After a twenty-year absence, I journeyed with my son to New York, a kingdom he’d heard tell of, never touched.

Having been away so long, I’d forgotten –

The magnitude: Whereas 40 story structures are titans in the west, they are foot soldiers in Manhattan.

The relentlessness: structures mounted in Los Angeles before 1930 are regarded as quaint…but not long for this world. In New York, turn of the century apartment buildings elegant, proud, glower down in muscular certainty.

The rush, the crush: Times Square, once a trench of human darkness, now a raging torrent of wares hawked in every technological medium.

The Heart: groaning platters of Bolognese in Carmine’s on 44th street…

The Soul: Sacred splashing echoes down the walls of the 9/11 memorial.

I won’t wait another twenty.