We live in an age of collapsing boundaries and unforeseen calamities. Whether we call these days the Great Swoon, or the Dissolution, or the Dissipation, things are happening that I assumed never would. I’m in Manhattan now, on Wednesday. Grand Central at rush hour is quiet. I haven’t seen a tumbleweed in Midtown yet, but the hustle and bustle are gone. Lots of Midtown is boarded up. Without restaurants, the performing arts, and people in offices generating ticker tape, Manhattan feels like Cleveland.
Did everyone go to the Inauguration? Why would they? Aside from its faceted banality, this one’s surrounded by 26,000 troops. Was that crazy guy in the buffalo hat that scary? Midtown is not as empty as Rome after the Vandals sacked it, but it’s close.
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