New York and Indianapolis

There were those early morning breakfasts in New York City during one of my trips in the ’10s. I stayed in the St Marks hotel in Greenwich Village and, for two nights, at the Washington Square Hotel. At the WSH I breakfasted on the premises. The St Marks place didn’t offer breakfast and I went out to eat, sometimes right around the corner, where I could sit outside and watch the early morning traffic grinding along. The whole trip was a working holiday for me, a chance to do research using a book that was out of print and hard to find. The research work made it hard to enjoy many of the other activities going on in the City, so free time moments became that much more valuable. I’d started a project at a literary conference in Paris, and once I saw my original plan wasn’t working I was determined to revise the paper I’d presented and get it published. This meant getting up early and going to the library for a morning session, then going back in the afternoon and reading till closing time. But at least I had time for some small part of the spectacle of the city grinding its way. By nightfall I was usually too tired to do much more than find a restaurant, walk around for an hour or so, and turn in. But since I don’t know the city that well, just walking around the Village and the Downtown area in search of varied fare was holiday-like. Then there was a time when I put together a supermarket meal. What stands out about that is that I found myself being given extra portions of deli food by the staff. The reason for this—what I suppose has to be the reason—is that I was wearing a sports jacket that had seen enough wear to either be left in New York or discarded when I got home. And secondly, since I wasn’t familiar with the grocery I was shopping in I spent a longer time than usual picking and choosing different items. In any case I think I detected a sigh of relief from the staff when they realized I wasn’t shoplifting. In the end I walked out of the place with more bread rolls than I could use and an extra helping of potato salad. I think it was potato salad. Maybe it’s enough to say the gesture was welcome since my studies weren’t being financed by scholarships. This was a kind of prelude, anyway, to a visit to my hometown, Indianapolis, where I spent four days enjoying the hospitality of friends before going back to New York, then to Barcelona to finish my project. It’s said we can’t go home again. Uundoubtedly true in some ways, but not in this case. And you always hope to be able to repay the hospitality.