Places

Stand clear of the closing doors. Next stop, Brooklyn Bridge City Hall.

Throwbacks.

Visit the old places, the lost and hazy worlds of our past. Relive them with fresh eyes. Let your body unlock memories lost to time space.

Go there, physically.

Do they still smell the same? The local bakery? The breeze from the nearby shore? The warm fragrance of brewing coffee in grandpas moka pot.

Can you still hear the sounds of the old world? The clink of a coin in an arcade machine. The whir of someone kindly rewinding a VHS tape.

Timespace is the memory that can only be unlocked with you standing in the place where it happened.

Your body needs that key. That portal to jump timelines.

Next stop: Fulton Street.

Sometimes I try to remember the details of old spaces. It’s a treasure hunt of memories. The colors of rugs in grandparent’s apartments. The layout of the building you once lived in. The details of the posters in your old room.

Sometimes I look at old pictures just to experience the spaces that they accidentally captured.

Space is a portal.

Sometimes you walk by a space you’ve never been to, and you feel the ghosts of its past. Good, bad, terrifying. The momentary dread under a light post. A child’s giggle in an empty room.

When I was 20, I had a brief urban exploration kick, and snuck into an abandoned hospital in Staten Island. It was frozen in time, but decayed. Even the insects abandoned the place.

But the ghosts. The ghosts were there. Watching us, just out of sight. You can feel the tortured past in the crumbling buildings.

Next Stop: Brooklyn Bridge, City Hall.

You can still hear your crazy old neighbor out of the window, as you’re waking up in the old place. The dream suddenly vanished and you’re thrown back into today.

Come back to the present.

Find a corner or object in a place you’re in now. Stare at it until you notice something you’ve never noticed about it before. Maybe the small crack in a flower pot. The way the rainbow of light reflects off of the TV. The water tower on the building across the street.

That object becomes the portal to today, which will one day be a lost memory. This is your key.

Stand clear of the closing doors please.