Walking In New York City

Abandoned, injured umbrellas with decrepit, twisted batwing limbs reach out helplessly, littering street corners. Driving rain and icy winds fuel fast walks along avenues of holiday-delighted visitors and irritated locals.

To enter a friendly, organic French café with an enormously long Viking-sized table running down the middle and warm aromas of freshly made bread and caffeine-bean brew, where one may thaw out frozen limbs with WiFi and pleasant company, is bliss. Long conversations later donning your armor against the cold once again and steel yourself for the certain frigid onslaught once exited, is fresh. To enter an IMAX theater, basking in the aesthetically stunning film experience of the year, is sweetness. Later, entering a student apartment brightly decorated by artwork found on these very streets, joining the company of family for friendly competition in the world of board games, is priceless.

From the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan rises like a diamond under the icy sky, a shimmering gray mass of gritty granite in the cold, metallic sun.

Every dog on the street is dressed to the hilt in fashionable overcoats to protect against the cold. There are many bulldogs. Pigeons and squirrels scavenge. Part of the squirrel population is black or dark brown, and appears to be perfectly integrated with their lighter counterparts whilst nibbling on the decorative cabbages in neat rows about Peter Cooper Village, a dozen or more red brick high-rise apartment buildings with green trim. Trees stretch their naked trunks towards the meager light in stark contrast with the white sky.

Yellow cabs pass patches of dirty, rotten snow while maneuvering brusquely through grids of human enterprise. One walks for miles and miles and see strips of faces show through bundles of coat lapels pulled up over ears, scarves, hats, even the occasional ski mask. If you look carefully, you can see that the faces of pedestrians are not entirely unfriendly, only guarded with hardened expressions to shield from the bitter wind.

Soon enough, spring breezes will thaw these faces with gentle touches, features will fade into softness and frowns melt with the vanishing snow. And new life, hope and fragile happiness will sprout with the budding trees in Central Park. The stark monochrome schemes will be assuaged by a touch of green. I will be gone then.