New York, while not infinite, at least aspires to that
condition, and the narrow island of Manhattan is filled with regular
rectangular iterations of crystalline concrete growth, rhomboid and enormous at
the northern and southern ends, and dipping to a mere four stories in the
middle. The streets, except of course Broadway, run north south east west, and
so you can stand on 6
th, say, and look up and down a vast canyon of
stone and brick and steel.
But if the buildings possess slight material similarity then
the people are nowhere the same. Every face is different, brought here down who
knows how tortuous paths, from the heavily carved features of a man whose
ancestors crossed the Bering Strait in the last Ice Age, to fresh migrants
arguing enthusiastically in their approximation of American English, Eastern
European accents peppered with the twang of idiomatic loan words.
It is a city that is never still, except perhaps now, early
on a Saturday morning. The shops in the street below have hardly opened, the
smell of bacon from the deli across the road has not reached up to my window,
and the sounds of birdsong have not yet been erased by traffic and the howl of
sirens and alarms.
For the first time in a week the temperature is
rising, and with it the layers of cloud that have blanketed the island in a
dense, gritty fog. Instead we have a sticky heat, and later in the day the
hipsters of this hipper than thou section of Williamsburg will stand on street
corners, tattooed arms and legs projecting from short skirts and torn jeans,
condensation beading on the iced drinks they sip through the spaces afforded
between piercings, studs and labrettes.