Like all Americans, I’ve had New York on my mind this week. I’m sure most of us remember precisely where we were and what we were doing when the Twin Towers collapsed. Incredulity led to horror. Then, a profound sadness. At first, the scope of the tragedy played like a disaster movie out of Hollywood but the individual stories covered on TV and in newspapers made that moment personal, and real. For me, there were no Six Degrees of Separation but only two when I found out a friend had lost his brother-in-law in one of the towers. Arnaud was at a trade show in Las Vegas, immediately got a rental car, and drove to New York to be with his sister and her young children.
New York is a tough city, in more ways than one, and it took me a while to warm up to the Big Apple. It was a passage obligé at the end of my first trip to the US in 1977: we would be flying back from JFK. We so looked forward to experiencing New York: the Empire State building, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Time Square, and Broadway for electronic purchases. At that time, the World Trade Center included the two tallest buildings in the world so, naturellement, we took the speedy elevator in the South Tower to the observation desk. What an incredible view! I could really feel the air movement at a height of 1350 feet and I kept wondering how funambulist Philippe Petit ever spent forty-five minutes tight-rope walking between the towers, a quarter mile above the ground. Over the following three days, we hit all the landmarks and we were exhausted. The “verticality” of New York was too oppressive: we drove up to rural Connecticut.
After 9/11/01, I felt an obligation to help NYC rebuild: instead of flying once a year for my major trade show, I made three visits. To this day, I still fly to New York at least twice a year. Coming from California, I usually land at night. I always try to book a window seat on the right side of the plane on my way to JFK: we fly over Manhattan, usually just across Central Park, and I get to see the lights of the city: it’s a 2-minute magical moment. For a few years, the southwestern tip of the island was noticeably dark, a somber reminder of the lives and lights that had been snuffed out at the World Trade Center. On this more recent picture, you can see the beacon of the newest, tallest building in Manhattan, the Freedom Tower. Freedom. Hope. Peace, perhaps. It always looks peaceful from up high.
Vocabulary
Le passage obligé: lit. obligatory venue, a must-see
Naturellement: lit. naturally, of course.
a french life, one perfect moment at a time