First an expectation, and then a feeling.
When we were told to go to Battery Park City I honestly didn’t know what to expect. The area would probably smell. The plant life must be drab. There probably won’t be anyone there; who would want to frolic in toilet contaminates? Sure, it’s a nice experiment on paper and looks great in promotional videos, but surely it isn’t like that in real life. I was wrong on all accounts.
Upon arriving I was met with a clean park system encompassing apartment complexes. I had the sense that, at some point, I had stepped out of New York and into some sort of hybrid society. Walking on the bright green grass, along the water side, I took in deep breaths of the salty ocean air. I watched as children played, couples lounged, and athletes biked or ran, all throughout the park.
As I sat down by a water feature with ducks and coy fish, the picture of which is in my tweet, I was hit with that aforementioned feeling. It is a little hard to explain, as feelings usually are, but if I had to describe it I would say it was a mix of feeling shameful and hopeful at the same time. I felt the shame for being part of a society that could be so wasteful when such efficient, and beautiful, systems had been invented and have already been proven to be effective. However, somewhat paradoxical, I felt hopeful for being a part of that same society, for only through its inventions did such a system come to be, and only through its progression will such systems advance across the globe until we are truly living symbiotically with nature.
