Enough about sweet desserts. Wanna get into the deep shit? I'll miss how easy it is to hate you and how hard it is to love you. You filthy capital of the empire, epicenter of capitalism, lair of wall street, belly of the beast. You. You the one that ordered the landings on Grenada and the DR - just to name the one's with which I had a personal encounter - and you who imbued breath on the death corpse of a Condor that overflew the Andes ravaging it's own for so long, for way too long. But then also you, where some of my dearest friends found love, you who, by the art of the anonymity of the masses and your story of not complying to the power, allow for freedoms unseen where I come from. And, mostly, you who have nothing to do with the so goddamned wall street. ¡You at the margins of you! You that lived through the broken windows, you and your habit of opening hydrants when summer wants your kids to dance on the street. You, feeding both Guatemalans and Bangladeshis, one next door to each other. You, speaking more tongues in one square mile than the rest of the country. You, dancing on the top of Sunset Park while saluting Mictlampa, Tlahuiztlampa, Huitztlampa and Cihuatlampa and then rushing to your job to bake some Rosca de Reyes for seis de enero. I guess misunderstanding comes so easily and hope shines for the one who endures through distrust.
I'll miss tap beer, specially Guiness. The 24/7 subway. Damn! That's one of the nicest things you've got, public transportation that serves all of the city, that is true democracy (and keep your first world complaints, you don't even imagine what it is to ride a combi in la sierra). I'll miss the parks, I'll miss the public libraries (another one you just nailed - and now by you, I mean you, Brooklyn), I'll miss the rivers and the parks by the rivers. I'll miss standing at the Brooklyn Bridge at night and counting up to seventeen planes crossing the sky (first and last reference to any of your many overphotographed landmarks).
But now listen to this, 'cause this may be what I'll be missing the most. For the last three years I could go and sit at Teachers College's cafeteria, anytime, any day, and sooner or later a friend would walk by. We would sit and talk and more friends would keep coming until we were a group of eight who didn't even previously agree to meet, who bumped into each other and refused to pretend we were too busy for a chat, who could later go have Jordanian food, bring a platter of East African fish and rice or just sit there and be friends for the sake of it. Ginsberg. Before I came here, when I started doing some research on who you were, I came across Ginsberg. And when I finally started finding the pleasures you hide so delightfully, I realized that just like him I wanted
a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
