Stop and Watch the Buildings

In New York, there seems to be this unspoken rule that you don't want to appear like a tourist--which there are thousands of everywhere, on any given day. You see them gathering in clusters outside the Empire State Building in sweatshirts, posing next to the policeman and his horse; Or you see them with shopping bags the size of Montana, slowing traffic in the sidewalk by their slow pace and their numbers covering the entire width of the sidewalk, like a blockade.

I'd be kidding myself if I said I was a New Yorker. I'm too much of a newbie. I still get upset by beggars on the subway, I say, "Excuse me" when I need to get by and "Thank you" when I do pass. Yet, there's this part of me that says: PLEASE KNOW I LIVE HERE. I caught myself this morning literally thinking that some guys, loading up a truck, would notice I was a New Yorker, because I ran across a street, with traffic hurdling towards me. Of course, even if those guys gave A HOOT about my presence there, they would know I was new in town, because no REAL New Yorker RUNS across a street with traffic speeding towards them. They WALK, with an air that says "Cars? What cars?"

I find myself acclimating to this city as if it were a giant Junior High School. I walk quickly, with my head down. I try to never look at anyone directly. I cross streets when there is a break in traffic, not when the light dictates. It's a move-get-going-or-move-out-of-the-way sort of pace. It hits me over and over again though, that when I keep myself at that pace, with my nose to the cement, that I am missing out on something important to me. I am missing the experience of knowing where I go and where I am.

I've discovered that if you don't look up, you miss the real wonder that is New York. When you look up to the sky, and you see where you are--among all those giant buildings, and traffic on a historical street--it is nothing short of dizzying. This IS in amazing city. I sometimes cannot believe I live here. I turn a corner and I am suddenly on a street, I've only seen in photographs. But there have been days, weeks that I have missed the beauty and awe-inspiring weight of this city because I thought I'd look like a tourist, and I never once looked up.

So now, on my way home, when I go through Grand Central Station, I stop at the balcony every night and look up at the green ceiling with the constellations. I know I look like all the other tourists that have just blown into town, but I don't care. Looking up at the bull emerging through the clouds or the bee and triangles just takes my breath away. I am filled with wonder and relief.

I am reminded of a story my friend Betti told me once. She was a teacher in Washington, D.C. on a Sunday outing with a group of disabled kids. It was hard to keep them all together, and she was hurrying them toward one of their destinations, when one of the kids said, "Stop! Let's stop and watch the buildings."

So, wherever you are, in New York, or in Little Rock, Arkansas, or in Menlo Park, California, let's notice where we are in this big, wide world. Let's not hurry, but stop and watch the buildings.