Coming back from from New Haven, we got off at Grand Central and he took me down one of the concourses to the place with the vaulted ceiling. He stood at one corner and I stood at another and we whispered into the walls, our voices drifting across to each other.
When I first moved to New York, enamoured by its parks and museums and design firms and restaurants and bars, I never imagined that there could be much more to its geography than that. How wrong I was. My first drive across the George Washington Bridge was jaw-dropping - the cliffs of New Jersey are astonishingly tall, covered in a dense thicket of trees. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Drive up 87 to the Catskills or the Adirondacks and you'll witness the Hudson River winding its way through spectacular scenery and unforgiving seasons. Now I can't get enough; just two hours up the road, it's like the city never existed. Perfect recuperation after a long week.
Erie Basin is a really wonderful little shop full of old, creepy and beautiful things, such as Victorian mourning jewelry (some with hair in it), Freemason masks from the 1900's, tiny children's rings from the 1700's, and all kinds of other treasures. It is really as much a museum as it is a store, and all of the items have a haunting and unique aura.