nyc

New York City is, as I had thought it would be, busy being New York City. As the plane passed over Manhattan on its way to LGA, I could see even that its wound is healing: the WTC site, from the air, looks much less like the site of a disaster, and rather now the site of a tremendous building project. I had to look twice to make sure that it was lower Manhattan that I was looking at.

Plaza lobby: crammed with people checking in, piles of luggage. We (me, Buck, Peter & his friend Stephen) kept ours with us out of a sense of efficiency and not thrift. And I haven’t wandered out of the building since. Behind us in line at the reception desk: concerned mother and daughter, daughter carrying two heavy dresses on hangers, draped across her two arms like corpses in white body bags, daughter complaining of weight. The daughter was perfectly made up, the way my mother had always longed for me to be, her lipstick applied in the perfect way that is almost impossible to do yourself from a simple tube of color. Mother assuring her time and again that she couldn’t help her, but maybe, here, let me take my own one, no really, here, let me try… It was one thirty and they needed to be dressed and in the ballroom at two. Nasty flashbacks to my own debut (me in strange white dress, mother trying to occupy spotlight all night) occurred for a few seconds until my husband, in his own line reached a live receptionist.

Two bedroom suite, overlooking the fountain out front. Hey, I should always be the one to make the travel plans.

So I sit in the brasserie that they’ve made out of The Space Formerly Known As The Edwardian Room. Pale wood flourishes beneath the dark oak ceiling. Glass shelves. Marble tables. Recessed lighting. Art Deco/Industrial/Arts and Crafts style fixtures. Huge old chandeliers with enormous red lampshades. You can find this all over NYC (well, maybe not the chandeliers and oak ceilings). I have a sudden longing for Edwardian style, though I’ve not been given any reason other than stylistic to be unhappy. The Amstel Light is cold, and its glass clean.

The bartender and the guy next to me are discussing a play involving an interaction between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, whom the bartender keeps calling Heisengard. He is the founder, assures the bartender, of the Heisengard uncertainty principle, which is really a big thing, if you’ve ever heard of it before, he tells my fellow patron, who is less verbose. Heisenberg was Hitler’s boy, says the bartender, which is true. He could very well have developed the atomic bomb at the same time we did. He had the knowledge, the genius, the talent — I myself know that from many sources, especially James Gleick’s Genius. But why did he not? Perhaps the cost of (very possible) failure in the Third Reich was too high. Perhaps he saw what sort of world it would be were Hitler to win the war. I don’t know if anyone is certain of the reason.

The uncertainty principle: the observer affects the observed.

The uncertainty principle: one can know the position of a particle, or the speed at which it is travelling — never both.

So, what is more important — your place in the universe, or your progress through it?