M5 Essay for Applications Class
Memories Of My Existence
By Armin A. Cooper
I am a New Yorker. There is no way I can refute that statement, although I have tried from time to time. I was born in New York and I have spent the overwhelming majority of my life here. It seems that no matter where I go in this city, particularly in the borough of Manhattan, I can’t escape the fact that my roots are planted in this place. It is as if memories of my existence, and those of my family’s, peak out at me from around every corner.
If someone asked me, “Who is Armin Cooper?” I could easily show them by taking a ride on one of the city buses. I could pretend to be a tour guide, like the ones on those red double-decker buses that always seem to be racing by me on the street with tourists gawking at things that are simply so commonplace for me. However, if I were giving a tour, I wouldn’t just point to the interesting places in New York, I would also point to the interesting places of my life.
I could probably choose almost any city bus in Manhattan but let’s take the M5. That bus has an interesting route, traveling uptown and downtown through many neighborhoods in the city, few of which are very similar. One might think this would be a difficult bus to use for a tour of my life, but I could make it work.
I get on the M5 where it begins on Houston Street in Greenwich Village, the place where my parents moved to in the mid-Sixties. They came to the Village from Philadelphia because it was one of the few places an African-American man married to a Jewish woman could find refuge in this country at that time. My parents were beatniks, as well, so they fit right into the anti-establishment culture of the Village.
As the bus turns off Houston and begins its ascent up Sixth Avenue, I look around the streets wondering how often my parents must have traversed these very same sidewalks, at first just walking hand-in-hand, but soon carrying my sister as an infant, since she was born not long after my parents settled here. I was born seven years later in the middle of the 1970s, and as the bus passes Greenwich Avenue, I can look off and see the exact place where both my sister and I were born: St. Vincent’s Hospital. Many times I’ve walked passed those buildings and tried to feel a connection to the spot where my life began.
Very soon, though, the M5 departs the Village and heads through Chelsea on its way to Midtown. Now the bus starts to get crowded, which makes sense since the streets outside are now filled with pedestrians. As we approach 34th Street, Herald Square, I am reminded of the days my mother took me down here to go to Macys. I liked Macys because it had a huge toy department but I hated all of the people that left little room to breath inside or outside the store. 34th Street is still as crowded as it was thirty years ago but at least there are more shopping options besides Macys.
From the thirties, the bus heads into the forties, past Bryant Park and 42nd Street. This area has changed a lot and is still changing. New buildings seem to be going up everywhere, the old ones now forgotten. At least the streets are cleaner and they look safer. As a kid, 42nd Street was not an area I ever felt comfortable going to. I used to wonder how a place so famous could end up being so seedy.
The bus now glides past Rockefeller Center on the right. Many times my father took me down here to see the giant Christmas tree in December. I always had a hard time believing that a tree could be so big. It seemed incredible to me until one day, many years later, I went with my parents into a forest in northern California to see the redwoods. Those trees were definitely unbelievable.
The M5’s tour of Sixth Avenue is now at a close as Central Park appears directly in it’s path. I know almost every inch of this park as I played here often as a kid. Later when I was in high school, I ran in the park for track and cross-country practice. My feet still yearn to grace the roadway one more time. Of course, the bus turns aside Central Park and heads over to Columbus Circle. Again I am confronted with more changes. The old Coliseum is gone, replaced by the Time Warner building and the GW building is now the Trump International Hotel. However, my connection to Columbus Circle has actually more to do with what lies a couple of blocks away.
Looking down 60th Street, I can just make out John Jay College of Criminal Justice where my father was a professor for twenty-five years. Right across the street is a campus of Fordham University where my mother got her BA in Philosophy after I was born. I passed through Columbus Circle with my father on our way to his office in John Jay more times than I can count. I miss his cozy space, packed full of books and papers.
The M5 is now traveling on Broadway and it has now entered the Upper West Side, my neighborhood. Although I was born in the Village, I was raised here. There is no other place in the world that I know so well and no other place where my memories run as deep.
Five blocks up Broadway, the M5 passes a large apartment building where a piano teacher, with the help of my mother, changed my life by introducing me to music. Across the street is the exact spot where I walked out of Alice Tully Hall, five minutes after graduating from high school, and proclaimed to all of the surrounding buildings that I was leaving New York forever. Little did I know that four years later, almost to the day, I would stand in the same spot as I prepared to walk into the Juilliard School to begin my studies of music at the encouragement of my piano teacher. What’s more, diagonally across from Juilliard is Barnes and Noble, a place my wife and I have been coming to since we met as part of our never-ending quest for books. We are bibliophiles.
Beyond this main nexus of my life, the M5 turns off Broadway at 72nd Street and heads over to Riverside Drive. I always thought this street was very interesting as it bends left and right as we go uptown. The buildings to the right are forced to mimic the curves in order to stay in step with the sidewalk and the street. To the left is Riverside Park, where I also played as a kid and where my wife and I often took walks when are relationship was in its courting phase.
Before long, though, the bus crosses over 96th Street, my true home turf. A couple of blocks later, I can just make out my apartment building several blocks away through the trees. I’ve lived there almost all of my life, a fact that sometimes seems impossible to believe. Thirty years in the same apartment is a long time, yet I don’t think I feel that old. It’s amazing how one place can entrap you and sometimes you don’t even realize it until three decades have gone by.
But the M5 doesn’t pause here, it continues on, reaching the triple digits in streets. Now I can only smile as we pass 112th street because right there on the ascending pavement is Bank Street, the school that inadvertently started my long journey to ITP. That school and my current school feel like identical bookends on the story of my life up until this point. I am grateful to have attended both institutions although I wonder now where they will lead me next.
The M5, meanwhile, reaches Harlem, crossing over a long bridge above 125th Street. Off ahead in the distance is the bus’s final destination, the George Washington Bridge. However, I only catch a glimpse of it before the bus turns to head back to Broadway. Now we’re in Washington Heights, a neighborhood I don’t actually know very well although I have come here to visit friends from time to time. It is amazing now to watch as the Dominican population, who have long called Washington Heights their home, share the streets with other ethnic groups. New York’s melting pot is ever-present.
The bus’s journey now winds down. There are a few more hills to transverse and then the final stop is reached in front of the bus station at 178th Street. I put my feet back on terra firma for the first time in over an hour and a half but before I began my return trek, I look west. There, once again, are the vast towers of the George Washington Bridge. They span the Hudson River and through their spires I can see on the far side the Palisades of New Jersey.
In an instant, one last memory comes back to me. The G.W. Bridge is actually the starting point for an Interstate Highway, I-80. This highway spans the entire North American continent, ending on the West Coast. However, three quarters of the way there, a second Interstate, I-84, breaks off from it and heads northwest. That road ends in my favorite place in this entire country. One day, I hope, not too far in the future, I will cross the George Washington Bridge, as I did once before, with my wife and we will make the three thousand mile journey to the where I-84 terminates. And when we get out of the car, our feet will stand on the ground within a different city, one that I wish to call my home once more. My body and my mind may be that of a New Yorker, but my heart belongs to Portland, Oregon, a place where I dream of planting new memories.