Skip to main content

New York Thought

The city lies dormant below the 86th floor observatory deck. 
Laid out, split open and ready for inspection.  Crowds jostle over centimetres of camera space.  Winds tear up the building, round the tourists and back down to the street happy to escape the madness of the crush. 

The quietest spot is where the wind dances in a corner by itself.  My hands only just grip my camera steady and teeth start to chatter from the harsh chill.  Mini yellow cabs jostle on the street far below me and ant people parade up and down pavement after pavement.  The city lies dormant and is peaceful from this rooftop scene.

I could reach out and touch Central Park.  Pluck a squirrel right out of its tree.  I could reach out and poke the Statue of Liberty.  Create my own mini snow globe by shaking it all about. 

Tourists track me down in my quiet corner and brave the violent wind to take shaky photos to show loved ones back home.  A helicopter circles the deck slowly and I must be an ant person for them far above me.  The sun dazzles my eyes by bouncing back and forth of the steel cage keeping me up here safe.

I blink to take in the view one last time. 


(Photo by me, 2008)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Friday

This week has been hard. It seems to have just been one long downward spiral which should've meant I woke up this morning feeling beyond hope.  Especially after the 4am nightmare where I drowned and then woke up in a hot sweat. But I woke up a lot more cheerful than I have been all week.  It's freezing cold and the 2 mile walk to the office from Charing Cross was painful but I got in and have found myself smiling all day.  Smiling when a client meeting was cancelled even though I got here early to do a lot of printing for it.  Still smiling after I can't book any rooms for a few more meetings I've scheduled for my boss this afternoon.  And I'll hopefully still be smiling at 17:28 when something urgent happens as it has a habit of doing last thing on a Friday. This weekend I will be trying hard not to stress out about how many words I've written (0) or how many weeks I have left until the film from hell is to be pitched again (38) or when it has to be compl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Disconnect

There is a feeling of being lost which has been creeping up on me more and more over the past few weeks. It makes me feel as though I am a different person to the one I was a month ago. Different thoughts, different priorities. Even so far as saying different voice, different body, different face I see in the mirror. I do not feel like I am me and the more I try to reach myself or sift back over old conversations and emotions to find myself the less graspable 'I' am. I can hear my voice talking at people. Sense me ears listening and my brain nodding along happily inside my skull. But there is a disconnect. And in that gap I do not like the situation. I don't feel comfortable and I don't know how to get up and be even remotely okay about where I might end up. It may simply be a bad Monday or a bad week about to start. When the disconnected fog descends, as it certainly will again and again and tomorrow and the next day again and again, I will try to be ready to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beat Sheets

Yesterday I sat at my Grandma's kitchen table for five hours.  Out of those that time, one hour was spent staring out of her back door at squirrels and wood pigeons in the garden.  Another thirty minutes was spent with the neighbour's cat, Teddy, who decided to investigate the kitchen and my legs and the very warm boiler I was working next to. In the remaining three and a half hours I managed to write about seven pages which translates to roughly seven minutes on screen. That takes me to seventeen pages total and I have to hand in one hundred and ten pages by June.  I ideally want to have completed a first draft by March (yeah right) and then I'd have a few months to edit and wrestle with it. At the moment I'm preoccupied with several beats I need to try and hit or at least aim for in terms of Act I, Act II, Mid point, Act III, climax and a resolution (or not if I want to puzzle an audience). I've got my story laid out and I'm happy with the structure but ...
Post a Comment
Read more