Happy Fourth of July: to liberty!
[This is a repeat of an previous post. I thought it especially relevant today because I see our liberties as newly-threatened. In addition, there’s the news that the crown of the Statue of Liberty has been reopened today to visitors for the first time since 9/11.]
I’ve been visiting New York City, the place where I grew up. I decide to take a walk to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, never having been there before.
When you approach the Promenade you can’t really see what’s in store. You walk down a normal-looking street, spot a bit of blue at the end of the block, make a right turn–and, then, suddenly, there is New York:
And so it is for me. I take a turn, and catch my breath: downtown Manhattan rises to my left, seemingly close enough to touch, across the narrow East River. I see skyscrapers, piers, the orange-gold Staten Island ferry. In front of me, there are the graceful gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. To my right, the back of some brownstones, and a well-tended and charming garden that goes on for a third of a mile.
I walk down the promenade looking first left and then right, not knowing which vista I prefer, but liking them both, especially in combination, because they complement each other so well.
All around me are people, relaxing. Lovers walking hand in hand, mothers pushing babies in strollers, fathers pushing babies in strollers, nannies pushing babies in strollers. People walking their dogs (a preponderance of pugs, for some reason), pigeons strutting and courting, tourists taking photos of themselves with the skyline as background, every other person speaking a foreign language.
The garden is more advanced from what it must be at my house, reminding me that New York is really a southern city compared to New England. Daffodils, the startling blue of grape hyacinths, tulips in a rainbow of soft colors, those light-purple azaleas that are always the first of their kind, flowering pink magnolia and airy white dogwood and other blooming trees I don’t know the names of.
In the view to my left, of course, there’s something missing. Something very large. Two things, actually: the World Trade Center towers. Just the day before, we had driven past that sprawling wound, with its mostly-unfilled acreage where the WTC had once stood, now surrounded by fencing. Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.
As I look at the skyline from the Promenade, I know that those towers are missing, but I don’t really register the loss visually. I left New York in 1965, never to live there again, returning thereafter only as occasional visitor. The World Trade Center was built in the early seventies, so I never managed to incorporate it into that personal New York skyline of memory that I hold in my mind’s eye, even though I saw the towers on every visit. So, what I now see resembles nothing more than the skyline of my youth, restored, a fact which seems paradoxical to me. But I feel the loss, even though I don’t see it. Viewing the skyline always has a tinge of sadness now, which it never had before 9/11.
I come to the end of the walkway and turn myself around to set off on the return trip. And, suddenly, the view changes. Now, of course, the garden is to my left and the city to my right; and the Brooklyn Bridge, which was ahead of me, is now behind me and out of sight. But now I can see for the first time, ahead of me and to the right, something that was behind me before. In the middle of the harbor, the pale-green Statue of Liberty stands firmly on its concrete foundation, arm raised high, torch in hand.
The sight is intensely familiar to me—I used to see it almost every day when I was growing up. But I’ve never seen it from this angle before. She seems both small and gigantic at the same time: dwarfed by the skyscrapers near me that threaten to overwhelm her, but towering over the water that surrounds her on all sides. The eye is drawn to her distant, heroic figure. She’s been holding that torch up for so long, she must be tired. But still she stands, resolute, her arm extended.
Nice Neo.
Vanderleunesque.
Neo:
My first time on the Promenade, like yours, was a memory maker. The walk down Montague Street is a treat itself, but nothing approaches the awe when you reach the end and see the city. I had traveled to NYC several times before 9/11, and my first impression when I saw it afterwards, without the WTC, was that it looked emasculated. That’s an odd way to term it, I know, but that was the thought.
And from this Texan, New York is NOT and never will be a “southern city.” 🙂
This morning I have been looking through my photo folder and came across the series made by my son in June of 2001, from a Greyline boat we took that day to show Manhattan to our guests.
Two pictures from that file made me all choked up again. One of the Lady Liberty, from the point at the foundation looking up at the torch, and another – of a deck full of people staring at the panorama of lower Manhattan with the Towers intact.
Very nice post neo. I was a tad more banal this Independence Day, and chose to celebrate the little things in my life that (to me, anyway) make America great. Cheers.
I am very pleased that my “Twin Towers” Google Alert brought me to this site. It is one that I will return to with pleasure. We are birds of a feather. As a lifelong Democrat who grew up sandwiched between Lexington and Concord I came to New York in 1970.
I rarely comment on individual blogs, but I hope you won’t mind if I share what I just added to ours:
“Watching the Macy’s Fireworks from the George Washington Bridge on such a gorgeous night, with the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and all the lights of the most spectacular skyline in the world at their most dazzling, was bittersweet – because it was impossible not to see what was missing.
“How can anyone call himself or herself a New Yorker and be willing to accept a generic World Trade Center – one that would disfigure an incomparable city and incomparable country – in place of two of the most celebrated icons the world has ever seen?
“It’s not too late to build a World Trade Center worthy of the price we paid for being Americans.”
Hope you had a wonderful 4th, Neo!
Here’s to the greatest nation that has ever existed,
to the most benign great power that history has known,
to the freest people of all the annals.
Nations of the world:
We do not seek to conquer.
We want only to be free of violence.
Let us go about our business in peace.
Peoples of the world:
We do not seek to subjugate.
Your allegiance is not required.
We do not want you to bow to us.
Keep your ways.
Keep your tongues.
Keep your gods.
Our desire is simple:
Deal with us,
buy our goods,
sell us yours.
We want only to trade with you.
We will give you a fair deal.
We will all grow wealthy together!
BTW its not ONLY Black voters who need to wake up its all the gullible, emotional unthinking non enquring fools who allowed this USURPER to get in to power and who even now with all the evidence they need still can’t wake up and smell the coffee.