Reader! How much time has passed since we last spoke? Too long, I should think, myself being partial to long leaves of absence on the account that I, somewhat unfortunately, live an admittedly charmed life full of obligations and pleasures to which I must attend before being at liberty to address you. How many times will you read my apology before seeing a change? Too many more, I fear, but I have great gratitude for your understanding and hope you will regard me with the grace as you would a slightly scattered, often confused, largely trying-her-best, friend. This is, after all, what I am.
Reader, just before Christmas my family enjoyed an expedition to New York, New York. I’d been to the city once before, years ago, but it is a place that sweetens with age, and to enjoy its splendour with my favourite people was a delight.
Our first day in the city, we traversed the numbered streets, bundled against the cold, and joined the throng of adventitious on their way to the Empire State Building. Though unassociated with such Manhattan iconography as the Rockefeller tree, and less grand than the feathered point of Mr. Chrysler’s monument, the Empire State Building struck me as the symbol of the heart of the city.
It is no secret that Texas is, and will forever be my home, nor would I find it surprising if you, Reader, were aware of my love affair with California. But walking through the marble palace in the middle of a city of twenty million, a building so tall a person thinks she can well watch over the world from its peak – and perhaps she may even wonder how much more world could possibly be beyond all that her eye can see – one begins to realise the true meaning of the empire state.
The word “great”, contrived in our everyday use, is restored to its original meaning when ascribed to a place such as the Island of Manhattan. It is a city that exudes a stately power so that one is reminded of both her own insignificance and potential. It is a city that breathes even while suffocated by concrete, and offers sanctuary in its abundance.
However, while staring down at the expansive world before me from the top of that sky-scraping building, I pondered the cyclical nature of the state’s greatest treasure. New York City was made into an empire because it has a history of Americanism in its purest form to which people have not only been drawn, but created. Those early Dutchmen heard a heartbeat in the harbor, and what followed their arrival was a reaction to the vibrant possibilities lurking beneath the sandy shores. As fate demanded, New York pursued its predetermined path to prominence, which in turn laid a concrete foundation for greater development – in every sense of the word.
New York City is a capsule of this country – all the great, and all the ugly. It is the convergence of every culture known to our world, a place where they may fuse and yet remain integrous to their roots. It is a place of constant evolution, where injustices are battled and its citizens strive to reach the ideals upon which America was founded, and has yet to uphold. It is a place of enormous wealth and poverty, where the fallacy of the American Dream may prove true, and in its elusion be negated. It is at war with itself, and in this, maintains a delicate balance of restless life.
There, still life exists only in its museums. Green exists only in leather wallets and the stretch of parkland over which the rich tower. A French woman professes irony inscribed on a copper tablet. Non-human noises are acknowledged as a stand-in for silence. There, a person may find an endless amount of anything.
Those early men at Empire State Inc. felt the city’s centuries-old promise of greatness – and ensured the safekeeping of its legacy when they built the Empire State Building. They erected a monument dedicated to the fragment of a nation so powerful it was akin to an empire on its own, and its unofficial capital – where the kings and queens of modern society watched over their kingdom from castles in the sky – was made unforgettable with the construction of an art-deco fortress that reflects such a sentiment.
New York City had known greatness before the Empire State Building was nothing more than a concept in Mr. Floyd Brown’s mind, and it continues to do so long after the final bricks have been laid atop the tower all those years ago. What greatness was born of the land naturally was guarded and grown by those who saw the spirit of the city best – a sea of the old and new, foreign and familiar, of hope and disenchantment. Gritty, seedy, and glorious – this is the city of the Empire State.
Reader, I hope you find yourself in New York City someday. It is a privilege to travel, I wish for you to experience the affecting majesty of the tiny island. Until we meet again.
Love,
Lettie Anne