Of course New York is a big mess. How could it be otherwise? I mean, Tokyo is a mess, maybe not as big of a mess, but I would rate Japan as the cleanest country I've ever been to, and its megametropolis is still a little stinky. The secret to living here, if I've even guessed it yet, this may be wild speculation, is a combination of hard and soft attitudes. Hard, meaning you are willful enough to proceed despite what feels like an entire population intent on holding you back, and Soft as in, like a reed. Bend Like the Reed. There is so much stuff coming at you all day, every day, you have to let it flow by you, you can not try to stop it and examine it before sending it on its way. Glimpse it of course, take as much in a possible and then move on. One ally you have in the city, to help feel more like the reed are the parks. By Seattle standards, the parks here are also kind of stinky. Overcrowded on nice days, full of bare chested white men whose glare stings the cornea, the parks are much appreciated here, since they are the scant islands of green in an otherwise white-grey sunbaked landscape. Much of this city has the stamp of man on nature, imposing a new paradigm of ownership. We are the conquerors, this city proudly erupts, we have paved you! But Nature isn't even listening, Nature just quietly erodes, washes, grows. The parking lot across the street from us is chirping with crickets on this first of a long line of hot nights. Crickets. Parking lot. It is fenced off, and weeds haven't just sprung through the cracks, they've devoured the entire lot. It is a tiny serengeti over there, complete with tiny lions stalking prey. In the mornings, straw colored cats prowl the straw colored foliage. If man ever held dominion here, you wouldn't guess, save for the barb-wire fence draped with shredded plastic bags surrounding this huge area, there is nothing but the grasses, the crickets and the cats.
In the short term of course, our mastery of nature is total. This city has sprawled itself out over x number of islands, making itself comfortable. But the chez lounge is not inanimate, it is alive, and its concept of time and mastery is on a completely different scale than ours.
I was pondering all this while lying shoeless in Madison Square Park today during lunch. Shoeless Ian Webster. The air is fresher in these little pockets, and the cool shade cools the grass, and the cool grass retains its morning dew, and softly soaked my clothes as I lay, corpse-like, surrounded by hundreds of chattering New Yorkers who chose this 'natural' spot over the benches that line the scorching pavement. They talked of unnatural things, but I only heard snippets, and the words themselves became kindling for day dreams that soon lost any sense of the day. How is a siren different from the sound of a thousand crickets? It isn't really. Something living is trying to tell a specific other something living that it is there, all else who can hear it be damned. It is the shotgun approach to getting to its destination. They both are hard, they have to be to thrive in the city.
I opened my eyes and the noises were not gone, but had become part of the background, part of the river of noise flowing past me. I stared at the tree-limb above me, behind it a deep blue sky. Near me where I lay is a newly erected sculpture of what looks like two chrome trees fighting, or helping each other after a wind storm. Their branches connect, they are life sized and leafless. They look like naked robots compared to their living counterparts surrounding them. I am struck by the irony of the echo of nature in art, placed in a planted pocket of a city planner's design. Planted or not, the actual trees mock the sculptures with their elegant geometry, rough texture, and epic, sprawling branches shrouded in leaves. When the air stirs, the trees answer. The robots stay in frozen combat. They will be taken down at the end summer.
This city reclines in the palm of Nature's hand. But not because it has forced itself there, but because Nature hasn't yet begun to clap.
My eyes flickered open, and I pulled myself upwards. My clothes were indeed damp despite the midday sun, the grass quickly shrugged off my imprint. I returned to work.
Posted by ian at May 24, 2007 11:35 PM