Meet Me There

Empire State Building (March 2012)

The night expands into shadows on sidewalks, in steps hurrying to catch the next train, or as they walk into a park to sit on a bench and rest. Breezes caress cheeks, gestures, or trail punctuations in a conversation. Cars converge and diverge into routes, pre-meditations, or failed plans. She keeps looking at her watch, at what its numbers tell her, their power over her expectations. There's the sky to look at. But her eyes don't look beyond the branches of trees without leaves. Her mind settles on the sound of steps, at what they are up to. She can still feel him in these nameless faces, his touch, the movement of his palms on her, where they pursue her. He takes her further in her closed eyes, into where trees hide between city-streets, between tongues that know what each cannot feel.

Empire State Building

 Last night, I walked through a drizzle of snow flurries on 5th Ave, from 34th to 14th and back.  I had been checking out a merchandise on the web, and wanted to see it in-person before buying it. And since I liked what I saw, I went home with it.  The streets were busy and wet outside the store, and I felt like walking around for a while.  Pizza was in my mind, or food from a truck-stand.  But I ended up getting a subway sandwich at a place near 32nd. After leaving the fast-food restaurant, I stood on the sidewalk for a while, looked around, then up.  The lights on the upper part of the Empire State Building were on, and created an effect; it looked immersed in a halo, or that its height blocked my line of sight to a full moon on a semi-cloudy sky.  I took a couple of snapshots, before heading to the Grand Central Station.  On my way there, I borrowed some videos at the Mid-Manhattan Library. Costa-Gavra's Missing - a political drama set in the 1973 coup in Chile - wasn't that bad, when I saw it later. The main characters in the story - played by Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek - are residents of the empire state.