TIME PASSES UNNOTICED, UNTIL THAT MOMENT WHEN we suddenly turn and all seems transformed, even the earth beneath our feet. Sometimes I walk alone, up and down the streets of the city, feeling somewhat estranged. Many of the places I have known are gone. The city I once shared with Robert was a whole other wonderland, albeit a far grittier one. Forty-second Street with its sailors, hustlers, and night girls. Art houses offering Fellini and Bergman movies throughout the afternoon for fifty cents. Pawnshop windows filled with transient treasure, depression-era guitars, and turquoise jewelry, and the glittering Kino parlors and the quarter photo booths.

The psychedelic circus of the East Village is buried deep in the archeology of continuous change, irrevocably altered. Gone are the revolutionaries, nomadic squatters, jazz clubs, and the cheapest rents imaginable. Skid row is unrecognizable, and alone in memory are the burgeoning musicians mingling with homeless men in long overcoats, lighting fires in oilcans, along the Bowery. New fires of prosperity burn, and new stories will be written.