The Sidewalk is always Grayer

The view is unintentionally intimidating.  Left: seemingly endless miles of lifeless trees and brownstone buildings separated by a river of vehicles only momentarily dammed by traffic lights.  Right: the same sight.  Except for a skyscraper standing above the rest.  The Chrysler Building?  Too west to be.  The Freedom Tower? Much too north to be.  The curiosity spreads to my feet and, with the unknown structure my compass, I walk south along Central Park West.

 Scarcely another soul populates the wide sidewalk discounting myself.  I almost feel alone in this ghost town of a city walking in the solitude of my sidewalk.  One empty, forlorn bench seems to beg the few passers-by to spend a moment of time.  I give it an excuse (“Maybe another time, I have to be a fláneur today.”) but soon regret that decision.

 

 

Still, myself again excluded, hardly an individual strolls along the boulevard.  Freezing temperatures and the demands of 5:00 on a Friday are likely culprits.  Yet, the rapidly thawing heart of the beast, stretching from 110^th to 59^th streets, miraculously resembles some life.  Children dressed like wandering eskimos and teenagers prematurely welcoming spring with their short sleeved shirts simultaneously play in the park.  One adolescent throws a wayward snowball.  It lands at the surprised feet of another.  The war is on.  With little snow left, the skirmish becomes a bloodbath of icicles, muddy slush, and even an empty soda can.  Parents cringe at their senselessness.  I smile at their innocence.

 

Central Park West offers a fine lookout over the park, like an elevated turret.  One distant historic bridge – it’s old so it must be historic – hides, in its shadows, a couple standing idly.  They’re just talking.  Could be about the mistakes they have made in the past.  Or their plans for the future.  Or Sunday night’s Oscars.  I ultimately resolve something whimsical like the latter and decide to move on, regretting my forced entry into a private moment.

That same skyscraper, the mysterious one which touches the sky, becomes my focus once more.  It seems to be within reach.  Maybe four more blocks, five max.  Then I’ll know its name.  But it keeps growing taller and yet further from my grasp, as if actively evading my southward quest towards it.  I continue this dreamy sequence – it’s just a little further, I tell myself for thirty blocks – without realizing the crowd growing around me.  The sidewalk is much less lonesome, and I begin to hate this, too.  Then, another magnet vigorously seizes my attention: the statue of arguably the most famous “wanderer,” right in the middle of Columbus Circle.

Like locust, a swarm appears around me.  All walks-of-life walk beside me: the Wall Street businessman; the working class hero; the pushcart New Yorker selling signature heroes; the European or Asian tourist snapping pictures from every angle; the hopeful musician; the hopeless beggar; it’s the most complex family gathering in the world and happens at every hour every day here, there, and everywhere in Manhattan. 

I pass a horde of tourists speaking rapid German.  Suddenly, I feel myself become a member of the smaller New York family as I proudly hurry by my cousins from the Berlin family.  I adopt a completely indifferent expression, hasten my step, bump my shoulders with anyone who gets in my way.  I give these people a taste of what it means to call this city a home.  I put on a mask.  In a word, I become a New Yorker.

But I am not one.  I hate the feeling.  But I still do it.  And I go through this monotonous routine each time I hear a foreign tongue.  It is what my years commuting into the city have done to me: make me a face in the crowd.  Now, in the presence of perhaps eight million other faces of the swarm, I feel most alone.

The outermost stragglers of Times Square join me on my sidewalk, as I walk past Columbus Circle and towards the Port Authority.  The lights and neon of midtown New York mark my path.  Now, this time what I believe is the New York Times’ building attracts my eye and I again find myself wandering to that.  That is another building I have always been curious about due to the scaffolding-like exterior which partially surrounds the spire.  However, such a curiosity to see the building would not be satisfied that afternoon.  My empty stomach pleaded with me to end this madness and get home for dinner.  Freezing hands resisted emerging from my pockets.  Even my foot could not continue sharing my battered shoe with a pebble which had been there since 64^th street.  I entered the Port Authority, that ancient sanctuary for New York’s commuters, and waited to board the next bus for home.  Soon, in the midst of the filth and irritation that is the Port Authority, I began to miss New York.  It’s a complicate relationship we have.  The sidewalk is always grayer on this side, I suppose.