THE SLOW, DEEP, DEVINE CURTAIN CALL

By MICHAEL PERKINS

ALTHOUGH I HAVE MADE MANY VISITS TO NEW YORK CITY, both before and after 2011, November of that year holds a near-magical place in my heart, as that most theatrical of towns chose that particular time to stage the most glorious welcome for me of my lifetime.

The old admonition to “never meet your heroes” has never applied to my encounters with NYC, as it has always lived up to the lofty and majestic dreams of my landlocked youth in the American midwest, where I grew up in towns that boated “the” big local skyscraper instead of an entire forest of them, places where dreams had cramped parameters, limits, unlike the Apple, which had its own accent, its own vocabulary, its own Seven Wonders Of The World. As a photographer, I found that many of my visual bucket lists were composed of local Manhattan landmarks, complete with daydreams on just how I would shoot the neighborhoods and boroughs, and all their native must-sees. I visited other places, but I breathed, even prayed, in fluent, fervent New York.

And so, 2011 was something of a mission year, in that it was the first time my wife (born and bred) and myself were to visit the resurrection that was already well underway at Ground Zero, and within that, to experience the Great City for the first time in the depths of autumn. “Autumn In New York, why does it seem so inviting…?” Not only autumn, but the singular transformation in color that could only be seen at its peak in Central Park. However, in the weeks before we were to fly in, weather bulletins were alarming.

Bethesda Fountain Plaza, November 2011.

Just weeks prior to our arrival date, the city had endured a massive low pressure-generated storm called, alternatively, the 2011 “Halloween Nor’easter”, “Snowtober”, “Shocktober”, “Storm Alfred” and “Oktoberblast”, a severe system that, as it cruised up the east coast from the Carolinas, broke snowfall records in twenty cities, covering NYC in a spooky blanket of Halloween white. My heart sank; there went fall color. The trees, whipped by merciless gusts, would almost certainly be bare for our visit. Oh, well, another year…..

In the end, the snow melted before we flew in, and, by early November, the leaves in the park had held, cradling my dream site at the Bethesda Fountain Plaza in explosive hues of red, green, brown and gold. A magical framing of my fantasy location within the bounds of my favorite place on the planet. Living for twenty-five years in Arizona, this transplanted farm-belt boy had lived for many a fall season without the wondrous palette that was a birthright for most of the country. Now, the city had given me Thanksgiving and Christmas in one big, brightly wrapped bundle. That year, autumn was no sign of the end of things, or a season of sad slowing. It was divine, and for that one amazing afternoon, it belonged to me.