Colors of New York

Light Grey and Orange

I was walking on Broadway at twilight time, when Manhattan, decorated by orange splashes of color, looks at its best.  The minute I turned to the east, I got stricken by an almost full moon hanging over 74th Street. I stopped. I didn’t try to take a picture to steal the moment, I just kept looking. I was looking with all my senses through a narrow alley of buildings, up to the roof with water towers, and right above them, at the enormous light-grey disk of the moon.  It was there, fascinatedly beautiful in its existence.

Red

I started to call him Red Rocket since the first time I saw him. A bike rider dressed all in red on a red racing bike flew by me on the Hudson River Greenway. I had just a couple of seconds to glance at him. The immediate impression of grace was unforgettable. The next time I saw him on the path was a couple of days later; Red Rocket was riding towards me, not as fast as the last time, and I had a chance to have a better look at him. Dark glasses, moustaches and a goatee. Leaning forward and concentrated, he was ‘one’ with his bike – a perfect expression of speed and energy, a perfect red. I smiled.

White

I sat down in the shade of a tree on the Great Lawn at Central Park. I had chosen a north-east corner so I could see my favorite view of the city – a green layer of grass, a yellow stripe of baseball field sand, then green again – all the shades of green in various shapes that the trees of Central Park could offer, and in the background there was a city –the wild geometry of Midtown. Suddenly a boy of 4 or 5 years old with bright white blonde hair started to run back and forth on the grass. “The painting became alive”, I thought, and immediately recognized the feeling of witnessing a miracle, a normal miracle of life when the stage was set up and something amazing just happened.