The End of Golden Era’s

By Kethia Embelo

The Thursday before last, I found myself in the crowded basement of a Soho bar with blue walls full of lush plastic plants and purple lights hanging from its iridescent ceiling. To reach the bar, you traveled down a narrow spiral staircase in pitch-black darkness. When we entered, the light bounced off the ceiling and danced around my vision like a school of rainbow fish darting away from a predator. Suddenly, my friend Symphony said something that piqued my interest.

“We have completely missed out on the Golden Era of living in New York.”

It seemed I was the only one who heard her; our two other friends, Ariana and Chloe, continued their conversation in the corner. Symphony was a fifth-generation Afro-Caribbean New Yorker born and raised in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. This meant that when she shared any of her personal opinions about New York, we would all shuffle our chairs closer and listen intently. Ariana was from Seattle, Washington. Chloe was born in Seattle but grew up in Longmont, a small town outside Boulder, Colorado. I was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo but spent most of my life in suburban Virginia. So, despite the three of us living in New York for the last four years, Symphony was our bible. We didn’t feel knowledgeable enough to voice any real opinions about New York. We would only share them with people we knew who had just moved to the city. If that were the case, we would bombard them with all of the rules, opinions, and ideas we collected about living in New York. So when Symphony shared her opinion like this, we all got excited for the opportunity to discuss our ideas on New York. In that moment, I am not sure if I was too drunk or if I also picked up on Ariana and Chloe’s uninterested demeanors, but I found myself without a reply, simply nodding and staring off into the rainbow fish lights. Symphony’s words echoed in my head.

“We have completely missed out on the Golden Era of living in New York.”

Quickly, the conversation turned to the next topic: spring break or graduation, and Symphony’s declaration disappeared from all of our minds.

It wasn’t until two weeks later that Symphony’s words popped back into my head, this time as my own. I was spending the tail end of my spring break back in Virginia; the second I slipped into the back of Mama’s large black minivan, she excitedly shared that the old Bed Bath and Beyond on Lee Highway had been converted into a Barnes and Noble and suggested we’d go, knowing I probably finished the book in my hand on the bus ride home. Thirty minutes later, I found myself wandering through the aisles of an awkwardly large and hollow Barnes and Noble. The ceilings stood three times the height of the bookshelves, and the place had an odd echo that bounced the children’s loud voices around. Hurriedly, I picked up The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and rushed back home.

The next day, I opened my eyes in my childhood bedroom, awoken by the morning rush in my house. My four-month-old niece was the earliest riser among us. She sang right at six forty-five in the morning, and I realized that since I was living with a tiny rooster for the next few days, I should spend my mornings reading my new book. I got up and went to retrieve the little rooster. We settled on Mama’s oversized white couch, and I propped the infant up on one arm and opened my book with the other hand. Since my sister-in-law gave birth to my niece, I have been taking the train home to Virginia more frequently. I enjoyed spending mornings like this. Covered in warm sunlight that fought its way through the cracks of the closed shutters covering the living room windows. Smothered by the thick, humid air that reached my southern town earlier in the Spring than it ever could in New York. Reading aloud to my niece had become an essential part of our morning routine; as I read, I would make sure to skip any gory or gruesome parts, only including things I believed would be formative for a newborn to hear.

“Foreword By Frances McCullough”

I thought it was important for her to be in the habit of reading the foreword. You miss too much information if you don’t. I look down as her big brown eyes blink slowly at me, as a smile makes its way onto her face. We often don’t talk about the process of “Falling in Love” regarding our family and friends. As much admiration as I hold for my siblings, I don't remember a moment when I realized I loved my brothers and sister. Or my mother and father, but in moments like these, I imagine my niece not as a child but twenty-one or twenty-two years old, a girl just like me, coming across a book, looking up at me, and saying.

“I remember you reading this to me.”

Not because she possesses any real or tangible memory of me reading it to her, but instead, there is a connection made in her subconscious between us, reading books, and love. It was in those mornings that I realized the automatic love I had for my siblings had transferred to my nieces, and I wondered if this was how it felt when you had your own children. I wrote a note in my journal later that day, reminding myself to ask Mama if she could remember the moment when she realized she loved us.

