I’m miserably dragging my bones, today. The subway ride wasn’t even that long yet stations lazily drifted by like distant planetary stops on an endless journey to the universe’s end. I wonder if I’ve got a fever. Space travel is said to be hard on you.

As I sip my coffee at a terrace, a warm autumn day lighting up the wide Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd, Harlem is asleep around me. Its Dutch roots forgotten, the renaissance of the 20’s a pale memory, later crime and drug records having painfully been filed and put aside, the city finally seems at peace. She speaks in hushed tones, subdued by heavy
gentrification and a new found love for peace.

Harlem finally seems at peace. She speaks in hushed tones, subdued by heavy gentrification and a new found love for peace

A man with a perfect Easter Island statue profile walks by wearing a brightly coloured African suit and open sandals, hurrying on some mid-day errand. I imagine him having a deep voice and maybe speaking some French. He doesn’t fit my expectations of this place. But then again nothing does.

The young black woman who served me my double espresso with a bright smile wore her baby behind her in a cradle board while working behind the coffee shop counter. People are sitting at small tables around me and inside, sharing cups and laptop computers, wearing headphones and microphones, smiling blindly to distant interlocutors.

The streets are indeed surprisingly wide in Harlem, as Marie had described them. The southern parts almost have a Parisian feel with their long avenues of nice buildings looking like hôtels particuliers, with the exception of those ugly street-facing fire escapes, which – thank god – were never invented in Europe.

I look around me while rubbing my eyes. The scene seems password-protected, and I haven’t cracked the code. What am I not seeing? Something is missing, something previously written to a chapter of my preconceptions by history and media and now having been lost in a new superficial reality.

I should come back when my imagination is healthier. And my head. Maybe, then, will I see through the curtain and figure out where Harlem has gone.