Samson

The city is a wonderful meditation on what is loved, what persists, and is left behind.  Some places and objects receive an inequitable proportion of attention, are polished and carried forward, while others are left in stasis, or else, to decay.

The New York City mythos, as told by its residents is that the it was once a magical setting, nascent and pregnant with every possibility.  Its denizens will lament that extinct vision, contrasting it to the city of today, specifying the store closures, the loss of one favorite haunt or another. 

"The city has changed," they will mutter, oft accompanied with a sigh.

At its core, perhaps, the city has been steadfast in its conduct and operation, an unchanging shedding and reinvention of things and places.

On the day before my wedding day, my father and I huddled at the desk in my hotel room, nursing glasses of dandelion wine from a slowly dwindling bottle.  "Eventually," my father spoke slowly, feeling out the words, though the alcohol may have played a part in this respect, "the love will fade, but a coexistence will persist."  He let the last words hang on the air between us, "Interdependent."  At that point, I had thought, what poor timing for a stark, morose a view of marriage and relationships.  But over time, I think I have come to understand his view.  

I think my love for New York City has tempered over time, but in truth, it was never a romance for the ages (Can one-sided loves ever be romantic and not pathetic?)  I was enthralled, and New York merely shifted some of its belongings to make room for me, no more than what you might do to accommodate a fellow commuter on the subway.  And while I might say the city used to be this or that, that you could live, LIVE, as if the city changed to spurn me, the central proposition of the city as an organism is to change in order to thrive.  I just wanted, unrealistically, to hold it in place.  

Regina Spektor - Samson.