Many of my personal pieces tend to be dark and pessimistic, but even I have moments where I feel happy about surviving the Trump years, enduring the pandemic, and where I am at peace with the world. On a sunny morning I sat on the seat of my walker watching NYU students of all races and ethnic groups pass by to class. I embraced the fact that this school, that I know is built on money and privilege, still contains a racially variegated student body that was becoming ever more diverse.
Turning from the students I saw at the distance rays of sunlight reflect off an architecturally uninspired white apartment tower, making the street gleam for a moment. Watching the light brought back vivid memories of trips to London I will most likely no longer be able to take. I recall gray days when the sun suddenly appeared, and made the city, and the lovely, arty, green neighborhood we inhabited for the year shine. The sun often only stayed around for an hour or two, and then the skies darkened and one felt that infamous London dampness take over one’s being. And then the light abruptly came out again — the London norm — and all was aglow.
I often have invoked those memories when dark thoughts envelop me. I know that section of London was never quite as luminous as I remember, but images of its narrow, handsome streets, a pub with a garden, a neighborhood shopping area with a variety of small shops, and the great park we lived close by, the Heath, always offer me great pleasure. The Heath was an enormous expanse of greenery (790 acres) located on one of the highest points in London, running from Hampstead to Highgate. It was rambling and hilly, and topographically varied. In my many visits to London, I probably explored almost all of its acreage.
I remember walking past its serene swimming ponds, kite fliers on Parliament Hill, bird sanctuaries, dense woods with ancient trees, green meadows, dirt lanes, often heading towards my destination at Kenwood House — a stately home that contained Rembrandts, a Hals, a Vermeer, and a Henry Moore sculpture in its bountiful flower garden. I also remember dreaming of an apartment house built seemingly inside the Heath, mysteriously looming over a field. The dream was an ambiguous one, whose meaning wasn’t clear to me, both forbidding and at same time a sense of entering an idyllic world.
There was also a charming, small shopping district, South End Green, tucked away near the Heath, with pubs, coffee shops, a bakery, a book shop, an art supply store, John Keats House, and even a Marks and Spencer that sold food, clothes, etc. I have few dreams of London today, since I have stopped traveling. But I remember the times I spent there as usually happy and sometimes exhilarating. Though I know I am repressing those instants of anguish and unhappiness I experienced.
I would love to hold on to these happy moments, but they tend to disappear as quickly as the sun does on a London spring day.
