Walk

Where the gloomy prison of the Tombs now stands, there was a lake of crystal water, overhung by towering trees. Its silence and solitude were disturbed only by the cry of the water-fowl which disported upon its surface, while its depths sparkled with the spotted trout. The lake emptied into the Hudson river by a brook which rippled over its pebbly bed, along the present line of Canal street. This beautiful lake was fed by large springs and was sufficiently deep to float any ship in the navy. Indeed it was some time before its bottom could be reached by any sounding line.
Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam by John S. C. Abbott - Project Gutenberg

I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

In New York the sun reaches everyone at the hour of the day appointed by their position in the grid pattern, weather blows in from every side, but one can go for days (weeks, years) without being aware of the shape of the natural world around one. You can forget entirely about topography (and for that matter, history) in New York City, but it is there, at the end of every street.

"In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens--elections--members of congress--liberty--Bunker’s Hill--heroes of seventy-six--and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle."
Washington Irving (1783–1859)  Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Ice floes frozen since the 60's are melting and hibernating mastodons creak about the earth, rooting through piles of ancient garbage for a bite to eat. The Yale debate team of 1967 is polishing their blazer buttons and slapping Old Spice on their craggy faces. I can't imagine being asleep for 30 years and waking up in this election and being confused. Right at home is more like it. We hear more about Vietnam than our current war. 36 years ago the media was obsessed with revolting youth, and revolting youth were obsessed with the war. That is different. Being a pissed-off young person seems like a minority pursuit at the moment.

Liza stares blankly, as if she might have regarded Quadrophenia more along the lines of that movie with Sting in it. Dylan feels despair rising. Fishnet tights do not a cultural vocabulary make. To the ironized, reference-peppered palaver which comprises Dylan's only easy mode of talk former prep-school girls have frequently proved deaf as cats. -- The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

This phenomena (ie looks like a duck, but seems not to understand my quacking) was most disconcerting at first. But even more disconcerting is the reverse: the situation where shared interests, even obsessions, do not preclude having absolutely nothing in common with a person.

Remains of cessina. east l.a.

Lars thinks about dinner.

Southern californian hill towns. Each with a distinctive cuisine, wines, and culture.

From the moment I arrived in America, everyone told me that Los Angeles was horrible, that I would really like SFrancisco but would hate LA, so I had convinced myself that I would definitely like it. And indeed I arrive and am immediately enthusiastic: yes, this is the American city, the impossible city, it's so enormous, and since I only enjoy being in huge cities it is just right for me. It is as long as if the area between Milan and Turin were just one single city stretching north as far as Como and south as far as Vercelli.

Italo Calvino - Hermit in Paris

Now, of course, LA sretches roughly the equivalent of from just south of Rome to the Arctic circle, and European intellectuals spend most of the year here working on development deals.

In New York one may find every class of paper which the imagination can conceive. Every grade of society is catered for. If an Esquimau came to New York, the first thing he would find on the bookstalls in all probability would be the Blubber Magazine, or some similar production written by Esquimaux for Esquimaux. Everybody reads in New York, and reads all the time. The New Yorker peruses his favourite paper while he is being jammed into a crowded compartment on the subway or leaping like an antelope into a moving Street car. -- P.G.Wodehouse - Psmith Journalist

Still true, of course, with the caveat that nowadays half of the specialty market is for pornography. And even more disturbing, but along the same lines of "a magazine about group A, written by possibly group B, but probably group A or indeed C, for group B" are shelter magazines. Group B being the folks lusting after what they haven't ready access to, at least not until they make a bunch of money or get out of jail.

And its final green a dirty brown. Abandoned reading matter, October 2004.

I walked all the way back to the hotel. Forty-one gorgeous blocks.
from Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Sometimes when you look up in New York you are allowed to imagine the city as it was 20, 30, 40 or 80 years ago. I think what suprised me about this building was, in fact, the name: Hotel Lincoln Square.

There's a location (the confluence of North-South Columbus Avenue and diagonal Broadway), next to Lincoln Center, that is being called Lincoln square these days. There's even a Loews Theatre called Lincoln Square. This building, though, is about 10 blocks up-town, looking down on Verdi Square. Which is odd. Increasing the oddness: I assumed Lincoln square as a location dated from no earlier than the building of Lincoln Center (sometime in the early 60's -- just after West Side Story was filmed. The "sets" for the movie are in fact the tenements which had been evacuated prior to being torn down so the Center could be built). But this Hotel is older than that: the sign could be an attempt to garner some reflected glamor from the downtown location, but that seems unlikely.

Anyway. I liked the fire escape, the painted sign, the water tower against the blue sky. I would have taken a picture which got more of the water tower, but there was a women having a loud argument with herself in the ideal spot, and I thought she needed her space.