The spirit of New York

I think I finally understand the impression I felt in the streets of New York in March 1993.

Weariness breeds professional diseases, makes

• medical doctors embrace eugenics,
• nurses euthanasia,
• lawyers the right of the stronger and
• masters misanthropy.
  

To elaborate on the latter point: A person who is responsible for the lives of other people, their well-being on the one hand and their performance on the other, will at some point begin to wish they'd just hide in the shadows and start working towards it. And it is this heartfelt averseness towards people that exudes from New York. I had felt before that it is somehow connected to the closeness of the tideless sea; well, it is still and empty, no, more than empty, an abyss under an empty sheet.

For itself New York chooses an eternity lived in the 19th century and for the rest of the world the illusion of movement by passing images outside the windows of the carriage. And so that no destinations are expected that are not part of the show, people are directed away from listening to what one of them might have to say on where the journey is going to the others and towards hearkening to what cheerleaders tell them.

No revered city, whose canyons aren't lined with vultures, but New York is the only place on earth where the disdain outweighs the appetite.