Thursday afternoon
and I’m sitting on the promenade in Brooklyn Heights, the day the plans for the cultural center at ground zero are released [I like, with some reservations] and the day after Donald Trump [I hate] held that joke of a press conference on the WTC redesign so that he could continue to listen to the sound of his own voice.
The sun is beginning to do what it does best in early evening, slowly settling behind the buildings in front of me, and there’s me on my bench, a plastic bag with the salmon for the night’s dinner to one side of me, my other bag full of books and magazines to be gotten through, and the little notebook in which I start writing this.
Abby runs by, nearly done the brisk 10 or 12 miles I’m sure she’s just been on, and stops to say hi, beaming. The light and temperature are perfect, and I’m grateful for this city and our place in it. There’s fish to cook, wine to buy, but I tell her I’ll sit a bit longer, let her finish her run, and she does.
Beside me, a family of four looks at the skyline, then down at a series of bronze plaques inlaid in the stone, depicting the view before them throughout the years, and before it looked in so many ways empty.
The older boy, maybe seven years old, treads on the images he sees, the buildings and ships impossibly large in front of them. And whether he’s acting as all boys do, or because he’s living at a wrong time in this world, as he stomps on the buildings, slowly and just above a whisper, he says, “Smash...Smash...Fire...”
Watching him, I realize that it’s a bit of both; he’s part Godzilla, part kid growing up in these strange days.
The family heads off together, and I gather my things for the walk away from this view I love. When I walk over to look at the skyscrapers that were at his feet, I see views from the 19th-century on up to 2001. The boy was stomping on 1935 -- buildings more sparse, the towers still un-imagined -- as if he knew what would be there and, later, what wasn’t.
The sun is beginning to do what it does best in early evening, slowly settling behind the buildings in front of me, and there’s me on my bench, a plastic bag with the salmon for the night’s dinner to one side of me, my other bag full of books and magazines to be gotten through, and the little notebook in which I start writing this.
Abby runs by, nearly done the brisk 10 or 12 miles I’m sure she’s just been on, and stops to say hi, beaming. The light and temperature are perfect, and I’m grateful for this city and our place in it. There’s fish to cook, wine to buy, but I tell her I’ll sit a bit longer, let her finish her run, and she does.
Beside me, a family of four looks at the skyline, then down at a series of bronze plaques inlaid in the stone, depicting the view before them throughout the years, and before it looked in so many ways empty.
The older boy, maybe seven years old, treads on the images he sees, the buildings and ships impossibly large in front of them. And whether he’s acting as all boys do, or because he’s living at a wrong time in this world, as he stomps on the buildings, slowly and just above a whisper, he says, “Smash...Smash...Fire...”
Watching him, I realize that it’s a bit of both; he’s part Godzilla, part kid growing up in these strange days.
The family heads off together, and I gather my things for the walk away from this view I love. When I walk over to look at the skyscrapers that were at his feet, I see views from the 19th-century on up to 2001. The boy was stomping on 1935 -- buildings more sparse, the towers still un-imagined -- as if he knew what would be there and, later, what wasn’t.
posted by quickstuff at 20.5.05
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