Bird’s eye view
You are standing on the observation desk of the Empire State Building
unable to take a breath. You can not believe your eyes. You have got a sense that you are
watching a movie and somebody has turned down the sound. You try to define who is the main
character of this picture. The only answer that comes to your mind is the city.
Gradually your mind is cleared and the sense of dizziness evaporates.
Little by little you realize that you are on the top of one of the highest buildings in
the world and the city is lying before your eyes. Crowds of people surround you like dense
clouds and you feel yourself a participant of a fascinating movie. You hear different
languages: English, Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, Bulgarian. You can’t help guessing the
meaning of their words even without translating them, as all of them are talking about the
city.
At last you are given a small role in all this action. According to the
scenario, someone asks you to take a picture. You do it with pleasure as you are sure that
this person will keep these pictures for years and will show them to his descendants.
Overwhelmed with delight, you approach the bars. Through those you
start recognizing familiar constructions and places: Rockefeller Center, Chrysler
building, Central Park and the Statue of Liberty, the symbol and the pride of America.
At last that moment has come – you and the city, face to face, tete-a-tete.
You see a chain of yellow cabs rushing along the streets. They carry people to their work,
to urgent conferences, to business meetings, to romantic dates, or just to show the sights
of the big city. You hear piercing sounds of car horns and roaring engines. Odds and ends
of someone’s conversation reach your ears, making you a secret interlocutor. When you go
along the street you feel like a boat in a bubbling stream down the mountain with rocky
banks-skyscrapers and steep thresholds-people that can change your way abruptly. You have
no power to resist; you are able only to correct your direction trying to notice some
peculiarities of these people phenomena.
 Here is one. A young lady beautifully dressed, slim and elegant, is walking
along the street gracefully. Then she stops for a moment on the sidewalk, takes her
flip-flops out of her small pack, puts them on instead of high-heeled shoes that she wore
a second ago, and continues her way “flip-flopping.” Probably it’s convenient. Now
look at another woman of middle age. Her hair is neatly arranged. She wears an expensive
costume and combines it with purely-white knee-length socks and sneakers. I wonder how
this could be. Probably they take care of themselves much more than of others.
At last my road leads me to Central Park, the vast “island” buried
in verdure. Situated in the very center of Manhattan, it is an enormous resource of life
for all citizens. There you see crowds of people jogging along the lanes of the park. All
of them are of different ages and social status, but they are united by one goal – a
healthy lifestyle. You see mums and dads with their kids lying on the emerald grass or
playing various games. You see hard-working students sitting on the rocks with laptops in
their lap preparing their homework.
Finally my thoughts bring me back to the top of the observation desk.
And, what a miracle! A pigeon is sitting on the edge of the wall and wondering at the
bustle around. Nobody invited it to participate in the movie of life, but this unexpected
appearance becomes a culmination. The pigeon opposes a slow course of time to the “busy
monotony” reigning in the streets of the big city. This touching scene makes us stop,
consider for a moment where we are and where we are heading. At this moment you realize
that you are neither an actor nor an observer – you are a man who is standing on the top
of the Empire State Building wandering in his thoughts around one of the most beautiful
cities of the world. This city is New York.
By Ekaterina Pigusova
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