes away all the pressure. So came the sign and we drove to Connecticut, an hour north of the famed city to drop off one member, park the car – everybody knows parking in New York is a problem of its own – and lead back toward the city to unravel it up close and personal hours later with a train.
The house of the family we went to in Connecticut can have a story of its own, so I will not tell it here, not to ruin the fun of both stories.
As the train started its journey toward New York passing through several small towns and then quarters before our destination, the images at the other side of the window were as unwelcoming as the scenes when we were nearing the city – industrial areas, houses with backyards filled with unwanted objects and children's stuff scattered here and there, even with clothes hanging on ropes in some, Harlem and its apartments, its graffiti and narrow streets, and the narrow green space in between the rails and the fences separating them from the social atmosphere behind which were spotted with garbage among the not so fresh trees which we could assume were craving for the once good old times.
Then the train arrived in the Grand Central Station, the oldest of its kind in all US. It was … - I am trying to find the right adjective - giving you that first image of the New York you know from movies.
That half a day and the next whole one spent in the cosmopolitan city served quite well to change those first images and you thought to yourself, "so, that is the reason why New York has become New York, why it is there in the books, in the movies, and in people's thoughts."
As we put the first step out in the street, the heavy rain forced us to open up umbrellas. With our host in New York we walked through Fifth Avenue and Broadway, people moving around attending whatever business they had, umbrellas touching each other's arms as they swept by each other.
The Rockefeller Center rising high into the sky welcomed us in, as we walked in the hallways to look for the two spaces dedicated to the sale of part of Elton John's closet to aid the kids suffering from AIDS. We watched through the window the group inside who were going through the stuff – one coat was priced just 25000 dollars, another … - we made our jokes as we passed by the eager buyers who looked strange enough New Yorkers. "So can’t he just spare some money for the aid and also give away the clothes as another form of charity?" (but then who can make use of those fancy clothes? So guess he has made the right choice!) or "Maybe he has just bought the clothes cheap and is selling them with a higher price."
Lights in Time Square were beginning to be turned on one after another when we arrived there. We opened our way to go downstairs to Hard Rock Café. As I was walking in, I heard this father behind me telling his son, "Look," and I looked too with the boy, "Have you seen a TV as large as that anywhere before?" I hadn't; the screen had three sections to cover the whole façade of the building in front. Both I and the boy were amazed of the gigantic pictures imposing themselves to the passersby.
The Café has branches all around the world, so you almost know what to expect. Guitars of the famous, teddy bears with the name of the city over their blouses as souvenirs sold, rock music played loud, … but here the guitars on the walls belonged to ones like AC/DC and Kiss to name just a few and in a window installed just down the stairs, the Beatles' suits and their backpacks (which looked so ordinary and somehow ugly, like the uniforms of schoolboys) showed off.
Our friends' house was in East Village, where we took a short rest before going out for dinner. An Italian restaurant, full of young and old trying to have a good time in the small but friendly atmosphere, to whom we joined, enjoying ourselves for the next one or two hours.
The club we headed to afterwards was the complete opposite of the grand several-storey ones found in DC or California. The small space created a somehow cozy atmosphere where you could relax and dance a few steps to the international mood enhanced by the music playing in the air.
Walking back toward home, we stopped at a small bar to amuse our ears to the soft live jazz music played inside before dropping dead after such long hours of driving and tourist walking to get ready for yet another day of New York sightseeing to come.

The second day we were the exact embodiment of tourists with little time and lots of things to see in a city with so much to see. A friend from Toronto whom we had not seen for some nine months joined us and our four-strong group started our tour from in front of the oldest pub in New York where they served beer out of those old-style wooden barrels.
Another friend, a Columbian woman whom I had come to known while she was living in Tehran joined us too for a few hours. Not only was seeing her and talking of nothing but everything great, but also what was fabulous was her actually being a tour leader; so from then on we were real real tourists in New York.
East village toward Greenwich, George Washington Square with its first Roman-style arch, the vicinity of New York University – its library, Islamic center, the alley where the faculty houses were located, its law department, etc – then to Soho – where artists presented their art, mostly paintings and photography works, on the sidewalks, one having his CD player with a bunch of CDs over his car parked just behind him, the other with her storage room in the back of her van – then toward little Italy – where the Italians, whom we found were the second most prosperous group of immigrants after the Jewish in the US, had settled in the first time they had arrived in the city years ago; tables were awaiting customers on the sidewalks in front of the restaurants and cafes, waiters setting them and inviting the tourists in, just to give you the feeling of being in a Europe in the middle of the US; the quarter however has today some sort of Chinese identity to it, as the Chinese population from the neighboring China Town has crept into the area over the years – the China town is something like Iranian bazaars, where you can find no matter what: duplications of many famous brands, copied DVDs of the latest movies, etc. all in apparently cheap prices , and lots of lots of people packed together moving around like a swarm of bees going from shop to shop to satiate their self thirst with some money spending; we couldn’t wait to get out of here and our Columbian friend bid us farewell giving us directions for the rest of our tour.
