Hiatus

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

In New York, you walk across the same avenues as always. How many times have you walked this same street, 53rd, across 6th and 7th avenues? How many times have you passed by countless multitudes, tourists, workers, between the rising buildings and souvenir shops? In the dead of winter clutching your coat against you, hurrying towards the nearest subway, or in the glory of spring, with chin up and chest high, taking in every ray of light that shined on the city?

The city you so loved, still love, but from a distance. You’re not able anymore to drag your feet slowly down Broadway watching the old men play chess on Sundays on the sidewalk, or linger at the booksellers’ tables, or duck into Housing Works Cafe during an afternoon of rain. I’ve missed the city in the rain, all that muck, all those crazy umbrellas, and the people coming in from it. That’s almost when I loved it most, when everyone, wanderers and purposeful walkers, would get soaked, and we went into cafes for coffee, sat and watched the window, loved strangers from afar and imagined their next destination.

Photo by I..C..U..