Goodbye from Battery Park
“Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox in America—that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, this is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.”
—Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again
Sunset from Battery Park tonight, taken with a cell phone I’m afraid:
“New York - that unnatural city where every one is an exile, none more so than the American.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman
There are three wants in America which are never satisfied: that of the rich wanting more, that of the sick wanting some relief, and that of the traveller, who says, “Anywhere but here.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
New York, I Love You
But you’re bringing me down
Like a death of the heart
Jesus, where do I start?
But you’re still the one pool
Where I’d happily drown