The discord of city music

The din. It rumbles. Screeches. Blares. Barber shop harmonic cacophony. Mostly machines. With Homosapiens thrown in for good measure. There is some ebb. Some flow. But never completely stopping. Never silence.

I have thrown open the windows (well, opened as far as they will go) of my Manhattan hotel room to let in the glorious sound of urban verve. 

Some call it noise. That sound moving up from the street. Which it is, under the purest definition of that word. 

I think of it as life.  Moving forward. Starts and stops. The antithesis of stagnant. 

It is music to my ears. 

My windows overlook a very busy thoroughfare. Across the street, I watch people meandering into watering holes. Popping into a tobacco shop. Purposefully heading into a yoga studio, avoiding the lurking customers of a "video" store. My favorite diner, though, has closed. Plywood covers the front window and door. The neon "Diner" sign is dark.  No one knows, at least at the front desk of the hotel, what happened to it. 

It simply is no more. 

They made a damn good cheeseburger in that diner. And even though the online menu indicated that ordering bread pudding was an option, it really never was. They would always substitute rice pudding. Which is rather meh when your mouth is set for bread pudding.

So I look at the plywood, wondering why the diner went away. And what will fill the void. Listening to the street sounds below my window. Moving. Always moving. Even when the action on the sidelines has stopped.

People are always telling you that change is a good thing. But all they're really saying is that something you didn't want to happen at all... has happened. My store is closing this week. I own a store, did I ever tell you that? It's a lovely store, and in a week it will be something really depressing, like a Baby Gap. Soon, it'll just be a memory. In fact, someone, some foolish person, will probably think it's a tribute to this city, the way it keeps changing on you, the way you can never count on it, or something. I know because that's the sort of thing I'm always saying. But the truth is... I'm heartbroken...
~ Kathleen Kelly, You've Got Mail