In the Center of Redefinition
(a sample)
The lesson is inescapable there. I see it everywhere. I see it in the people who are continually remaking themselves, redefining themselves, but I see it throughout the city itself. Just walk along the streets, and keep your eyes open, and you can’t help seeing it. Look up, and you’ll see that the buildings that towered above the city yesterday cower in its shadow today. As if overnight, on a street that has become familiar to you, an old building vanishes, and the next day an enormous crane appears at the edge of the vacancy left where it was, and then, floor by floor, something newer, taller, and bigger rises there. On block after block, you see rising above the low buildings of an old neighborhood the framework of a tower that will soon dwarf them.
Again and again you are reminded that the new is never new for long. Even on an avenue where everything seems new, you will see a scaffold erected, the first step toward building something newer. In parts of the city the rush to replace or supplant the new with the newer leaves you breathless, astonished, and exhilarated.
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