Sunday, April 08, 2007

MY NEW YORK, YOUR NEW YORK

I am not from New York. I was born, bread and bageled in the Midwest. But 0nce I was introduced and seduced by The City---nothing could be so ugly or so pretty---I loved and hated it the worst and best.

I loved it not and hated it a lot when first we met and, yet, as I recall in retrospect, what else could I expect?

Mixed emotions of crowds in constant motion, loud mouthed natives roam its street; graced by winter snows, slush and sleet and oppressive summer heat; homeless bums slumber, defecate and urinate in Central Park and every place without a trace of wine-soaked shame.

Tourists stare and shake their heads for the walking, talking dead, fed by gutters, dumpsters, waste that clutters every place rats infest and feast on food unfit for man or beast.

New York, a not so ugly, not so pretty, gritty city, buildings high, glass-walled castles in the sky, where thousands live, grow old and die and passers by buy and sell and nobody gives hoot in hell who they were, where they come from, where they go, where they disappear to six feet below.

Frankly I don't mind that I will leave behind a population of the mostly poor, living in isolation from the rich and famous, the dreamers and schemers who provide the inspiration, stimulation, innovation, creation and frustration it was meant to be: the cultural center of not just this nation but the whole of God's creation.

There will always be the wimps, pimps, hawkers, stalkers, Wall Street looters, men in thousand dollar suits, fast talkers, street walkers, high-priced prostitutes, crooked pros who know the way to gyp the suckers of their pay, pious among us who kneel and pray that all that's illegal and evil will go away so they can convince non-believers to look ahead to Judgment Day.

But those who have a mind to change this strange and powerful melange into a mindless paradise will find that it can't happen here. The whole world could disappear, but come next New Year the ball will fall on Times Square, and the Empire City ain't gonna go nowhere. It's here to stay. Okay? Okay!

1 Comments:

Blogger Paul Foer said...

Whenever there's a road with a fork
It always leads to New York
Big Apple
Gotham
you wake in this city that never sleeps
the place where everything runs, never creeps
reaches for the sky
gettin high
Giants Yankees
Johnnies and Frankies (from Nathans?)
Mets and Dodgers
Place your bets you old codgers
hey pal you talkin' to me?
you aint gonna keep me down on the farm
cuz this aint Kansas
through verazanno I pass
on the left see Staten
you're talkin Manhattan
on the right you see Coney
get anything you want if you got da money
big rock, island for 24 bucks

4:47 AM  

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