We then headed toward the Ground Zero, an unusually void space in the middle of high-rises and congested city life. Once here stood two towers, high into the heart of the skies, boasting to all others around of their grandeur and of being a symbol of New York. Today, only posters rest to tell of that one-time glory and add to it the story of how they were gone, in just minutes, taking with them lives endeared by many, the story of how people united to soothe the pain, and the story of the new baby to be born out of the sadness, suffering, hatred, love, and passion, to let the future generations remember the two buildings which turned into ashes and whose ashes changed the history of not only a city and a country but the whole globe.
Each of us told our own story of where we were and how we reacted when the planes hit the first and then the second tower. None of us had believed the incident to be true, but today it felt truer than anything else around us, as wars have been started and are to be started, just because some fundamentalists chose to prove themselves right as they did on that particular day. And now years after, it was just announced in the news the day before we visited the site that remains of bones from those people exploded in the towers had been found on the roof of another high-rise nearby which was to undergo renovation (and we thought "How come? Is this another version of remnants of our Iran-Iraq war martyrs still being found from time to time, reminding us of the brutality and invigorating the pain and sufferings?")
Next we walked through Wall Street and its famous bull statue, then we went on a fairy to Staten Island to see at least from a distance the Statue of Liberty; afterwards we had lunch on the Fishermen's port where people and tourists were enjoying the sun and the show by an African-American who seemed to have no bones in his body as he moved around more like a snake than a human (He surely did not have any bones in his body!) on a weekend. We rested for a few hours next to the water, facing Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges.
With too much still to see and tiredness gradually taking us over, we decided to skip the upper town Central Park and the museums, and to get back to the Village; this time walking through Greenwich and the West Village.
What made these neighborhoods noteworthy was of course their structure and buildings as if reincarnated from another time and space, but also the people walking around: The punk guy with his cock like blue hair and black t-shirt and shorts took you back to the eighties; the chic ladies in the latest fashions took you the glamorous prêt-a-porter runway shows; the gay lovers walking hand in hand presented you with a reality you had till now just read in books about, and the hippy girls and boys made you envy the carefree life they were living. The characteristic features of the area that could otherwise be paradoxical combined as shades of one color, the color of New York: people queued up to the next corner in front of the most famous cup cake store in all the city; a bookstore graced another corner with its large sign of Biography Bookshop; the boutiques of stylish brands seduced shoppers with their unique window arrangements, and a restaurant with an odd setting served a Brazilian-style sushi, a new innovation bringing good fortunes to the owner.
Then there were all these small flower booths all around the streets we walked by, fresh flowers which painted the sidewalks with fresh rainbows of color and a taste of nature in the middle of modern life. And the petit cafes and bars all around were just incredible; with styles as diverse as the nationalities residing there, none were empty, all hosting at least one or two guests: the Irish pub, the Chinese bar, the French café, the one whose owner's apartment was next door and as he chatted with a neighbor, the door ajar let us pick inside, where his baby son was playing and the hall windows opened to a small yet beautiful backyard, and the Moroccan one which we took special interest in, with its eastern-style tiled tables and seats set outside just a few steps lower than the sidewalk level in which a middle-aged man and a gypsy-dressing woman sat to relax while amusing themselves with some guitar playing.
The next stop was another European-style (a New-Yorker reading this would probably get offended, "European-style, ha!") attraction of the city. In Union Square artists of all ages set tables at one side of the place selling paintings, t-shirts, pins, and in another part, a farmers' market was set up, where you could buy the freshest vegetables and fruits and various types of bread direct from the producer, or could freshen up on a glass of grapefruit juice from the flask of a not-so-young woman who also sold home-made cookies and cakes.
And although we were running out of time, the fatigued group of ours decided not to leave the metropolitan with a taste of its famous cheesecake. We waited in line for some time as the bakery was packed with people coming from far and near to prepare for the Easter celebration the day after with rabbit chocolates, cookies, and cakes.

A taste of New York cheesecake still in our mouth and the experience of things both strangely odd and familiar becoming a new part to our entity, we bid farewell to our great hosts, wishing to return to the city to discover more of what still remained to be explored."