Dear Reader,
Jonathan Vatner, today’s guest author, is the author of The Bridesmaids Union, about an online support group for bridesmaids. Carnegie Hill, about the interconnected lives of Upper East Side apartment dwellers, earned praise from People, Town & Country, The New York Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the managing editor of Hue, the magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology, and teaches fiction writing at New York University and the Hudson Valley Writers Center. Jonathan lives with his husband and cats in Yonkers, New York.
Please email Jonathan and welcome him to the book club: [email protected]
Leaving the City
In the sixteen years I lived in New York City, I was always on edge, bracing myself for the next indignity. I thought it was a weakness that I couldn't get used to being crammed into fetid subway cars, smelling garbage when I opened the kitchen window, or waking to a cockroach skittering across my face. The sidewalks were ornamented with dog droppings and chicken bones and condoms. At night, souped-up coupes pumped music at maximum volume, and car alarms wailed for hours, inconsolable.
When I finally convinced my husband to flee the metropolis for Yonkers, I cleaved to the natural world as if I might lose it. I reveled in the soil beneath my sneakers, getting lost in a thousand shades of green, chattering crepuscular birdsong, sunsets streaking the clouds orange and pink, the extravagant perfume of lilacs, the silence of the night.
What I love most is our view of the Hudson River, every hour a different splendor. Sometimes it's still as glass until a barge treads past, unfurling an elegant curtain of ripples. On icy winter days, a biting wind froths the surface. On hot summer afternoons, the river lies as still as my cats, sleeping belly up in the press of sunlight. As I write this, the afternoon light is dancing on the surface of the water, silver filigree atop a slab of chrome.
And the cliffs! Every morning, the stoic Palisades greet me as I sip my coffee and begin to write. Under a baby blue sky, the craggy face shines copper. On overcast days, it looks brown or slate or yellowish gray. It hides behind bursts of bright green foliage in summer and shrinks into the darkness at night, distinguishable only by the headlights of the cars threading through the trees at the top.
Often, I watch a hawk circling overhead, but occasionally the raptor of the day is a bald eagle, stiffly regal, and I feel a swell of patriotism. Ducks gossip in eddies along the riverbank. In New York City, all I knew were pigeons, but in Yonkers, the graceful birds that perch atop our building must be doves, bringing tidings of peace that I now recognize as my own.
-- Jonathan Vatner
Email: [email protected]
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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