The Mirror of Manhattan
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The Mirror of Manhattan
The Mirror of Manhattan
If you sit in one place long enough, you'll see every stage of your
life walk before you.
You'll see yourself being pushed down the street by your
prideful, protective, loving mother. This is motherhood at its
finest, purist, and most endearing. Simple love. Pure love. New
and amazing love.
Stick around and you'll see yourself being walked down the
street over-dressed in winter clothes, held by the hand so that
you don't get crazy and dash into the avenue in front of a bus.
Now you've come to the city alone or with friends, and you're
treading lightly in awe of the tallness and the city's invitation to
independence. There are no hands to hold so you place them in
your pockets and wonder to yourself.
Keep looking and there you go again with husband or wife and
family in tow.
Everything changes even as you sit still and watch your own life
walk by.
Now you begin to see things that you might not want to see. You
see yourself stooped over and struggling to get from place to
place. You hear your friend say, "I see you're without cane
today." Your pride and mind are still very young, but your body is
old; that's why you left your cane at home to meet your friends
for lunch. You see this and you see so many things about
yourself and your life as you sit and watch.
Come here; see a show. No ticket is required. It's the show of life
and it's on stage anywhere you choose to take a seat here in Manhattan.
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Re: The Mirror of Manhattan
Marvelous little journey ... and it's a review of life in less than a day. You don't even have to take a bus or drive a car to get there. It comes to you and me if we just wait.
It's the writer's personal creed of conduct to catch the details which the rest of the world happily lets drift by; like a plastic toy in a swollen creek. "If it doesn't have any immediate value, why invest the energy thinking about it?" they might say.
I was observing a man in his late twenties on the subway yesterday drumming his fingers on a softbound briefcase. Now the usual indication is that most people who do that are experiencing a moment of anxiety from a thought they just had. For some, perhaps they had an indecent thought they were dwelling on and wanted to backtrack to smoother ground.
This was decidedly different however. There was a methodical, almost contemplative movement of the fingers. Having recognized it I immediately came to the conclusion that the guy was a musician. He was practicing scale movements. But ... was it a piano or a guitar? Ah! He was using his left hand. He was a guitarist!
Right or wrong - the exercise (mine) was good for a line in a story I might write tomorrow, or any given Sunday.
Each of us must be the "MENTALIST" if we want to find life in dark or unexplored places and write ... as we must.
 
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The Mirror of Manhattan
Thank you very much...yes we see things that other do not !!!!!
EnlargeTears in My Sauce
My mother gave me a book of poems for Christmas. She said
that Billy Collins’ poems reminded her of the poems I have
been sending her lately.
The black-haired woman at the Italian food store told the man
behind the counter that the Osso Buco was too expensive and
demanded a reason. He had nothing to tell her; he just worked
there and she was from the old country and wanted more. I
figured she must know how to cook Osso Buco, so I asked her
and she was so pleased to tell me her recipe. Italians, she said,
brown the meat and then scrape the pan and the scrapings
have all the flavor. This is the second time I have been told
that the secret to good Italian cooking resides in these
scrapings.
But this night I cooked sausage, peppers, and onions, and I
read the poems from the Billy Collins book.
It became so clear to me that poets like Billy Collins have a real
job. His job… their job… our job… my job is to wander the face
of the earth and report back to all the busy people about all the
tiny little things in life that they are not paying attention to like
the lady in the Italian store with a two-hundred–year-old recipe
for Osso Buco locked up in her head who shared it with this
stranger, this poet, with nothing to offer her in exchange.
And when I sat down alone to eat the dinner that I had cooked
from scratch, I broke into tears halfway through my meal, my
tears dripping into my food, seasoning it with the realization of
who I and Billy Collins really are and wondering if we are blessed
or cursed.
hope to read your poem of the tapper!!!!!( guitarist ) Thanks !!
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The Mirror of Manhattan
i sent you the poem Tears in My sauce because it reinforced your story about the tapping man and how poets notice the little thing like that that others are not aware of and then we take it a step further, liike billy collins, and write the thought down..
your finger tapping note too me was actually poetry...
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The Mirror of Manhattan
Thank you Poet Brother !
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To have great poets there must be great audiences too.
Walt Whitman, American Poet (1819-1892)
Ya!