Bryant Park and Beyond

Bryant Park is two blocks from my office. When I first walked past it two weeks ago, my first reaction was “whaa...?” Why do beautiful parks in Manhattan still shock me?

This park, lovely and bursting with orderly greenness, has become something of a symbol for me.

I ended up in New York/Jersey more or less by accident. This just happened to be the area where both Oliver and I could best pursue our career interests: a good library science school for one and plenty of big, soulless banks for the other. I like the fact that I had no fantasies of New York before I came here, because it makes me feel detached from the spectacle. I feel a bit like an explorer or an anthropologist, notebook full of questions in hand.

The first: what’s so great about New York?

Silly question, right? The answer is obvious after all: it’s big and there’s a lot going on. Still… big? A lot of stuff going on? These phrases have never captured my imagination.

So there are crowds and tons of options on a Saturday night. So?

Back to Bryant Park (which is much more lively than my photos make it look, by the way). I often walk through it on my way to/from work, and I’ve spent a few lunch breaks there too. Each visit, I’ve noticed that there are about a dozen different things going on. Authors do readings to nodding crowds in the park’s outdoor “reading room”. Perfectly coiffed young professionals chatter and network over glasses of wine on the terrace of the Bryant Park Grill. Colleagues grab seats in the shade for lunch and gripe about their bosses. A pianist plays on the upper terrace. Young women rush to the lawn, LuluLemon mats in hand, for the public yoga class. Workers scrub the giant screen at the west end of the lawn in preparation for the night’s outdoor movie. A bluegrass band plays to an end-of-the-workday crowd. Here, time isn’t passed but seized. When I look at Bryant Park I wonder if I don’t see a little something of the “it” that so many have written about.

New York, more so than any other city I’ve lived in, is hellbent on “being somebody”. It’s as though everyone here is working feverishly toward some dream or another. There’s the actor /model /business tycoon dream of course, but there’s also the organize- an- African- music- festival dream, the hold- indie- rock- concerts- in- an- abandoned- public- pool dream, the open- a- bar- full- of– vintage- arcade- games dream, and so on. There’s such drive, and so for many unique things; sometimes I imagine I can almost feel it. And it feels good! Just walking down the street, knowing that all around you the city is creating and building and working towards newer, bolder things … it’s exciting.