I had not been in Jersey City since I left NewYork in 2004. The waterfront had changed so thoroughly with new construction that it wad difficult to find a landmark I recognized. The Katyn statue was still there (for now, at least). Rick and I used to make fun of the ghastly design by throwing our arms back and making a death rattle. Thinking about that, I remembered how when he and Stacy lived down on Monmouth Avenue nearby, the four of us would go to a nice little Polish restaurant called Tania's, that had the best chicken and potatoes. It turns out it was still on the Google Maps.
But everything on the water was new, like I said, with new glass construction in that way that is unforgiving to any sentimentality one had about how it used to be. Our very hotel was a Hyatt that jutted out into the Hudson beside a block of new pier apartments. Red discovered that the three thousand dollars got one a two bedroom.
We played the game of "if one absolutely had to live city", and we both agreed that was about as close to Manhattan as I'd want to get. Definitely I wanted to be on the "America" side of the Hudson. Most of my planning would be based on how quickly I could get out in the countryside. It was not always that way for me, though.
It a sunny, beautiful day. Blue sky with haze along the skyline as in most days. We'd gotten early checkin at the hotel, giving us plenty of time for trip in to the city. It was not even lunchtime yet.
As we walked over to the ferry terminal I tried to point where Henry Hudson had first dropped anchor in September 1609. It had become impossible to find it, with all the new construction jutting out into the river. K. pointed to the shiny building on the Jersey City where he son-in-law worked, for one of the big investment banks. It was a building my ex-wife had once worked in, doing temp work for a different banking firm. The building was now flanked by taller ones that I didn't recognize. My experience of all it had shrunk and receded, with only my determined memory available to penetrate into the what-was-there-before.
We bought tickets and waited for the next boat across to the city. I remarked how odd it was to see these beautiful terminals for the boats, since the whole ferry service there had been started only after 9/11when the PATH line under the Hudson had been destroyed. I was happy to do so. I had always liked taking those little zippy boats across the massive flow of the Hudson, along that side of Manhattan, where it was called the North River in the olden days.
But the most phenomenal sight of course the giant tower across the river that had been built since I was last there. Of course I'd seen many pictures of it, but this was the first time in person. Like the old one, it is magnificently directly in front of you as you stand on the waterfront of that part of Jersey City. It was always the best view of the old towers.
How we used to hate those towers, and mocked them. But that's a whole different story.
During the few moments it took to cross to Manhattan, as the terminal on the other side by the Winter Garden and the Financial Center was closer and closer, I felt an overwhelming peace that I had not felt in my entire life.
It felt as if all the things had ever happened to me in New York had happened in a different life than my own, even though I knew from the continuity of memory-consciousness that it was all real and had happened to me. It was as if the City was brand new to me, yet for once in all my history of experience with it, even before I ever set eyes on it, but only heard about it, there was no aching yearning in me to make it my own. All of that had happened. All of it was paid for. I could behold the city with the detachment of the faculty of beauty alone, overflowing with a compassion for everyone there, living out that yearning I once had.
In that moment I loved everyone there, and everyone I had ever known. I looked on the sinful wretchedness of my life back then as if from beyond this earth. I thought about the people I would want to exchange forgiveness with, whom I can no longer see. Long ago I had repented of so much of that, but the ugliness of one's actions is not altered over time. But it was overwhelmed by the beauty that was before me, in all the people there, and all the new buildings in quirky shapes that had risen that irrepressible garden in the years since I'd been there.
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