What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

It was spring 2001, a different time in a city that never stopped changing. Early May, the streets of New York crisp with still chilly winds but calmly warmed by the sun streaming through the dark clouds finally losing their seige of the skies.

What is it about extremely cold winters that makes them prone to being followed by amazingly beautiful springs? Perhaps all springs are pretty much the same. Perhaps all of this variance from season to season, from year to year is all in our heads.

I got into the habit of taking long walks in my neighborhood in an effort to get to know the area. After a few weeks of exploring I felt like the king of Stuyvesant town. I knew the 14^th street and 1^st Avenue area well, every store, every restaurant, every little detail.

East Village felt like this not quite dry canvas I was walking around on, I could almost feel my shoes smudging the fresh paint as I was walking around. There were homeless people in parks, people who walked the streets, smelly, drunk, lost, perhaps insane. There were people with jobs and a thousand places they needed to be at like 30 minutes ago, running, rushing, pushing, sweating, stressing. That's the thing with ugliness and stress; they are both kinda contagious. You can not live in the center of ugliness and not become ugly yourself. Same thing applies to stress. You can leave your apartment feeling like a million dollars and with a great love for everything and everyone and in New York City, within 2 blocks you can change your mind and hate the whole world with all your heart.

All it takes is running into one or two negative, angry, bitter New Yorkers on the street and you can ruin your entire day. With such dangers looming on the streets, Manhattan sometimes felt like a field of land mines. Take a wrong step and you could be blow to pieces.