A to Z Challenge: My theme this year is NYC before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

UPPER WEST SIDE: I love the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I’m sure it has a lot to do with it being where I stayed when I visited NYC for the first time back in 2013. Actually, it probably goes back even further to You’ve Got Mail, one of my favorite movies, and one that celebrates the UWS. There’s just something about this neighborhood; the history, the architecture, the vibe. However, we chose Brooklyn for two reasons: our dear friend and her now-toddler daughter live here; and Brooklyn bucks go a lot further when it comes to living arrangements. Flanked by Central Park and the Hudson River, the UWS spans south to 59th Street and north, to 110th Street. The Upper East Side might have Museum Mile, but the UWS boasts plenty of cultural go-tos (Lincoln Center, American Museum of Natural History, Columbia University, and several theaters, like the Beacon). It’s got Zabar’s for Pete’s sake! The brownstone- and tree-lined neighborhoods also have that quintessential NYC feel, too.

You’ll also find the 72nd Street station control house, that opened in 1904 as one of the original 28 stations of the NC subway system. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the control house was deemed adequate because of narrow stairways and no underground crossover or crossunder to access all trains from one entrance. A new control house built near it in 2002, provides the much-needed space and second exit/entrance.

The station underwent another renovation in 2018 that included a sky and cloud mosaic by Yoko Ono, who lives in the iconic Dakota building atop the subway stop. I took a picture of the mosaic one day–not even knowing who created it–but for the life of me, I can’t find it. Thank goodness for the interwebs.

UPANISHADS: I started studying Hindu philosophy five years ago and essayed my experience for a magazine in early 2017. For those first couple of years, these philosophies and the practice of meditation provided me with a perspective that kept me in a calm and contented Zenned-out state. I guess I had enough Zen reserves to muster through the first few months of Trump’s “presidency,” but as time went on, those tanks got tapped out. I remember at the time, I had been reading the Upanishads, ancient Sanskrit texts of spiritual teachings and ideas of Hinduism, but the god-awfulness of the Orange Menace, became too much and my Zen ran for the hills. I’ve been struggling to catch up to it ever since.

I don’t subscribe to any organized religion (often an oxymoron, if ask me), but I can get behind some of these sacred teachings and words of wisdom regarding karma and inner spiritual contemplation. Written in poetic verse, I find the text in the Upanishads much more palatable than most translated spiritual teachings. I’ll be the first to admit, some of it feels preachy and not relatable, which is why I don’t throw all my philosophical and spiritual eggs in one basket, but it’s got several nuggets of insight and perspective that my brain seems to align with. I’ve been revisiting these lessons over the past couple of months–even before this pandemic began–in an effort to find just an inkling of that elusive Zen. I’ll leave you with a snippet of the Aitareya Upanishad that pertains to the unity of life:

The Self is in all.
He is all the gods, the five elements,
Earth, air, fire, water, and space;
all creatures,
Great or small, born of eggs, of wombs,
of heat,
Of shoots, horses, cows, elephants, men
and women;
All beings that walk, all beings that fly,
And all that neither walk nor fly.”