New air filled my lungs as I took it in. I held my breath for a split second longer than breathing would require just to fulfill my need to analyze the novelty of it. As the breath passed and I exhaled, the familiar projection of smokey steam rose from my lungs as I expelled the warm air from my nostrils.
This place was new, something I hadn't seen before. Glancing upward I was only offered a small sliver of the midafternoon sky, clouds lazily drifting from one side of the strip to the other. This was something strange, not seeing the sky stretch out before me as I had been used to. Here the streets were narrower, as if part of some remote Italian village where automobile usage never caught on. The buildings towered over me, blotting out significant portions of the sky in favor of squeezing in a pair of tenants in the crowded city.
The streets were not as bustling as I had expected, but did contain a fair amount of pedestrians, most of them hurrying toward their chosen method of public transit to return home for the evening. My own legs carried me from block to block, each looking uniquely different but still vaguely familiar; the same half-canopy of brick and aluminum rising to shield me from the sun's occasional appearance.
In the city, everything shifted constantly. In no direction could you observe a lack of movement. It reminded me inversely of stepping out of my front door in wintertime back in my suburban home. Silence when it snowed. Silence and a kind of permanent twilight, the reflective qualities of the cloud and snow cover exchanging the dim light as the sun sojourned on the other side of the planet. Dead quiet, no wind, with the eerie reddish-pink color that accompanied night in those times. Freshly fallen snow betrayed no trace of passersby, laying fresh and clean in the streets and sidewalks alike. Cold and silent.
The city was bright, the city was colorful, the city was noisy. Where those cold winter nights represented death and sleep, I told myself, daytime on these streets was the symbol of life and activity. Each of those people had a life to live, a place to be, people who loved them. It took a moment or two of pause to recognize this and to truly integrate it into my thoughts, but the feeling of epiphany was worth it.
Eventually the city held less promise than it once did, less splendor and wonder. Getting to know the street layout made navigation easier, but adventure much harder. It's a shame, really, that novelty has to eventually surrender to practicality.
This place was new, something I hadn't seen before. Glancing upward I was only offered a small sliver of the midafternoon sky, clouds lazily drifting from one side of the strip to the other. This was something strange, not seeing the sky stretch out before me as I had been used to. Here the streets were narrower, as if part of some remote Italian village where automobile usage never caught on. The buildings towered over me, blotting out significant portions of the sky in favor of squeezing in a pair of tenants in the crowded city.
The streets were not as bustling as I had expected, but did contain a fair amount of pedestrians, most of them hurrying toward their chosen method of public transit to return home for the evening. My own legs carried me from block to block, each looking uniquely different but still vaguely familiar; the same half-canopy of brick and aluminum rising to shield me from the sun's occasional appearance.
In the city, everything shifted constantly. In no direction could you observe a lack of movement. It reminded me inversely of stepping out of my front door in wintertime back in my suburban home. Silence when it snowed. Silence and a kind of permanent twilight, the reflective qualities of the cloud and snow cover exchanging the dim light as the sun sojourned on the other side of the planet. Dead quiet, no wind, with the eerie reddish-pink color that accompanied night in those times. Freshly fallen snow betrayed no trace of passersby, laying fresh and clean in the streets and sidewalks alike. Cold and silent.
The city was bright, the city was colorful, the city was noisy. Where those cold winter nights represented death and sleep, I told myself, daytime on these streets was the symbol of life and activity. Each of those people had a life to live, a place to be, people who loved them. It took a moment or two of pause to recognize this and to truly integrate it into my thoughts, but the feeling of epiphany was worth it.
Eventually the city held less promise than it once did, less splendor and wonder. Getting to know the street layout made navigation easier, but adventure much harder. It's a shame, really, that novelty has to eventually surrender to practicality.
No comments:
Post a Comment