Animate City

  

(Animate City, B&W-film)

The Origins of a Good Conversation.

Some film photos of my time in New York City.

“One person seeks a midwife for his thoughts, another seeks to act as midwife. The origins of a good conversation.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

What paths we choose.

For someone who loves nature and quiet as much as I, it may seem strange that I moved to New York City and left Oregon at the start of Fall, my favorite season and one that epitomizes the beauty of nature and quiet reflection for me.

But however strange it may seem, not every path we take will suit what we picture as our Selves, and it is on these paths that we get a better picture of who we are and who we can become. But my thoughts are scattered, so forgive me while I spend a few lines picking them up.

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It is raining today. The streets are loud and crowded with people hurrying from place to place, eyes bobbing up and down in answer to the siren’s call of their glowing phones. Vendors hawk food and fruit while behind them small clouds of street-born steam go drifting by from manhole to storm grate.

Firetrucks blare in the closing distance.

I’m on the street wearing flip-flops that splash the back of my legs with every step. I order coffee, black. I get coffee, tan.

I’m back inside staring out across the rooftop of the hospital next door. It, too, is pouring steam into the grey-brown evening. Big neon signs are peeking through the gloom with their red and white letters on a skyless skyline.

10,000 faces could be looking into my window, and yet I feel no eyes but the city’s.

My heart starts beating faster and my breathing gets shallow.

This city, in a lot of ways, is everything that I am not. But maybe it is because of that, that I am so enamored by it.

The Rapids

Those moments that keep us.

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.  -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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Sometimes moments cease to be solely moments, they make their mark on memory, and can be called back and re-formed. I’ve had many of those moments, I’m sure we all have. The ones that stick. Those moments when, without any external reason at all, you grin, and the person you’re with asks you what the hell you are smiling about.

The moment fades as quickly as it came, and you’re brought back to this moment, but not before you had a quickie with a moment past.

I had one of those moments recently. In fact a few, but I’ll sum them up by saying that once again, I’ve fallen in love with a city. 

Monday morning.

The faces flew by as I watched from the cab. We were going home, and they were going to work, or school, or to get a loaf of bread at the bakery. Young and old. Giraffe-like models and withered old bums. Everyone an individual, and my mind was racing to imagine so many lives, so many threads weaving in and out, or completely parallel with my own, most never intersecting at all.

Saturday evening.

It was getting darker as our small group gathered in the courtyard of PS1, a MoMa gallery that played host to a weekly smattering of DJ’s and experimental noisemakers during the hot summer months of New York.

I’m hanging out with a friend I once worked with at our college newspaper. She’s being a badass news intern for Newsday, and has to wake up at 4 AM tomorrow to profile a Muslim family that is in the midst of Ramadan.

While she’s being all cool and employed, I’m drinking beers and trying to get mentally right with the music. My brother and his wife, whose birthday we are celebrating, are talking to friends and the gaps around us slowly fill.

I was thirsty, as I always am, so I wove my way to the bar. 

Everything in between.

Are the moments that I keep.  

The High Line: NYC

Unbid rainstorms make animals of us all, seeking shelter, we watch, waiting for the break.

A bright streak splits the sky, a boom, and a squeal, followed by laughs.

The crowd constricts and gathers close.

The electric air invades our lungs, a collective breath withheld.

Nervous chatter and smiling faces, drinking beer, our liquid courage.

The howling wind and pounding rain gives way and quiets.

We the waiting dart for cabs and form a line beneath the bridge — rainy days are cabbie’s friends — and wait again.