a plastic bag in harlem

I wrote this about a month ago but the blog system was down:

Well I was going to write a blog entry but the blog system was down. What trauma man. Not sure if I can stand it.

So…life in the US of A rolls on…am feeling rather exhausted after quite a busy workweek followed by a weekend in that mad city up north of here. And for some reason I seem destined to sit and watch American football until midnight. No wait, it gets worse. I am actually watching analysis of American football. Tragic.

I now want to live in New York…that city is one of the few places that just inspires complete awe in me. I am not sure why just New York has this effect on me. I think I just don’t know what to feel when I see it. One of the first feelings to hit me is how small I am. I like it—it’s reassuring to know that without you the world will just keep spinning on and on. You will never be so important that if you stop to take a breath the world will not keep whirling. You can relax and just watch the world—you’re allowed to sit in the audience from time to time. Sit with everyone else as they pass in and out of the sphere of watching, then leaving and returning to the stage, brushing through the velvet red curtains.

But then down some streets things are small again and you feel sheltered…fooled into thinking like the city cares for you, would deign to protect you for a few hours as awnings shade you and warm air drifts out of café doors.

Then quickly turn another corner and you are in a land detached from Americana. Languages from other lands, open air markets, stalls with strains of music outside the do-re-mi of your ear.

Yes, I love that city. Driving in on Friday, I felt nervous, imagined the streets of gold that would awe me, the alleys that would tempt me and confuse me, the avenues that would swallow me. I love how naïve it makes me feel, how new to the world I am when I walk down its streets. A child walking through the sun as it bounces off glass windows seventy stories up; a newborn watching the sun rise slowly in Harlem as a plastic bag flies high in the air, twirling, a strange stillness on a Sunday morning after a live Saturday night.