New York, In Red
Coffee upstairs, a red room, and a few days of going nowhere in particular.
Some cities you arrive in. This one absorbs you.
I did very little that would photograph as an itinerary. Coffee upstairs, taken slowly, with the window open because September gives you about four days where that is the correct decision. Getting ready without rushing. A room carpeted entirely in red, which I did not expect to think about again and have thought about several times since.
A little shopping. Not the point of anything — but there was a note waiting when I got in, in handwriting, about what the day could be spent on. That is the part I actually keep. Not what was in the envelope. That somebody sat down beforehand and decided the trip should feel a particular way, and then made sure it did.
You can feel that kind of forethought in a room the moment you walk into it. It arrives before anything else does.
What I keep coming back to is how easy the whole week got. Somewhere between getting dressed and going nowhere in particular, I stopped checking the time. I let the days be long.
That is the version of travel I like most. Not the list. The part where a city stops being somewhere you are visiting and becomes somewhere you simply are.
