Click
here for info on the Print Journal
(and to purchase your copy)!
A Placid, Crazy Thing
By Sarah Stodola
---------------------------------------
I recently moved into an apartment in Brooklyn with a view of Manhattan (I'm not just bragging, although there is that. I do have a point). I've never had access to a place - not consistently, anyway - that allows for such removed observation of New York City. I'm on the fifteenth floor, so any city noises that do make it up to my windows - an occasional car alarm, ambulance siren, or unidentified bang - reach my ears as muted, almost soft sounds. During the day, the dominant color of the view is grey. But at night, it transforms into a spectacle of lights, with the Empire State Building and its ever-changing color scheme keeping the skyline perpetually new and relevant.
I now get to see incredible sunsets on a multi-weekly basis; grand, sweeping, pink-orange landscapes that turn the skyline into a black paper cutout of itself. Every so often I notice a fireworks display off in the distance; sometimes near the East River, sometimes near the Brooklyn beaches. I can see subways that have gone above ground in Brooklyn making their seemingly desultory journeys to and from Manhattan. I can see boats moving up and down the East River leaving a trail of white behind them, and cars crossing the bridges in a never ending stream.
The most beautiful aspect of all this is the sense of placidity. From my windows, New York becomes a lazy, seamless collage. Everything fits together perfectly. There's no yelling, honking, pushing, crowding. Instead, it's a canvas of mercurial movement; constant motion, but slow and easy, everything in its proper place.
This all makes for a shock of the senses as I leave my apartment every day. As soon as a I get outside I hear the boom box that the homeless guy who seems to never leave his post in front of the empty building a couple of doors down is perpetually playing as he turns the sidewalk into his own personal dance floor. Then there are walk signs and don't walk signs, buses, catcalls. Then I'm on the rush hour subway. And then midtown. Etc. etc.
Bustle is a perfect word for this New York City. It’s one of those words that sounds just like what it means, like smitten, or perky. The street vendors, the business suits on smoke breaks, the cell phones, the cab hailers, the noises. Add them all together and they equal bustle. And that is my experience every day in the city. If it’s raining you have umbrellas thrown in, if it’s cold you have bundles that have people somewhere inside them moving down the streets. But the ingredients invariably equal bustle.
But then I get to go home again, and it's a sanctuary. It's so high above the city, in a way it's like leaving New York altogether.
It's a striking contrast, this life I'm now living, between the city from close up and the city from afar. The same thing can seem like two such different things, all depending on perspective. Most of us know this already of course. But one would think that New York City, which is such an extreme, bold, definitive place, must be an exception. One would think that its identity would be so strong, so clear, that it would look the same both close up and from far away. One would think that in the case of New York, one couldn't mistake one thing for another.
But this is not the reality of New York, apparently. Like everything else, New York is a place of many faces, and the two I am speaking of – the distant peaceful one, and the in-your-face, chaotic one – are only two of them, even if they are the most striking.
Regardless, I now have two New Yorks. I have New York in its duality. It is a place I can gaze over and ponder in its vastness, and it’s a place I can dive into head first, come what may.
---------------------------------------
Sarah Stodola is the Managing Editor of Me Three. She can be contacted at sstodola@methree.net.
©
2003 Me Three