Cityscape 2: New York

1.
Steam rising from a drain at the intersection of Broadway and Grand streets. It pours north along Broadway, shrinking back like a startled animal with each passing car before starting its journey again.

2.
They are filming in the supermarket at the corner of Mulberry and Prince. What does it mean to look at the city from the perspectve of a writer and as a filmmaker? Part of me thinks that the filmmaker is doomed to see only a fragmented world, to understand the landscape in terms of how well it can be framed and to the extent that stories can pass through it. Perhaps the Writer is better able to blur the lines between cities of the mind and cities of reality and to build bridges between them. Or perhaps not?

3.
An empty white pickup truck parked along the side of Crosby Street. Its windows are open. Laughter from a Spanish radio station spills into the street.

4.
Thinking about Charles Dickens and V.S Naipaul as I wander toward Prince street. Both seem to find comedy in the pettiness and triviality of everyday life. Dickens finds this heart warming and laughs with it. Naipaul, despite rendering everyday worlds lovingly, seems to laugh at it. I'm thinking specifically of Great Expectations and The Mystic Masseur.

5.
A group on a Pizzeria tour of New York are hundled together outside Ray's Pizza. At the front of the group a boy waves Pizza menus and tells stories. People smile and laugh at his jokes, the same jokes that rise toward my window each Saturday. I know parts of his routine by heart. I find myself observing the group now as Charles Dickens, now as V. S. Naipaul.