Avoiding Absence

This weekend (and the week so far) have been rather hectic, and I have not had time to post to this page. I apologize for the first of likely many times. In substitute, I offer something I wrote recently for class. It was written in about a half hour, so I'll pretend that half hour was devoted to this page. Enjoy. Entitled "Staten Island."

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Staten Island is the quilt warming the legs of New York City, made up of unique patches that grow more uniform the lower you look. On the top you find the grays and browns of midtown Manhattan and Harlem, mixing with the greens of forestry and the racial rainbow of the rest of the world. The yellow of the Ferry serves as the final extension to keep it hanging on to Manhattan’s lap.

As your eyes move down the quilt you find more green, less brown, and slowly realize the colors have less variance.

At the center there’s a gray patch, of both industry and blight. This patch was spray painted green, but the gray will never disappear in your lifetime. The superficial attempt at beauty is shunted into obscurity by the overwhelming cancer in the air, a last remnant of the Old New York.

At the bottom the colors are bleached and muted, as the color of free thought and action is drowned out by the immigrants that fled Brooklyn via the Guinea Gangplank for fear of change in demography and the failure to adapt. These patches should be snipped off, but were tacked on too near completion. Now the oranges and eggshell whites of blown out, taped up Guidos and silicone breasted bottle blondes with botched botox are weathering the whole quilt, like the effects of prolonged exposure to the sun, except the sun isn’t shining here.

Staten Island, contrary to popular belief, is not forgotten. It’s widely ignored. This is why.