NYC

Standing at the corner of Eastern Park Way and Utica the phrase "single story" screams at me - I stand there with images of Brooklyn and Americans and "the American way" of life and it is some what incongruent to what I see. The people are incredibly simple - not as glamorous or trendy as I expected, there are people with dirty sagging jeans, young men with pants hanging off their ass, house panties exposed; the place, the environment too, is not what I expected, garbage along side the road, dull buildings - no color or life, each block looks like a photocopy of the last; cars passing by with dancehall blaring - it felt some what like a walk in some familiar place back home except with bustling traffic, people scurrying and a less than pleasant odor (although Castries starting to acquire that smell) and a lot less color - that was Brooklyn (and imagine I met a Lucian over the Carnival who resided in Brooklyn and she was bigging up the place - a wa) , the hub for the West Indian oil dong or rather a bouillion.

Ok  so now the amazement of the brief experience of Brooklyn  is beginning to subside we head  into the hot subway - if I did not know better I would have said we were decending into the bowels of hell. Manhattan was certainly a different animal - my brother refers to New York as plas s'animeaux et bet...I can understand why. A jungle of people with the manners of the wild.

Contemplating whether to venture into Victoria's Secret :-)

The pace at which the people moved was dizzying, a cacophony of traffic officers whistles, impatient irate drivers leaning against their horns, the melding of voices in different accents - the city is loud...an endless sea of faces with a multitude of ethnicities, a virtual cobble. New York New York - it was an interesting experience...but for now I will take the laid back atmosphere of Connecticut it's a smoother transition from home.

Ponder on this for a moment, people leave they countries for  New York - America, in such of a better life, "the American Dream", because in their country they can't prosper - wow. It would seems being up here brings out the instincts (one might be tempted to say animal instincts - it gives a bit of credence to my brother's view of the place being plas s'animeaux et bet) to survive - fight or flight. Survival of the fittest.