[Dean's World] Ron Coleman: This is New York (a 9/11 reading)

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Posted by Ron Coleman:
This is New York (a 9/11 reading)
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1157724820.shtml


     Manhattan has been compelled to expand skyward because of the
     absence of any other direction in which to grow. This, more than
     any other thing, is responsible for its physical majesty. It is to
     the nation what the white church spire is to the village-the
     visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying that
     the way is up. The summer traveler swings in ... and as [his car]
     glides above the pigeon lofts and back yards of Queens looks
     southwest to where the morning light first strikes the steel peaks
     of midtown, and he sees its upward thrust unmistakable: the great
     wall sand towers rising, the smoke rising, the heat not yet rising,
     the hopes and ferments of so many awakening millions rising-this
     vigorous spear that presses heaven hard.

     ...

     The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak
     much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first
     time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of
     planes no bigger that a wedge of geese can quickly end this island
     fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground
     passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The
     intimidation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of
     jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.

     All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of
     annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated
     because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of
     all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of
     whatever perverted dreamer who might loose the lightning, New York
     must hold a steady, irresistible charm.

     It used to be that the Statue of Liberty was the signpost that
     proclaimed New York and translated it for all the world. Today
     Liberty shares the role with Death. Along the East River, from the
     razed laughterhouses of Turtle Bay, as though in a race with the
     spectral flight of planes, men are carving out the permanent
     headquarters of the United Nations--the greatest housing project of
     them all. In its stride, New York takes on one more interior city,
     to shelter, this time, all governments, and to clear the slum
     called war. New York is not a capital city--it is not a national
     capital or a stage capital. But it is by way of becoming the
     capital of the world. The buildings, as conceived by architects,
     will be cigar boxes set on end. Traffic will flow in a new tunnel
     under First Avenue. Forty-seventh Street will be widened (and if my
     guess is any good, trucks will appear late at night to plant tall
     trees surreptitiously, their roots to mingle with the intestines of
     the town). Once again the city will absorb, almost without showing
     any sign of it, a congress of visitors. . . .

     The city at last perfectly illustrates both the universal dilemma
     and the general solution, this riddle in steel and stone is at once
     the perfect target and the perfect demonstration of nonviolence, of
     racial brotherhood, this lofty target scraping the skies and
     meeting the destroying planes halfway, home of all people and all
     nations, capital of everything, housing the deliberations by which
     the planes are to be stayed and their errand forestalled.

     A block or two west of the new City of Man in Turtle Bay there is
     an old willow tree that presides over an interior garden. It is a
     battered tree, long-suffering and much-climbed, held together by
     strands of wire but beloved of those who know it. In a way it
     symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds,
     sap-rise in the midst of concrete, and the steady reaching for the
     sun. Whenever I look at it nowadays, and feel the cold shadow of
     the planes, I thing: "This must be saved, this particular thing,
     this very tree." If it were to go, all would go--the city, this
     mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be
     like death.

   E. B. White, Here is New York (1949)