The City of Show and Tell:

New York, NY - Peter - Tuesday, May 21st, 2002 : goo

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Abstract Nonsense about Postmodern Intertextuality and Hegelian Gesundfarbensextenkugelschreiber...

I was born in a small town, its four-digits of population quite quaint compared to these twenty-two square miles of structural steel, noise and filth. This city makes you pensive, thoughtful about your past, inquisitive about your future, enamored with your present. Here, I do alot of thinking. I wake and ride the train, everyone quiet in their half-sleep while I ponder and I ruminate. I consider a variety of things.

Is it possible to be in love with fifty thousand buildings, ten million works of art, patches of wheat-grass in store fronts? Can one read passion from the reflecting, refracting, gleaming street-side slabs of glass? Concrete, cars, stampeding trains, noisy piers; can one have an affair with such things?

I find myself seduced by five-and-a-half million people all at once, and if this city has a pulse, I'm determined to synchronize my watch to its beat. Day by day by day, I'm hopelessly struck by the massiveness of this place, its physical space, its spirits and its people.

The city's buildings are so grand and loom as if from some maniacal architect's dream. They bear their sign towers, billboards and winking neon like spectacles on the faces of amiable strangers who pass on the streets. Sometimes, they overwhelm me. Sometimes, they're unassuming, grinning at me with a smile as warm and bristly as a welcome mat; sometimes they're closed doors, turned up collars. Sometimes they're cold.

This is an interesting place to exist, as I'm not sure how fully one can thrive here, as a blip among a countless sea of faces. Yet I take it all in stride; existing here is as good as thriving elsewhere. Anonymity is a mixed blessing, of sorts, freeing me to roam as I please. But, I am dumbstruck at how easily I could fade into the crowds, this town, and absolutely disappear.

And yet I try sometimes. This is the City of Show and Tell.

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Peter: you live in nyc?

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