blaming Michelangelo for my fascination with art, religion, and naked men
Restaurants,
comic clips,
cats and dogs,
don’t make it
to the feed
right now.
I open the news
in trepidation.
Who have they
terrorized
today?
Whose fear
brought them
pleasure?
Whose distress
made them feel
powerful?
How can the
church lady
post
Disneyland pics
while her heroes
destroy
her neighbor
as herself?
When I arrived in New York 25 years ago, there was a shared sense on the street that if you didn’t follow the rules you could get hurt.
Figuring out the correct side of the sidewalk and how to navigate taxis, bike messengers, and loose mental patients was part of survival in this tough City. It was also part of being a good fellow New Yorker. You felt proud of yourself as you accomplished the ways of the City. Similar to stepping confidently onto a “people mover” at the airport, you learned what “regular coffee” really meant at a street cart, how to fold your Times so as not to annoy fellow subway passengers, how brief a question needed to be for a New Yorker to answer it, and that you always stayed to the right and moved attentively on the sidewalk.
True New Yorkers knew these things. New New Yorkers wanted to learn them quickly. Visitors wanted to know so as not to draw attention to themselves. We were all in it together. And if you hadn’t figured that out yet, you quickly did, or risked being run off the curb. Continue reading “sidewalks of new york”
seeing god naked 