Even in New York

Jan 27 2016

Even in New York,

gotham

polyglot

cosmopolis.

In the non-stop city,

solipsist, insomniac
cacophonous.

In the squalor and squabble

on the island of  urban chic

the snow was pristine,

in the unnatural calm

in the lull after the storm.

Grand avenues blocked.

Cars swamped

by sculpted drifts.

Towering mounds

where it was ploughed and carted and dropped;

pure white, in blinding sun,

under sky as blue as Iowa.

Soon

it will all be churned

to soiled slush, and dirty slop.

Soon

it will seep into boots, sully socks,

the life-blood of commerce
obstructed.

Soon, the din of horns

and siren call

and slip-and-fall,

the constant hum of noise.

But how beautiful, winter in New York,

when it becomes soft

and small

and Midwestern,

just like the towns

its residents fled from.

That ephemeral moment

when the city is closed

and people are home

and snow is luminously fresh.

When less is more,

and Mammon grudgingly rests.

There was a record-setting snowfall along the US mid-Atlantic coast. I was looking at photographs, and was struck not only by how much there was, but by how consistently pristine it was; so unlike the usual appearance of urban snow. I’m supposed to inhabit a winter city. But even here, the amount of snow is small, and it looks as you’d expect:   rutted, soiled, done.

How fresh snow transforms a city; even one as iconically urban and sophisticated as Gotham. And how it transforms the inhabitants:  snowball fights in a square in Washington DC; people on XC skis on New York’s Park Avenue. That city may be all about hustle and money and commerce. But a snow-day upends the usual values, and compels even its most competitive and driven inhabitants to think about other ways of being.

When I wrote island of urban chic, I was not only thinking of the city’s geography in the Hudson river, but of that notorious cartoon of  a world map as drawn by a native New Yorker:  the insular view from the “centre-of-the-universe”. And of how New York is so unrepresentative of the rest of the country, of middle America.

I’m still not sure about “luminously” in the 3^rd last line. As usual, I have trouble with adverbs. Because they’re often unnecessary. And worse, can patronize the reader:  as if she needs to have the obvious spelled-out. The context can say it just as well. And when the reader does that little bit of creative work, it’s far more powerful than being led by the nose.