On memorable last lines

(Every day is New Year's day, because I will not give up on my resolution to publish some bit of writing, everyday, until I actually publish something, everyday.  Think of it as a sort of mental Groundhog's Day/New Year's Day mashup that allows me to "never give up, never surrender!"  Because God knows I've done enough of that in the past.)


New York is a great city, yes.

It is a great, big city of 8 million people where even when you are pressed in on all sides by a shifting crowd of faces, you can feel more stripped of identity, invisible, and alone, than you've ever felt in any other time or place.

Where row after row of hulking, tall, grey, blocks of buildings offer no respite of beauty or nature or air.

Where you feel physically, spiritually, and mentally compelled to stride/shuffle/trot through the streets, fast, rolling your eyes at the tourist obliviously trolling along in front of you, snaking your way through crowds and pushing past people just to get ahead of others--both literally and metaphorically.

In short, it can be a great, grey, overwhelming city that grates on your soul and mind until all you have left is a tiny pile made up of the shreds of your remaining humanity.

Being on night shifts in the middle of winter doesn't help either.  Having recently come back from a trip to Vienna and Prague.  Being a wanderlust girl who dreams about living in early 20th century 'Par-ee,' Regency England, present-day Rome (basically, anywhere-but-here) definitely does not help.

So you can imagine that after daily being served elegant porcelain cups of coffee--always, always, on little trays of silver--in Vienna, and coming back to all this, I have been feeling a little low in the soul, beleagured, and altogether a shadow of myself.

HOWEVER!  The other day I decided to take a detour to Central Park.  I hadn't been there in a while--something about, once you've seen it a few times, you've seen it all.

BUT:  Central Park really is more than just a tourist attraction.  There is something about this square plot of land, despite the tips of skyscrapers peering in just above the trees, that allows the city to fade away for a moment, and for the refreshment that is naturally inherent to all human beings at the sight of land, and trees, and great open air, that makes Central Park magical.  


It is an essential element of the city that makes it superb.  It elevates New York the level of those great, old cities of Europe.  It is something, I think, that really has no equivalent in any other city I've visited yet.

There are crowds, yes, but they are a little more dispersed.  And everywhere, if only a tiny bit, strides are slowed, and heads lifted to look around:

It has CULTURE:

Hear ye, Europe, ye of the enormous granite monuments to every author, politician, and musician alike.  We, too, pay our adoring tributes to (admittedly, your) romantic writers, to the prolific poets.  See there, Robert Burns, cutting a mysterious figure:

 And:  Fitzgreene Halleck?  

Oh, he's ours, an American! 

And other miscellaneous works of art!

Nothing quite like Americans and their relationships to their dogs

 We'll one up you with our striped hot dog stands, with startling ubiquity not found anywhere else in the world! (omnipresent crisped-skin greasy rolls of mystery meat rivaled only by the amazing quality and varieties of sausage and fried cheese sandwiches(!) found in Wenceslas Square.  I drool at the memory.) 

 

And our bisected, airy version of  the Pantheon interior in Rome!
And a democratic people free enough from self-consciousness to perform impromtu dances in front of such sites!  

I might add that one of the strongest memories I have of Rome, besides the trail of carbohydrates I inhaled along the way, was the recollection of an age-old fountain made of a ancient looking spigot set in a stone wall in one of the side streets, enticingly pouring out water onto the hot summer street, and an older man telling a tourist in shades, Birkenstocks, and a large cotton tunic trying to catching the liquid in a plastic bottle, "Oh that water's absolutely great for drinking.  It's been used for centuries."
(am I the only one who learned in high school World History that the Romans channeled in their water with aqueducts from lead, and they probably went senile from lead poisoning?)
But, Rome, we too have our ancient drinking fountains!  Probably equally as sketchy!

And as you ramble through, your faith in New York and its people slowly being restored step by step, you take the time to notice, once again, those little touches of humanity and grace that make up this city, present and past:

Children playing that old American pastime, baseball, in the park. 

And in the touching tributes, perhaps some inadvertently comical "unnecessary quotation marks."

      "My God...isn't this a great country altogether?"

      'Tis.     

~Frank McCourt