Heights

             My friends from High School recently came to visit me and the three of us took a train into the city on a Sunday afternoon. Personally, I was hoping for a mellow escape—while simultaneously ignoring an unfinished paper looming in the distance. My friends were hoping for a little adventure, not very familiar with New York City, and ready to make the most of the one afternoon that they had to explore. What we found was right in between—just what we all needed. We found ourselves at a downtown apartment right off of Wall Street—a friend of my friends whom she’d met in her travels.  Needless to say (as the pictures sort-of say it all) he was exceedingly wealthy. 

And I was exceedingly inspired, to each their own.

It’s that feeling in your stomach, as if you swallowed a phone and keep receiving texts—that faint buzzing, that weakness of limbs, subtle numbness of fingers. The fear of heights doesn’t seem like fear at all. Rather, carnal reaction.  I can’t control it, I can’t stop it, I can barely endure it, but I don’t mind it. I step away from the edge with a jerk of my legs, when my newly fragile body has had enough. I wasn’t fragile before. But that was before I found myself atop the world. Well, sort of. Atop of the city hailed the greatest in the world—bright lights as far at the eye can see, subtle lights even further, and a newfound trust in the existence of the lights beyond the horizon, an assuredness resulting from this feeling.

The feeling of insignificance that spurs from the realization that we are all just tiny specks of dust within one of the thousands of illuminated squares, sitting side by side on the face of a high-rise. And Simultaneously, the feeling of insight, spurring from the realization that each speck of dust has the power to think of them self as a speck of dust, the power to draw the shades on their illuminated square, the power to look down on the rest of the specks, with respect or distain, depending on the day, depending on the speck. And furthermore, when those specks get together, in a cloud of indiscernible dust, the power to build the greatest city in the world.

Downtown NYC / 2011