New York, Saturday May 10, 2003, in the early afternoon.

As Clara, Karin and I went out the door of ABC No Rio onto Rivington street on the Lower East Side, we were greeted by the the smell of bread frying on the hotplate of a portable kitchen set up right there on the sidewalk. Here at the Nomadic Café uniformed artist/waiters bustled back and forth serving passers-by free artwork piping hot. Would we like some French toast? We sat down at one of their tables. Was there a better way to begin our walk? This was definitely not "Les Deux Magots" but rather a cross between an old-fashioned Parisian "café du quartier" and a portable soup kitchen. John J. McGurk, J. Gabriel Lloyd and David Allyn, members of the artistic collaborative PIPS, built and financed the café themselves. They conceived it as a "participatory sculpture", a place for people "to gather and develop relationships with strangers in the heart of New York City". Today they were offering French (not Freedom) toast. We felt right at home. We ate our art with maple syrup.

When we finally set off, it was with the idea of "interpreting" Christina Ray's "Post-September 11th Walk" by walking it ourselves. On September 14, 2001, she had journeyed on foot from Union Square to "as close to the World Trade Center site as possible". The reason for her trip? To "just experience the strange and sad moment in time". Her walk ended at Houston and Broadway, where she met with "obstacles : smoke, identity check; we could only walk as far south as Houston Street; beyond that, the streets were closed and guarded." The "hot and sunny weather" made her "tired and thirsty." What other factors contributed to her memory of this trip? The "destruction of the World Trade Center, comfort of three friends who were with me, the appearance of many sad people wandering aimlessly like myself, leaflets and posters of missing people, tension created by the military presence, general anxiety, a sense of community and connectedness."

I took out my camera, ready to document our every move once we got to Houston street (we had planned to do her walk in reverse). It was quite late, lunchtime really. Clara would have had some more French toast, by then she was ravenous (we had not had breakfast), but we thought it better to leave some for other people. On Houston street we stopped in what Karin described as "one of New York's last surviving old-style eating houses", the Katz Delicatessen. "A Lower East Side institution since 1888"(1), it was a vast room decorated with vintage photographs of celebrity diners where Clara tucked away two beef hot dogs lathered with ketchup. A few doors on, she had to make a pit stop. We asked at Russ & Daughters Appetizers: they wouldn't turn down a ten-year-old. Back on the street, thirst got the better of her, so we entered Bereket, a small Turkish takeout place, to buy a bottle of water. The crêpes at the check-out counter were tempting, by this time we were all hungry, so we each got one. A bit further in front of Yonah Shimmel's Bakery the smell of garlic knish just out of the oven persuaded us to stop once again. "Wait till you try this" said Karin as she tore off a piece of her knish and offered it to us.

At this point we decided that Union Square would be a more appropriate starting point, that way we could follow Christina's path chronologically. Reconstructing it after the fact is not the same as experiencing it in sequence. Buildings and streets can be unrecognizable when seen from the opposite direction. I got out her checklist. "Plaza at south end of Union Square Park, fountain in Washington Square Park, corner of Houston and Broadway." We took the number 6 train uptown to Union Square where we began our search for the "makeshift memorials, signs, military vehicles, police officers and many sad people" she had depicted. "After the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, Union Square became a spontaneous center of grieving and peace vigils" notes Jim Naurekas (2). It was a bright spring day a year and a half later, people were engaged in animated conversations with cell phones as they trotted along purposefully, oblivious to the bodies milling around them , others were just as busy kicking balls underfoot, twisting out jazz riffs or resolutely hanging out. At Union Square north the farmer's market with its vegetable stalls, flower-sellers and cellophane-wrapped pastries was in full swing under the watchful eye of a block-long bikini-clad beauty. We looked for traces of the memorials Karin described to us. I photographed the places she pointed out, the fountains, walls, statues, fences and signposts people had plastered with the faces of the missing. George Washington's pedestal was spic and span, as was Gandhi's. No trace there of 9/11.

On the way down University Place (Karin thought this might be the route Christina had taken) I noticed the Cedar Tavern: was it the famous Abstract Expressionist bar? It was, in fact, farther down the street, at number 24 that, as Jim Naurekas explains, "artists like Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Franz Kline gathered in the 1950s. Jackson Pollock was banned from the place for kicking down the men's room door. The bar was also favored by beat writers like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Frank O'Hara and LeRoi Jones. Jack Kerouac was kicked out at about the same time Pollock was, allegedly for pissing in an ashtray." (2).
I didn't take a picture.

In Washington Square Park, a small child watched a pigeon cavorting in a water puddle, while others climbed monkey bars behind a wrought iron fence (it had probably been there for years; 9/11 just made it visible). I was able to find several blocked-off streets, a Sidewalk Closed Ahead (the city is a perpetual work in progress), a police vehicle.

Our walk was punctuated by Clara's repeated reminders that we needed to visit FAO Schwarz and return to The Museum of Natural History's rain forest (we had been there earlier). I snapped storefront façades and fire escapes. Classic New York.

Trains, soldiers, an airport, a dungeon! This might take Clara's mind off FAO Schwarz. (Do you think it did?) Karin called our attention to the poster in the window: "Classic Toys wishes to acknowledge that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are profound values worth giving our all for. We are proud to be New Yorkers." September 11 has gone underground.

As we approached the intersection of Houston and Broadway, the advertisements became louder. "REVOLUTION!" screamed one. "LIBERATE YOUR MONEY!" shrieked a block-long billboard running the whole length of a building site.

Clara and I had been to Ground Zero the day before, on our way back from the Statue of Liberty (which incidentally was closed to the public; we could only visit the grounds, buy a Hot Dog and Freedom Fries). Ground Zero looked very much like a typical New York construction site, remarkable only by its impressive size. Should we believe what we see in photographs? September 11 has moved on. To Iraq, to Free the Huddled Masses?

By the time we reached Houston and Broadway, it was already 4 pm. We decided to celebrate the achievement of our goal by sitting down and having a proper meal. How long will it be before Iraq can do just that?

New York Body 'n' Soul Map - Psy-Geo-Conflux