The Revenge of Memory...

There are some mornings when rolling into New York on the train is still a pleasure. This morning was one of them.

It's Sunday and the oppressive heat of Summer has lessened to a cool 65 degrees at night and 80 during the day. I get off the train at the big hole in the ground formally known as the World Trade Center and start my amble up to work.

West Broadway is one giant construction site but in this cool clear morning you can see the Empire State Building towering over Manhattan like a giant gnomon on a sundial. The fact that you can see it from this far downtown always makes me think of the album cover of "Bleeker & MacDougal" by Fred Neil.


An obscure record but a great one. No one remembers Fred Neil but everyone remembers his song "Everybody's Talkin" which was one of his and the key song on the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack. A quintessential New York City movie if ever there was one.

The Avenues act like great long wind tunnels on some mornings. On the Gulf Coast Hurricane Gustav is about to make landfall, but in New York the gentle breeze is welcome to blow out the leftover humidity from the previous days rain. Everything feels clean.

As I walk away from the hole in the ground and head North I look back and see that the hole itself is gradually disappearing. The concrete foundations are being laid for the Freedom Tower and the walls are just about ready to breach ground level. Pretty soon you will not be able to see into the place where 3000 people lost their lives. In time the building will act like a giant scab and people will heal.

I hope.

I work my way through the slalom course of scaffolding towards my building. Under the scaffold at the corner of West Broadway and Park Place a small community of homeless people is growing. It started with one guy and a shopping cart full of his lfe and now there are about 5 people. Sleeping bags and cardboard boxes filled with their physical possessions are scattered across the sidewalk.

In contrast. This is Tribeca. It's otherwise very affluent and it occurs to me that the residents pay a lot of money to make it feel like Europe. I pass the Bouley Bakery with its delicious croissants and French bread and I pass Petite D'Abrille with it's giant selection of Belgian beers and Tintin books. It reminds you that New York is still a city of immigrants, albeit posh ones in this area.

I grab a cup of coffee and sit in Reade Park. It is only 7am but already there is a lady with an easel painting a portrait of one of the old industrial buildings that have been turned into luxury lofts. I watch her brush strokes for a few minutes and see the brick facade of the building evolve on her canvas. I am listening to Jackie Leven on my headphones and his songs take me back to Fife and remind me that I am, myself, an immigrant.

I find myself thinking about the Ceres Folk Museum. A place in a one street Fife town a few miles west of St Andrews.

The last time I visited this place was probably in the 1980's and even back then I remember thinking it was a bit crap. It was a few crofts and a few rusty old ploughs and tractors. There was a blacksmiths shop but the blacksmith was never there.

My family used to stop there a lot back in the day as it was halfway between St Andrews and our caravan site where we went every weekend in the summer. As a kid I thought it was so we could get out the car and stretch our legs, now that I look back on it, I think it was more so my Grandad could go for a pint. Maybe it was both.

I have no idea why it came back to me, I guess it was something in one of Jackie's songs. Here I am, standing in New York 28 years later, and my mind is in Fife.

I look up at the blue sky between the buildings and ask: "How did I get here?"