hiccup artist

wnyc:

Extend NY  - the Manhattan grid extended to every point on earth. Super cool and a reminder that, yes, everything should be considered in relation to NYC. (by @hrldcpr)

-Jody, BL Show-

each encounter was like a poem he instantly memorized.

:: jonathan franzen

i think this city is full of people wanting inconceivable things.
:: john dos passos, manhattan transfer

prospect park

suppose that
everything that greens and grows
should blacken in one moment, flower and branch.
i think that i would find your blinded hand.
suppose that your cry and mine were lost among numberless cries
in a city of fire when the earth is afire,
i must still believe that somehow i would find your blinded hand.
through flames everywhere
consuming earth and air
i must believe that somehow, if only one moment were offered,
i would
find your hand.
i know as, of course, you know
the immeasurable wilderness that would exist
in the moment of fire.
but i would hear your cry and you’d hear mine and each of us
would find
the other’s hand.
we know
that it might not be so.
but for this quiet moment, if only for this
moment,
and against all reason,
let us believe, and believe in our hearts,
that somehow it would be so.
i’d hear your cry, you mine—
and each of us would find a blinded hand.

:: tennessee williams

a thousand sharpened elbows in the underground

“then, too, the arrival in brooklyn brings with it a drop in sophistication and tension (manhattanites often equate the two) that registers immediately in the body. i have experienced it myself as a kind of decompression: a weight lifting from my shoulders. the low-rise streetscape, compared to manhattan, is like going from a tense verticality to a semiprone position”

:: philip lopate, brooklyn the unknowable