Saturday, May 10, 2008

A Few Miles Change Everything

I am always amazed by how a quick ride down the Hudson River to New York City completely shatters my attempt to understand New York state; the city may as well be its own country. I arrived in Grand Central Station yesterday and immediately was greeted by 24,000 long-stem red roses that were part of a campaign for Mother's Day from the A Diamond Is Forever Floral Spectacular. I had no further turned from the flower exhibit when I saw this chic tourist (traveling solo) taking a picture of himself with his camera on what looked like an extended walking stick (I originally mistook it for a metal detector). When I came outside the station, within a couple of blocks of Grand Central, I saw a woman hysterically crying in the streets. A man on the next block had has arms seriously close to the neck of another man and was screaming at him. The intimacies of life seemed so public on Lexington Avenue, but the odd thing was not the public intimacies but the severe privacy born out of the anonymity of no one caring about anything but their destination.