The things I remember about New York is no longer held in images and photographs.
snap snap snap snap snap snap snap
It’s a mixture of things, really. For example, there is the smell of a bottle of perfume that we haggled for in Canal Street from a young Indian man (We knew he was Indian because our sole Indian companion haggled for us and got us the bargains). It is an incredibly sweet smell that is probably more fit for a shower gel or body scrub than an actual perfume. Not in the vanilla-y or chocolate-y or coconut-y sense, but anyways. It’s just sweet. You almost want to down the bottle it if it wasn’t so inedible. I had worn it once and I was waiting in the Univeristy LRT station to take the train home. I caught a breeze and all of a sudden, I felt, for a moment, I felt New York. I heard the first few bars of my favourite song from the musical we saw and then there was the feel of the mid-morning sun as we made our way to Central Park, holding on to our breakfasts-to-go (courtesy of the hotel) in one hand and a styrofoam cup of hot chocolate in the other.
It’s weird that despite the 7 facebook albums by me alone and the 1234654879123+ by others, there is not one photo that I can say: that’s New York. Not the pictures of walking down an avenue in Central Park, not the pictures with the NYPD in wall street, not the picture beside the pigeons atop the empire state, nor the Sarsi party after Broadway night. Definitely not the barely recognizable Statue of Liberty through the fog or even the Picassos, nor that great big wall covered by a Monet. It wasn’t the pictures in the limousines to and from the hotel, nor the shots from the fancy dinner at Maria Pia. And that is bizarre. I love all those moments but nothing quite says New York to me as that strum of the guitar and that candy-sweet scent.
And so now I have to ask: WHY do I insist on taking 20000+ pictures when I’m on vacation? Cause trust me, come August 11, I will probably have dedicated a whole separate site/blog section for the trip to L’Ecosse.