2015
i keep my feet on solid ground
maura @ 6:09 pm
What’s the word for feeling melancholy as you experience something because you know you’ll be nostalgic for it when you remember it later? Surely the Germans have a word for that, probably many syllables.
We were in the city about a month ago seeing a movie at the NY International Children’s film Festival and I was strangely gripped by that very feeling. It was a lovely time — we had burgers and beer for dinner in Chelsea before heading to the movie showing at the School of Visual Arts on West 23rd. It was cold and clear as it had been for so much of the winter. We happened to be walking from the restaurant to the theater at that magic time that photographers love, when the light is just so. And it seemed like I could feel everything we’ve ever done in that neighborhood layered one on top of the other: when we used to go to the Boston Market and Krispy Kreme before seeing movies on 23rd St., when we went to Co for CUNYPie and we brought Gus and then had to stop in the New York Public Library branch on 23rd so he could go to the bathroom, when commencement was at the Javits Center and we walked down to have lunch at a Chinese restaurant and ran into a former student who’d been in my class the very first semester it existed, when we saw a movie at the Festival the prior year and there were lots of free snacks at the theater and afterward we went to dinner at the place that the NYC ebola patient later ate at.
We are not moving anytime soon, really we are not. The high school situation is sorted, I’m more settled into my now not-so-new job, and we’re still good with our apartment, neighborhood, etc. But at some point we will leave, I can imagine. Maybe it’ll be when Gus goes to college, maybe later. The thing of having one kid only is that we can always, in theory, move to where he ends up. I kind of can’t imagine ever leaving, I can’t think of anyplace else I’d want to live, but at the same time I think we will, someday. It’s a weird feeling, a strange sense. NYC, I’m already missing you.
At the film festival the movie we saw began with this hilarious short, which I love so much I could watch it forever:
In the Beginning from Arthur Metcalf on Vimeo.
