I’m biking through lower Manhattan, and it’s just filled with beauty. And I can feel in me the tension between three poles.
On the one hand, an almost rageful longing. Why can’t I have all of that?
On the second hand, a deeply appreciative gratitude. I’m so fortunate to be able to take all of that in.
And then a third impulse, which is the quietest of them all. A sort of hopeful amalgam. An appreciation accompanied by a realistic assessment of where I sit relative to all of it, along with a simultaneous hopeful wish that I might somehow benefit in a way other than simply visual.
Featured image prompt (openai): Oil painting, wide street-level view looking south down a lower Manhattan canyon late on a golden afternoon, October light hitting the building facades amber and rust while the street below falls into early shadow. A bicycle leans unlocked against a fire hydrant at the left edge of the frame, its handlebars catching the sun at a wrong angle — too bright, almost violent. A man in his fifties, bald, close-cropped beard, glasses, two small earrings, sits on a low concrete step in the middle distance, turned three-quarters away, elbows on knees, looking up into a light he cannot reach.
Bottom image prompt (openai): Oil painting, wide street-level view looking south down a lower Manhattan canyon late on a golden afternoon, October light hitting the building facades amber and rust while the street below falls into early shadow. A bicycle leans unlocked against a fire hydrant at the left edge of the frame, its handlebars catching the sun at a wrong angle — too bright, almost violent. A man in his fifties, bald, close-cropped beard, glasses, two small earrings, sits on a low concrete step in the middle distance, turned three-quarters away, elbows on knees, looking up into a light he cannot reach.