there is an old abandoned building on 96th street, right between the back entrance of Chase Manhattan bank, the main entrance of Gristedes and the donation center for the salvation army. This is a bad description for a building of course. The building itself is much more majestic than any one of the entrances. It must be four fs high, has a beautiful facade. It is just this large empty room. It probably used to be a power station, or maybe a pump station, a turn of the century industrial space, 20th century, not the current one. From the window here I can see the back of the building, the roof, the four steps the brick wall makes to finally make believe the building is the size it is. The back of the building is not as spectacular as the front, of course. They rarely are in New York, where every walk in the street is an experience, crafted by generations of architects, among others, of course.
The building is now abandoned, empty, which makes it a stone structure, almost like a little mountain, a hill, for pigeons. There were just two of them showing off their wings on one of the small roofs behind the building’s main facade. It was a bit like a conversation I could see from here. The shadow of the battered flag on the roof of our building gave them a temporary shelter from the sun.
A police car just drove down broadway with howling syrens, at full speed. This sound made a dog bark somewhere in one of the apartments on our floor. A double decker bus just drove by, packed with tourists, the guide explaining the importance of this corner. A barge, heavy and big, like a house itself just moved soundlessly towards the ocean, and a little white plane zipped across the bright blue sky. There are only little whisks of clouds over us today.
The shadow of the flag has now moved on. There is another little plane, louder this time. The pigeons are gone, there are new ones, in their place. The dog is quiet now. The tourists must have reached the park by now. It is time for me to go to the front door and take a look at today’s paper...