Asleep among skyscrapers - a year gone by

NYC Blackout:

Part 1:

 

We will take such events as an excuse to get physically close to our brethren, To other New Yorkers; to mingle and migrate with them, us, I, by the million. To be centered on our two great common denominating thoughts: one of being a New Yorker in a New York transient moment, and one of being a spark in a city of 4 million plugs. We focus forward and accelerate, we actively celebrate those with whom we are joining, rather than passively blink at who might be joining us.

 

We traverse the great famous bridges on foot. We split apples with strangers. We offer ideas on how to get from Washington heights to Red Bank using human contacts and a thumb. (Hoboken, ask for Dave, he’ll take you to Slabby’s, $40 for a cab to New Brunswick, catch a bus there.) We casually glean the intricate meaning of details in strangers’ lives.

 

We drink beer and wine and are ever more careful when playing darts ina dark bar. We smile at the policeman, who smiles back while suggesting that we keep to the left of his imaginary pedestrian/traffic boundary.  We keep left, and conspire to swing right somewhere in the unfurling distance.

 

We walk from upper east to upper west and swing downtown along Central Park, We sweat in metro-humidity. We curb crawl the neighborhoods for fresh bodega boxers and cold water and oranges.

Darkness brings an adrenalin rush. The stranded search for sleep on 42nd and Broadway, in Battery Park, in Central Park. We sleep on marble steps, park benches and grand green lawns.

 

For the first time on this tiny island we have no light but the stars. The constellations confuse us, so we invent our own.

 

Part 2:

Inventing Constellations