Strange to think that a city that seems determined to remind me of my own smallness, to reiterate how alone I will ultimately feel in such a densely populated place, to reassure me that I will remain a transient within my own dwelling...can still charm its way into my welcoming arms.
And so I take it all in, as it does me. The way "lonely hearts", I hear, do for one another. The way a lock and key fits, fittingly. Or perhaps like...photosynthesis. Yes. I don't fully understand it, but I know there's some symbiotic process going on, nature's way of teaching us interdependence...
So there I was, bent prostrate before the city...or did it lay prostrate before me? Whatever the case may have been, perhaps we were at each other's mercy. At my worst, I fold and surrender myself before the city's immensity, its emanating power. At my best, it yields to my determination, at my refusal to cooperate and to simply submit. That on a any given day, it is I that is large. No skyscrapers stand in my path. No bright lights blind me. Taxi cabs and cart pushers pause in awe of my defiance to let them pass. It is I who will pass. Regardless of what signal the walking person shows. I will go.
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Upon recognition that I need this city, and with confidence, that somehow, it needs me, an unspoken harmony ensues. We are bound together in some balanced state of coercive submission and symbiotic bliss.
In spite of its grandeur, from a distance and in the dark, the city's beauty becomes soft and subdued. Humbled, even. A moment wherein it concedes a little that perhaps, it is not as overbearing as it lets on. That at times, its defenses are drawn up to protect this secret vulnerability. That there is gentleness and peace, and quiet, within its walls (or buildings). In this moment I too make a concession. That in the short moment that I've managed to shrink its size before me, it remains, indeed, beautiful. That from afar, I can see clearly how it still charms its way back into my arms, as if to remind me that, as though a lover, no matter what it dishes out, I desire her still. Sincerely. And I do.
Chrysler Building, in the middle
Empire State Building, on the far right
the view from Williamsburg, in Brooklyn
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