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so blah
Friday, February 1 2002
This morning while walking Sally in Prospect Park, I saw the first evidence of Spring. In extensive clumps throughout the woods, some species of lily was flowering, and flitting about through the trees were a number of American Robins. (I never did see a European Robin the whole time I was in Europe.)
Since yesterday, every time I've been down to Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn (today it was on a mission to get light bulbs), I look at the church on the northwest corner of Carroll and 7th Avenue and privately suffer from its nearly abstract bleakness. That's what Europe does to you. Two weeks ago, that church was one of the most exciting architectures in Park Slope. Its spire was an ornate stony stab upward towards non-utilitarian perfection, and its single flying buttress was both sensitive and dramatic, or seemingly so. But now the whole thing just looks like a half-hearted attempt at making a church. Where are the gargoyles? Is that spire really finished?
Back when I lived in Los Angeles, I didn't know how ugly the buildings were until I went to visit Gretchen in New York. But now that I've been to Paris, New York seems blah at best.
Even the arch in Grand Army Plaza fails to impress me now. It used to seem worthy as a monument to victory in the Civil War. Now it seems austere and inappropriately restrained.
This is the New World after all, and nothing made here with hopes of echoing the grandness of the Old World can ever really transcend the world of ersatz. For one thing, the moss and rot of a thousand years are still a good 700 years away.
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