Famous Ankles

I’ve posted on the New York City Berlin Wall exhibit before.  I was walking by it again last Sunday and knew it was there.  I just peeked over and noticed it was deserted.  No big deal.  I had my camera and took a quick snap.  Once again, no big deal.  I doubted I’d get a post about it…or rather, I doubted I could figure out an angle to share some more pictures of the Berlin Wall in the blog.

But I have.

It’s one of the rules of tourism.  Nobody sees nothing until somebody sees something.  After a few moments, I walked over to the wall, and all of a sudden at least three groups of people converged on the spot.  They may have seen me taking a picture or just staring at the Wall and then joined in, having noticed the Wall themselves.  Or they saw other people watching me looking at the Wall. Or maybe…

Or maybe they wanted to take a look at the Wall themselves and had come thousands of miles to see it in solitude and couldn’t ’cause some guy spoiled the one moment that the Wall was undisturbed.  (Not pictured, a Japanese couple who had me take their photo up against the Wall.)

-H

Leading from Park Avenue and stopping at Fifth Avenue, right in front of the New York Public Library is a nice little memorial/salute/whatever. It’s Library Walk. On the sidewalk, in fact on both sides of the sidewalk, are brass plaques with literary quotations.

Well, the first one doesn’t have a quote. It simply states that the Walk is a celebration of the world’s greatest literature and that it was sculpted by Gregg Lefevre in 1998.

I still stop and read one or more when I walk on the street. And I walk on that street a lot. It’s a little sad that most people on the street don’t seem to notice them at all; but I do enjoy seeing a few people stopping and reading them each in turn.

Some are long; the one below by Gu Cheng is about the longest, and some are really short.

Some are old. The one below is from Francis Bacon. It reads: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

The next one is a bit desceptive. And I like it. It’s from Willa Cather and despite looking long, there is really only one message to it: “There are only two or three human stoires, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before…” It’s from “O Pioneers!”

There is an underlying theme to these plaques: literature and the human condition. I have probably read each of them a half dozen times, and some a lot more than that, and it’s always pleasant.

Like I said, literary in nature. Well, in the below case it gets philosphical (“Information is light. Information, in itself, about anything, is light” from Tom Stoppard). Okay, they are all philosophical, too.

Incidentally, there’s one of these plaques about every 10 feet or so.

Literature and international counterfeiting! These aren’t real coins. If they were, the homeless in the area would have chisled them out a long time ago.

There’s a dirty little secret to Library Walk, though. The plaques on the south side of the street and the plaques on the north side. Well, they are duplicates. The artist appears to have run out of grant money or literary inspiration.

-H

Seen on 23rd Street and Park Avenue.

I shoulda stopped in to see what it is really about. I think it’s just a restaurant with an interesting name: Live Bait.

-H