The Gates
Finally made it to the park last night. My friend and I arrived at dusk so outside of pictures on TV and the Web I never got the chance to see the gates in daylight. She already saw them twice and kept changing her mind about them. That I was willing to see them at all had less to do with curiosity and more with guilt and fear; I didn't want to regret not seeing them while they were around and last night was my last chance.
I worried that I'd already formed an unshakable opinion based on everybody else's and that after all the brouhaha, hoopla, Internet buzz and media blitz it would be impossible to have any kind of genuine reaction. But when I came face to face with these winding rows of orange curtains I was surprised by my own kneejerk feeling of...silly amusement. They made me smile.
Maybe enjoying those gates had something to do with arriving in Central Park at dusk and witnessing the transformation as night fell. Always a nice thing to do gates or not. In this changing light, the orange was quiet and grew further subdued as the sky darkened. Maybe the full moon added something. And the snow-swept grounds. As we sat on a bench facing the boat pond and drank hot cocoa topped with whipped cream, we observed occasional gusts of wind billowing the curtains and the half-frozen water reflecting them. To me, they looked like curtains over a proscenium stage either ascending or descending.
I liked that they helped me see a familiar place in a new or heightened way, almost like running a highlighter pen over an important passage in a book. I wouldn't have been in the park last night if it hadn't been for the gates, and I wouldn't have gone ice skating at Wollman Rink on a crazy impulse, the hell with all the hidden extra fees (damn you, Donald Trump). I haven't been ice skating in years and the experience added to a childlike state of giddy hyperawareness.
The gates didn't do much for me as individual units but taken collectively they added up into something greater. I appreciated where they paused, like around Bethesda Fountain, and then continued. I liked that they were non-destructive; free standing and not bolted into the roads. Somehow, they managed to be ubiquitous yet unobtrusive, blocking no path or view. Because it was possible to be beneath one row yet also view others from a distance, the experience was one of simultaneous immediacy and detachment.
So basically, I liked them.
I worried that I'd already formed an unshakable opinion based on everybody else's and that after all the brouhaha, hoopla, Internet buzz and media blitz it would be impossible to have any kind of genuine reaction. But when I came face to face with these winding rows of orange curtains I was surprised by my own kneejerk feeling of...silly amusement. They made me smile.
Maybe enjoying those gates had something to do with arriving in Central Park at dusk and witnessing the transformation as night fell. Always a nice thing to do gates or not. In this changing light, the orange was quiet and grew further subdued as the sky darkened. Maybe the full moon added something. And the snow-swept grounds. As we sat on a bench facing the boat pond and drank hot cocoa topped with whipped cream, we observed occasional gusts of wind billowing the curtains and the half-frozen water reflecting them. To me, they looked like curtains over a proscenium stage either ascending or descending.
I liked that they helped me see a familiar place in a new or heightened way, almost like running a highlighter pen over an important passage in a book. I wouldn't have been in the park last night if it hadn't been for the gates, and I wouldn't have gone ice skating at Wollman Rink on a crazy impulse, the hell with all the hidden extra fees (damn you, Donald Trump). I haven't been ice skating in years and the experience added to a childlike state of giddy hyperawareness.
The gates didn't do much for me as individual units but taken collectively they added up into something greater. I appreciated where they paused, like around Bethesda Fountain, and then continued. I liked that they were non-destructive; free standing and not bolted into the roads. Somehow, they managed to be ubiquitous yet unobtrusive, blocking no path or view. Because it was possible to be beneath one row yet also view others from a distance, the experience was one of simultaneous immediacy and detachment.
So basically, I liked them.