BACK INSIDE THE HEARTBEAT

By MICHAEL PERKINS

I SPENT MY ENTIRE LAND-LOCKED OHIO CHILDHOOD longing to wander the concrete canyons of New York City.

I ordered things from the Big Apple just to see the return address on the packages that came to my little suburban Columbus house, as if I needed regular assurance that the Gotham of myth, the New Yawk of movies and music and literature, was an actual place. I was nearly forty before I got to make my first trip there; I was creeping up on fifty before it became a semi-regular destination, thanks to my having married a girl who grew up on Rockaway Beach and to whom “the City” was just a subway ride away. Better still, her sister and daughter still lived there, giving us a readymade excuse to leave the torrid flats of Arizona for regular recharges from the World’s Biggest Battery.

As you read this, I will finally have been able to visit Manhattan for the first time in five years, much of that dry spell enforced by the monastic life was all adopted during Covid. During the worst of the pandemic, which assaulted NYC with the force of a tsunami well before it hit the rest of us, I used the city as a flickering candle of resilience that we all prayed would not be snuffed out, posting images of the town from my archives nearly everyday on Facebook along with as much rah-rah encouragement for her resurrection as I could muster. Now, I am back inside the heartbeat, arriving in the season that is the most reflective for many, as it was for songwriter Vernon Duke:

Autumn in New York
Why does it seem so inviting?
Autumn in New York
It spells the thrill of first-nighting
Glittering crowds
And shimmering clouds
In canyons of steel
They’re making me feel
I’m home

I love turning my eye in all directions to try to capture the city’s drama, its grandeur, its errors, its untamed, electrical energy. In a city that never sleeps, I also want to remain awake; I might miss something. And sometimes, the boy inside me snaps the shutter purely out of instinct. Because, really, I’ve had all the pictures inside my head my entire life.

They’re making me feel I’m home.