9.02.2011

Empire State (Building) of Mind

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I never got to see the twin towers before they came down.  I wonder if I would have been overwhelmed looking up at them.   They seemed so skinny and slight.  Since seeing the Empire State Building from a distance for the first time in 2009 and finally getting to touch it in 2010, I've grown attached to it.

It is a beautiful building.  It is tall, solid, and towers over that part of Manhattan.  It makes me feel small, inconsequential, and forgotten, but protected.  It stands guard over everyone, not recognizing the individual, but the looking over the mass of humanity that built it.
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Last year a few of us on the group trip had dinner in it before taking the multiple elevators up to the observation deck on a warm summer night.  I was scared to death to be up there, but soon the companionship of my friends and all the other viewers calmed.

I've been through a lot of emotionally powerful moments since that June night in 2010.  They included my heart, my art, my life, my health, my path, and my future.  That building continues to stand and doesn't know I am connected to it, but I know I am connected to it.

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I can't explain this connection to that building, it touches many areas, but I know when I see it I feel all the glory, goodness, pain, illness, love, creativity, angst, joy that I've swam through since then.   While I lived my life, that building stood silently watching over the city.

I had to touch the building when I visited New York last month.  I felt the buzzing energy in it and all of the year  since rushed through me and I jerked my hand away.  I looked up at it and knew I couldn't go to the top of it again that day.   I was afraid what would happen to me if I did.  Instead I looked at it from my hotel window that night, sighed, and closed my eyes.   I love that building.


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2 comments:

  1. I visited the Empire State Building back in the mid-1960s. It has an amazing history, and I know what you mean about being able to touch its energy. Whether it's the Sears Tower or the Eiffel Tower, these monuments to man's reach for the stars do indeed take on a life of their own.

    I did OK with the Empire State Bldg., but I had a major terror on the Eiffel Tower. It's like a giant erector set and you can actually see all the way down through the floor at some places. Then there are the outside stairs...omg...no way!

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  2. Carla - I understand the fears on an open building like the Eiffel Tower. I was scared silly by the suspension foot bridge bridge by the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. Much scarier to see the skeleton of a building. This always gives me vertigo.

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