Three pages into The Bell Jar, as Sylvia describes Esther Greenwood’s New York. I thought to myself,

“We have completely missed out on the Golden Era of living in New York.”

I am unsure if this was me just regurgitating what I heard from Symphony earlier that week, or if I was enchanted by Sylvia Plath’s depressive description of New York. But I don’t think I disagreed with what Symphony said in the first place. Even though she was born in the city in 2002, she lived post-Sylvia Plath, post-Studio 54. The rest of us moved here only four years ago; as fast as New York City moves, we knew this was little time to experience anything monumental. I wondered to myself, Is New York really slipping out of reach? We have been told missed every single art, literary, and fashion movement that infiltrated New York; we watch shows like Sex and the City and Girls, which took place only ten to twenty years ago, and feel like we missed out on the last real chance to live in New York City, the one that we read about at least.

I want to make something clear: I am not arguing that New York is dead.  I don’t have much of an opinion on the topic; while I can agree, it doesn’t feel like we have been living through the Roaring Twenties. However, the more complex your identity is, the easier it becomes to be less enamored with the past.

I have gotten into the habit of collecting bookmarks; it started last semester while I was studying in London. I visited The Socialist Book Shop and bought The Simple Art of Killing a Woman by Patricia Melo. I didn’t end up reading the book until a couple of months later, but I wanted to go back to the bookstore and made sure to keep the bookmark intact so I could remember the address. This seems small and futile, considering I could’ve taken a picture of it or saved the bookshop’s address onto my phone. However, throughout my semester in London, this slowly became a habit, and by the time I returned to New York, I was carrying a suitcase full of books and bookmarks for different bookstores around the UK. Most recently, I collected one from Trident Booksellers in Boston; I bought Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro to read on my train ride back to New York.

So, as I was checking out at the Barnes and Noble register, The Bell Jar in hand, I asked the overgrown sixteen-year-old boy behind the counter if they gave out bookmarks. I figured having one from my hometown would give me the same sentimental feeling I felt last week in Boston and a few months ago in London. He threw two into my hand, which I quickly slid into my book along with my receipt.

So when the ugly, gradient blue and green Barnes & Noble’s bookmark slid out of my copy of The Bell Jar and onto my lap, I looked down, inspecting the flimsy rectangle displaying large, chunky letters promoting Barnes & Noble’s Mastercard.

“Earn a $25 B&N Gift Card.” “Get 5% Back.” “It’s a Must-Have for Book Lovers”

A sense of dread washed over me; I flipped the bookmark over to find the same gradient colors, this time running a promotion for Barnes and Noble’s Premium Membership.

“Free Tote Every Year,” “Extra 10% Off and Free Shipping”

My mind flashed back to Trident Booksellers in Boston, and the smooth black bookmark they slipped into my hand as I left the store. Then I think back to my childhood, running around Borders, a gigantic bookstore twenty minutes away from my hometown. Playing hide-and-seek through the aisles with my siblings. Getting shushed by my mother as she tried to round us all up. I remember walking into school, head held high, with a copy of Percy Jackson under my arm. This was around the time the 4th generation of iPods came out, and they hadn’t made their way into the hands of children as young as us. So there was still pride in walking into school with a brand new book and a Borders bookmark. I remember the rough exterior; you could run your thumb over it and feel a million tiny bumps on the cardstock.

Would we have valued those bookmarks as much if they had been covered with Mastercard promotions? I’m imagining it now, us trading different bookmarks back and forth.

“Mine is for Visa!”

“I’ll give you ten Discover bookmarks for one Amex.”

The idea brought a strange laugh from me, and my eyes flashed back down to the gradient blue-green bookmark. The gradient made me think of the ocean, and maybe the ocean made me think of last Thursday in Soho with Symphony, Ariana, and Chloe, but I looked down at my niece and thought.

“You have completely missed out on the Golden Era of bookmarks.”