The Only Living Boy in New York

2009

With time as the essential absentee, there appears to be a total lack of all human and animal life in the cloche-covered city, and buildings are strangely translucent, as if conceived with a shutter speed of centuries. The history of the metropolis is stacked up like an eminent skyscraper firmly driven into the soil of an Indian burial ground. The present is only separated from eternity by the ever-rising water level. Buildings grow taller with the rising of the frozen water, until they succumb and slip under the surface. Cowboys and Indians, factories and old Dutch houses have all peacefully taken their place as part of the skyscraper that goes by the name of Halfmoon Hotel, which perpetually pivots upwards. Wandering through the City, I carry with me suitcases and books, amulets and medallions. Miss E is inside all of them. She is the captain of the Halve Maen, as I drag my suitcase across the Hudson. She rides the ancient buffalo as the crow flies. I hold her warmly in my hands as I stand lost in a maze of tall alien buildings. She resides in the citadel below me to nurture a mystifying fragile presence embedded in its core.