If I Could Make it There, I’ll Make It Anywhere…

It’s up to you, New York, New York; and for the most part E.B. White agrees.

I couldn’t help but hear the voice of Frank Sinatra singing New York New York during the introductory portion of “Here is New York”, and E. B. White was able to have his words play alongside those of the song I’m sure we all know all the while portraying the same message. “It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him”

 

Reading the story of the waiter serving one of his idols, Fred Stone, who had a moved him during his introduction to New York was very satisfying to read yet at the same time it was almost depressing. A city of almost 8 million people, where an empty sidewalk is nothing but an unheard of phenomenon,  and yet this very sort of environment has the ability to make a person feel even more alone than an open rural setting.

 

This famous painting is one of the most accurate symbols of the atmospheres in New York, like the finger of Adam, we can, with minimal effort, connect to one another. Without this minimal effort we are nothing but strangers, those 18 inches might seem pretty close but in most cases those 18 inches represent a distance between two people that are in actuality worlds apart.

 

In my introduction I mentioned that sometimes I like to just sit on a bench and watch the streets of New York as they struggle to provide room for all the pedestrians they serve as a means of transportation for. At times like this I have isolated myself from the city, then I am just an observer and no longer a New Yorker, and the longer I look the harder it is to give significant weight to the lives of others. The fact that New York, or any city around the world, looks like a busy hive of organisms, organisms we regard with disdain, not even considering them beings is a curious thought to play with. Another author made the same sort of impact on me, juxtaposing our lives with those of insects, though in a more sophisticated metaphor was Franz Kafka in his story “The Metamorphisis”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDwfcYTpQkI]