Touristing

Being in New York didn't seem to affect my normal vacation sleep schedule. The day after Thanksgiving, I woke up late and had a later brunch, then headed out into the city. Several of my friends from Patrick Henry were also visiting the city over break, and I met them for dinner at an Irish pub. Fish and chips with a pint of Guiness; not too different from some of my meals in Bermuda last spring. I suspect that pubs like this one will be a staple food source in the years to come. For comfort food, one could do worse.

Another stop was The Strand bookstore, on 12^th and Broadway—“Home to 18 miles of new, used, rare, and out of print books.” The top floor, accessible only by elevator, was home to some truly beautiful books, some hundreds of years old, bound with leather and fading cloth. I could have spent hours there, just looking, examining 15^th century French texts and wishing I spoke the language.

That would have to wait until my next visit. I walked around with my friends until they headed back for the night, and then walked around the city by myself. Seeing new things with friends is a wonderful way to build friendships, and is a lot of fun—my Bermuda trip and countless backpacking trips are evidence enough of that—but walking alone forces your attention to the place you are standing, to the people walking around you. There is something about New York that cries out for it. Millions of people in constant flux, through the day and through the night.

Social structures here are constellations, patterns formed out of nearly limitless potential by vocation, geographical proximity, and chance. A group of teenagers, laughing, take a group picture on the subway; you smile knowingly at the person sitting across from you. A moment shared with a stranger. In a small town, the actions of everyday life—buying groceries, taking a walk, seeing a movie—would be one of thousands of similar moments shared with acquaintances and friends. The city's endless parade of unfamiliar faces must surely affect the psyche in some way new to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It would certainly make an interesting study.

From the base of the Empire State Building, where I left my friends, I walked north through Times Square, with its lights—even the subway signs blink and glow—and past, up to the edge of Central Park. A low mist lay on the ground, lit by dim park lights scattered among the trees and benches. From beneath the grass and fallen leaves came the sound—faint, but clear—of metal striking metal and the sound of a foreman shouting orders, the subways under repair. Seanna informs me that many New Yorkers use Central Park to “get some Nature,” the capital N audible in the pronunciation of the phrase. But Central Park, with its boulders and streams and groves of trees, is like an animal in a zoo: nature behind bars, dozing under electric lights, atop a thin bed of grass built on a foundation of concrete.

I walked down 1^st Ave. By now it was late, and the U.N. building was dark, the flags taken down. Across the street, a sign reading “United Nations Peace Cleaners,” with a picture of a washing machine, flickered above a red “closed” sign.

It was late, and cold. I caught a subway and retired for the night.