In the City: Three Easy Pieces

The Solitude

“On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.”

– E. B. White, ‘Here is New York’ (1949)

Thus begins the most quoted poetic homage (and even prophetic given the events of 9/11) to a city. Along with Street Haunting and The London Scene (collection of 6 essays) by Virginia Woolf, it is possibly the best piece of writing on the experience of a big city.

To read 'Here is New York': http://www.travel-studies.com/sites/default/files/White,%20Here%20Is%20New%20York.pdf

The Streetwalker

               "I’m becoming

the street.

           Who are you in love with

me?

     Straight against the light I cross."

    –Frank O’Hara, ‘Walking to Work’

Almost 80% of the journeys in midtown and downtown Manhattan are made on foot. People mostly walk for practical purposes like getting to work, going to the grocery store, picking up children from school and so on. They also walk to purposes of pleasure like to the movie hall, weekend brunch or the picnic in the park. And in this time and age, for the most important purpose of all–to maintain an active lifestyle (that means walking over 10,000 steps a day). 

For most people a saunter brings to mind a walk in the park among the bounties of nature, but here’s a different, an original perspective:

"Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No, one never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes–I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass.”

– Frank O’Hara, ‘Meditations In An Emergency’

The Sunsets

And people continue to notice the passing clouds, and the resulting sunsets more often. Not just because they are instagramming the shit out of it. I think it is because of the nature of light projection in the city. The tall buildings have often been likened to canyons but made of glass and metal. These reflective surfaces throw the light around in ways that change with the trajectory of the sun across the sky. Sample this: at 7:30 PM the light from the setting sun falls on the west face of the building on the easternmost part of the street, bounces and strikes the windows of the building on the opposite side and this room (that I am typing in) is bathed in gold. So, it is hardly a surprise that a 6 PM meeting on a certain floor, in a certain building in downtown may get interrupted if the room gets flooded by light from a sky streaked purple, mauve, red and orange.

I went to Goa

and this is what I did see;
Goa of the sea

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea
-e.e. cummings

Goa of the beaches

In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.
-Rachel Carson.

And more beaches

where everyone has to be!

Goa of the sunsets

A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.
-Claude Debuss

Goa of the Churches

and their equally ancient companions, the beautiful rain trees.

Goa of the old houses

waiting to be torn down and rebuilt as grotesque multi-coloured, perhaps 'neo-Mediterranean' styled, high rise apartments.

Goa of the rivers and the green hills beyond

and a constant to and fro of barges carrying iron ore.

Goa of the Banyan tree

To study a banyan tree, you not only must know its main stem in its own soil, but you must trace the growth of its greatness in the further soil. Only then can you know the true nature of its vitality.
-Rabindranath Tagore
Interestingly, Tagore was comparing Indian civilization to the banyan tree. With every square foot of land being mined for money, I wonder how many banyan trees are being planted now. And what does that say about the 'vitality' of our civilization.

Goa of the birds

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
-Robert Lynd

Dark blue coat

Evening
by Rainer Maria Rilke‎

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes
a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

(Translated by Stephen Mitchell)