"When everything else has gone from my brain ... what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that." Annie Dillard
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Tuesday, November 16, 2010
A Walkway in the Sky
One of the world's greatest walks is the pedestrian path of the Brooklyn Bridge. Stroll across it at sunset on a balmy late fall afternoon and see the city at its finest.
If you're walking toward Brooklyn, on your right is South Street Seaport, lower Manhattan and, once you're out far enough, the Statue of Liberty. On your left is midtown, with the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. Ahead of you is this view, the towers and cables of the bridge itself, built six times stronger than it needed to be, built for the ages, and now 127 years old. A bridge that has inspired poets and madmen and ordinary citizens who need to believe in beauty.