The final stretch of the journey was the return from San Francisco to New York by plane. There was still one word missing. In fact two: of an.
Hope was supposed to be the last word but we had skipped of an.
So, we had one more day in NY before returning home and no idea how to get the two words done.
NY seems to be a city in decay. This decay is not caused by the economical situation, or the collapse of the twin towers. Decay is part of the city, the same way as skyscrapers, the subway and cabs. It isn't a lacking of something, is an urban element in itself, brought about by use and time.
Trash is dumped on the sidewalks for collection early in the morning, pavements are uncared for, century old subway stations with peeling paint are packed with rats roaming through the lines. NY is becoming old and weary. Would we call it historical in Europe?
One thing we were always looking for when arriving in new cities was the historical quarter. That is obviously the European mind searching for the church square, the city council and the central cafe. The place of stability opposed to the unbounded continuity of the american strip. There's no such stability place in most US cities.
In NY there's the Grid and there's the river. The abstract continuity and the natural limit that forces an abrupt transition, a phase transition in the continuum: from homogeneity to intensity.
And there was money, lots of money for a long time, building up intensity, giving it a shape. The effort of building, the immense physical labor, stays hidden behind the skyline. Contrary to other historical buildings - the wall of China, the Pyramids, the Parthenon - what impresses most in NY is not the effort, the power over will or technical excellence, but the investment.
NY is a decaying monument to capital. A beautiful one, by the way.
We made our contribution. 7 dollars and 58 cents, to be more precise.
Is NY in decay? I'm not so certain. I moved there in 1973 around the time when a truck fell through the west side highway - an elevated escape route for the "middle class" and closed it down for good. It was a time when NYU had just consolidated the campus around Washington Square and my first apartment was in Loisada (the lower east side) a place I referred to as Pompeii. This was final moment of a post WWII trend and the dawn of a fantastic time for the city. The World Trade Center was a skeleton, not the deep hole it became the month I left NY. I see it now as a place in suspension. High gas prices are always good for the city. Any city. What occurred there from 1973 to 2001 was a truly remarkable transformation. It was the result of a huge population tide that came in. It will be interesting to see what happens to it as the tide recedes. I've lived through one NYC recession and I see it as exactly what it needed. At some point the cost of living and the quality of life meet and people become human again. I won't say that "of an" is a better ending than "hope" only because I'm certain your story is not finished. But the coins on the sidewalk only confirm my belief Plano B is a group of master problem solvers and I am moved to applaud.
ReplyDeleteIt is risky to state a definitive opinion about a complex place as NY after spending only a few moments there, you are probably right it is just a matter of suspension rather than of decay. Does "a suspended monument to capital" sound appropriate?
ReplyDeleteI guess ending with transitional words such as "of an" suits better the impermanent character of the songline, rather than ending with a definitive and meaningful word such as "hope". But that was not the intention, it just happened that way...