East River Impressions

East River Impressions

Jennifer Tate

Copryright © 2003 Jennifer Tate

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Photos and text by Jennifer Tate Design: Aaron Zimmerman

East River Impressions is a publication of NY Writers Coalition (NYWC) Press. NYWC is a not-for-profit

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Visualize if you will, looking out a plain anonymous rectangle of glass, hung high above the drive named after Franklin D. Roosevelt, on a night of light rain of a vaporized odor you can almost smell from the 18th floor of a ward for the mentally ill.

Below, that wet drive shines

against the hundreds of red and white lighted baseballs moving respectively, temporally, in opposite directions; the wavering velocities of the vehicles give the drive its purpose: it was erected during that long ghastly period when the automobile overtook the land of horsedriven carriages and streetcars: when the moderns gradually destroyed the variable character of the city.

I can see along the corrugated eastern edge of the city, and farther into the “mainland,� hundreds of lights coming from the buildings of commerce and residence that look like

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inflections of transparent ice candies competing with each other according to the heights and brightnessess of their towers. Somewhat to the left, the magical reliefs of the steeple of the Chrysler Building, repeat themselves like tapering folding fans. And maybe a little further to the left and lower, a bright cherry juice sign that reads “GE”. And when I look even further left with a delightful strain against the glass, I can see the lighted cap of the Empire State Building shining in brilliant green. (If I were giant enough to lie myself face-up upon the mainland, upon its uneven pressure points, I’d feel the city’s prickliness and cry out “I hate Manhattan!” or “I hate this rotten city!” though I love it so.) And in the night I can see what I think is the angular rising perspectival canyon that is the wealth of Suttton Place, lit beautifully with those high and low, still and

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motive, red and white twinkles of light.

On the other side of the wavy concrete belt that is the FDR, lies the East River, which technically is not a river at all, but a tributary, that at one point, envelops Roosevelt Island like two trilling hands cupping a delicious piece of fruit.

(Ironically, at the south tip of that island sits a

windowless, two-story shell: the remains of a “lunatic” asylum.) And further out, over the tributary, easy for you to imagine, a string of pearls of light looped along the formidable cable structure of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, which leads, from this tiny massive island, to the miscellaneousness of Brooklyn and Queens, where on the land of one of these subordinate boroughs stands a waterside sign—“Pepsi Cola”—(like cherry juice again) that casts a blurred image of its red width into the

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tributary, a fading, tapering, elongation with its tip nearly reaching the middle of the water’s flow.

The mystical bleeping light of some anonymous airplane signal, moving like a giant firefly across the now darkened, infinite ether that is evenly tinged by the many lights above the topographies of the land, adds a technical beauty to the serenity of the purple-black sky.

From my southerly

coordinates, I see two pulsating light beacons worthy of being adored: their heads popped above the water: one of them, the closest to this glass, seems supported only by a pile no wider than its own width, while the farthest and highest (maybe six feet), rests its slim rectangular truss structure on a quaint miniature island that is, from my view, also occupied by some things imperceptible, recondite.

The beacons pulsate, though not in unison, but, on and on

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and on and on ‌ In the twilight the vista is at its most beautiful as the steam from the four or so factories (with many others resting now), turns just a little darker than its day hues, in contrast to the sky beyond, and the lights set themselves against a darkening plane of azure that is all unmistakably enchanting, ethereal, magical—especially during those humid summer, New York evenings when you are at the water’s edge.

By day I can watch the strong little tugboats pushing or pulling the huge lazy barges, in a gray water on a nearly overcast day with clouds of varying hues, the widening wakes of the barges rolling the gray water over into impatient pabulums of froth that are even less than ephemeral. On sunnier, less contemplative days, the waters

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are of a nice aphrodisiacal blue, softer, yielding, capricious, nourished by the very distant hand of Dionysus.

Often at day, I also look down at the highly engaged FDR with its moving colors that accentuate the frequency of taxicab-yellow. And I can also easily see along the city’s east edge, the automobile underpasses below massive blocks of indifferent buildings. The tall flatness of the United Nations rectangle appearing almost in perfect elevation, makes me think of far places beyond my little Island of Manhattan.

And I marvel at the now bright hued white and beautiful steam, that rises from the stacks, and moves windward, perhaps to the east, and up toward the stratosphere that we humans can only reach with the propulsion of jets. And I can watch the flying wasp-like helicopters as their powerful

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cyclic propellers play with the gray waters just for a wonderful moment as they land or fly away.

The white commuter ferries wrapped in sunglare windows, cross again and again the tributary between the two landmasses, transporting the bourgeoisie whom likely work and play in the city, and can afford the daily trips.

These ferries are apropos in relation to the few tennis court bubbles, visible from this glass, that line the water’s eastern edge, where one such wealthy off-white bubble sits near three monumental towers that have, in recent years, sprung like concrete, stone, steel, and glass monsters that have lived far too long beneath the earth.

And if by chance I catch an early urban morning (not a typically charming time for me), I can see, looking west, the work of the sun burning the glass of an anonymous window

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on a sleepy city tower.

And as daybreak moves forward, maybe I’ll see a nostalgic little red tugboat all by itself, on its way to its burden, coming toward this glass.

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