walk around Manhattan for the first time is to risk suffering a cervical contracture at any time. The gaze is lost in the last windows of the skyscrapers, tiny, as small as you down there, almost touching the sky, that in New York starts very high, as if the horizon line had shifted to make way for endless buildings. The vertebrae twist back and you can hear, with the clarity of a watch that you were winding, the sound of hinges as your head hangs on your back almost defying gravity.
As you perfect your posture and coordinate your movements, You can even continue walking without stopping jumping from rooftop to rooftop, recreating yourself in each facade, enjoying every neon, feeling that, actually, you walk with your eyes on the sky, that starts higher and higher, and not on the sidewalks where you can hear the footsteps of pedestrians and feel the heat of the fog that the sewers blow.
Actually, through Manhattan you walk with your eyes on the sky, that starts higher and higher
A New York admired from below, but you can only understand it by looking over your shoulder, giving him back his arrogance, overcoming its infinite vertical strokes, to its giants of glass and concrete that seem ready to close on you at any moment with the fury of the biblical Red Sea. 35 West 33rd Street. It is the address of the apartment that I have rented online from Suzanne, a New York publicist who will pocket 1.700 dollars for lending us your home for ten days.
We are in the heart of Manhattan and our modern building is, how not, a skyscraper 36 story, The Magellan, that escorts the colossus among colossi: the Empire State Building. We have a gym, internet point and a dazzling terrace, but in the elevator there is a button that is impossible to resist. «Roof top». I still don't know that the city takes on another meaning from above., that it is necessary to emotionally submit her by reaching higher than her, dismantling it from a bird's eye view to strip it like a pentagram that drops, one by one, all notes. It is only the curiosity of enjoying a different perspective that takes us to the roof. Maybe, also, the need you have when you arrive at places to give yourself a rush of hyperreality to make sure that, Now, you are finally there.
It is necessary to subjugate the city emotionally by reaching higher than it., dismantling it from a bird's eye view
There is a horizontal New York. Now we have it at our feet, like a deck of cards scattered on the table or an extensive meccano that has just had the last piece assembled. Exclamations of admiration are heard, although silence predominates while each one pursues perspectives, infinite facades and paper horizons that this time are real. and the feeling, truth, indescribable. for a few seconds, You feel part of this overwhelming city that you fall in love with at first sight or that horrifies you as soon as you feel tiny in its lap..
But a shadow that looks like an eclipse forces the neck to retract, dispelling the mirage and reminding you where you are. The 106 Empire floors grow as you look up plants, while the vertebrae rattle with the anguish of an old funicular. You have to go up there to perceive the soul of the city, to at least try. The Art Deco dome of the Chrysler building sparkles with the sun like a Mayan deity perched on his pyramid. Macy´s It looks like a Monopoly house and makes you want to wave your finger at the yellow taxis to make them go faster, helping them avoid the intersection of Sixth and Broadway.
We have New York at our feet, like a deck of cards spread out on the table
If looking at the sky Manhattan doesn't seem to have an end, From here you can see all the way to its southern confines., at the confluence of the Hudson and East Rivers, in the same Battery Park from where the boats leave for the Statue of Liberty. Makes you want to do many things and do them quickly, with that feeling of urgency that follows you when you want to swallow a new city in one bite, even at the risk of slow and heavy digestion. But you have to go up to the Empire.
In the following days, We will continue looking for the heights, climbing to the Statue of Liberty or dining at Marriot, the revolving restaurant located in the epicenter of Times Square, although the main course will have to wait because the lines at the doors of the building discourage us day after day. We finally decided to get up early.. The elevator marks the floors in tens at a time., although the sensation of vertigo is nil, so the succession of tens on the digital screen seems like a practical joke. When you want to realize, you are already at the plant 80. The second section, to the floor 86, goes up in another elevator.
Now that you can embrace her with your arms, New York takes on another meaning and is even excused for disdain for heights
A 320 meters from the ground, New York looks like a lion whose mane has been cut off, harmless despite the fight of giants. The entire terrace of the Empire is fenced, to perhaps prevent some hake from thinking of emulating King Kong. «There are people duck», what would i say "The Rooster". If it weren't for the platoons of loud tourists, this rooftop would be a magnet of serenity, an epicenter of favorable energies in which to watch the day slide into the sunset.
Yet, You have to try to abstract yourself and learn to see the city without vertigo, without the coming and going of skyscrapers that dilute you until you become another insignificant tourist with your mouth open and a neck in constant danger of being scrapped.. And it is then, now that you feel like you can embrace her with your arms, when New York takes on another meaning and is even excused for its disdain for heights. And it is then, only then, when even the mist from its sewers seems like a perfume.
