View from my window in the Pods Hotel, Times Square
The streets of Manhattan are intense. You don’t see any children. No grass. Few trees. Towering buildings above. People with mental illness talking with the crowd as they might argue with a friend in their kitchen. Sidewalk stalls with shouting sales people. A shirtless muscular man wearing a gorilla face mask, holding a giant glowing speaker pulsing hip hop music. A girl in her own dance party. Men in suits, clean cut, looking official. $5 USD for a small bottle of orange juice. Yet sunlight still filters down these canyon walls.
I am drawn to the overwhelming energy of this place – a jolt from the somnolence of Vancouver Island – but only in small doses. It might blind me if I were exposed for too long. There’s an excess, a sensuality, a dazzle, a big price tag, a sense that 3% of people are ready to riot at any moment. The racial tension is palpable.
Even the physical surfaces of Times Square are battle-hardened: asphalt and pavement underfoot, steel and glass above, metal benches and tiled walls in restaurants. The interior architecture is devoid of organic elements: wood panelling, even office plants. It’s prison-esque. That is, until you reach the Macy’s building on Broadway, festooned in a gradient of thousands of flowers.
I read Psalm 46 one morning in Manhattan. The famous line “be still and know that I am God” sung out. But it struck me that I’ve typically had a privatistic interpretation of this verse, as if it were only about mindfulness. The context of the whole Psalm is of war, chaos and confusion, like the cacophony of urban streets. And the stillness is the calm of post-battle, after the weapons of war have been discarded. May I bring this penetrating calm, this silent assent to God ‘who makes wars to cease’ into chaotic spaces like Times Square.
