Redeye

Wake up for no reason other than to notice that below there is a magnificent city splayed across dark water – map out the arc your plane must have flown and mentally calculate where you might be. You are high above the land still. Then you see it. The unmistakable spear of Manhattan, jutting itself into the sea. You’ve snuck up on New York City at four in the morning and already you can see the lurid ads of Times Square, wooing you with splashy colors undiluted by a thousand feet of altitude. The density of mid, lower Manhattan threaten to buckle the strip of city, bowing it beneath the rivers on both side and fold back on itself. The bits of land around Manhattan seem to turn towards it, as if to warm their faces with its glow, Jersey trying to kiss across the Hudson and the bridges of Brooklyn tugging, greedy of the splendor. At this hour Central Park is uninteresting, a dark blot on a splendid grid of gilded light. Over Brooklyn find the park you know and count the avenues away from it, starting over twice until you find your street and cross street and the corner where your friends are sleeping now beneath the dark roof that whips now out of sight.