Central Park as if it were the first time

With the exception of this cute tourist note, I felt like I had the park for my party – the rest were « neighborhood », family: only runners, cyclists and those who ride their dogs. I was probably the only disagreement – the strange lonely hiker, neither a dog nor anything. (Of course I almost got in and go out with a « pet »: A young Rakun had been trapped under a grill near the lake, and I was hanging out until I was sure that the relevant service had recorded my request to come to unleash it.

Of course the park is more attractive when the orange autumn palette is spreading or sprinkling with white and pink miracles the spring stick or when a whole lush oasis caresses your ears and cooling your skin. But trees make their presence in the heart of winter as ever: naked, exposed, dark silhouettes look so unprotected that they are as if they are demanding to turn to them and ask them, « Are you still living, trees? »

Although I have been living in New York for almost two decades, I am ashamed but I will say: I don’t know the Central Park as well (or as well as it should, since I have walked it countless times). Each time I start with the thirsty naturalist, determined to get as deep as possible in the bushes of « The Ramble » (the wilderness, in terms of vegetation, a piece of the park) and to finally get lost in the woods, away from the tourists who are photographed in bridges and boats, Twenty-two-storey art building « El Dorado » or admire the former villa Carnegie (now Cooper Hewitt Museum), who sends me back to my student Paris. I never manage to stay in the park – I am pulling the architectural « sirens », the masterpiece buildings that adorn the avenues that frame the iconic rectangular « lung. »

I consume that the brains behind the magnificent green « islet in the islet » have deliberately designed it; that I fall into the trap that was masterfully captured in 1858 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, The geese that sunbathed on the rocks of the numerous lakes of the park, but they are already encouraged to go out on the 72nd street to study the Davli that illuminate the fairytale entrance of the « Dakota », and let my imagination gallop century before moving to one of its luxurious apartments, John and Yoko.

Woody, galleries and eternal postponement

In addition to the guilt that I betray nature for the sake of architecture, I am also pursued by Dobel, the hero played by Woody Allen in his film « Anything Else. » Most of the scenes with this role unfold in the Central Park – as well as so many other scenes of the filmmaker who may have captured and loved the big apple as much as you are wondering: Woody or Woody?

At the climax of the plot, then, I think Dobel makes an appointment to Jason Biggs in one of the park galleries. To date, I have not identified the arcade; I let it be a mystery, so every time I wander and go through some galleries, I wonder if it was that of the critical scene of « Anything Else. » I resist the temptation to google the Central Park galleries; I expect them to be on their own.

And the movie – I fell in love with the road to New York – I have years to see it again; An ambitious but with a young actress in cranny; her middle -aged music mom (Stockard Channing), who is trying to reheat her career; Love and happiness, always in the sweet and bitter consolation of the mythical city.

The fantastic sempé

But not only Woody haunted me: As I stare at my companions my comrades to bike and run, images are painted by a non -indigenous but absolute New Yorker, to whom we owe some of the most authentic depictions of life in the metropolis. On today’s « co-parcists » I highlight the towels ala Bjorn Borg who wore jogging in the ’80s, or I think today’s runners hold their wokman-unlikely sempé hand details.

(Who would imagine how quickly the people who read all of them in every possible position and attitude – on benches, walking, rolling – the Times, were about to imagine « museums »; one hundred I see a newspaper in the park, everyone is playing with them.)

The sketches that had been so impressed in my childish-adolescent mind when I was stuck in Greek magazines in the 1980s and 90s, come to the surface, especially for the last two years, after revived by the unparalleled French sketch.

The « gates » of 2005

I left for the end the return where it all started: I probably love the Central Park as it is at this time, snowy and deserted, because so I first met it, just 20 years ago. In February 2005, on our first day in New York (and in the « New World »), my sister and I went up Madison Avenue again and ran to press the snow on the trails and slopes of the park, following the « gates » Orange hanging fabrics waving like curtains, « splashing » the whitish landscape with a warm beaten color. Although the « The Gates » of the visual couple lasted only a few days, the gate of the magical city had opened wide forever.

Because as they say and say different famous variations, it is only enough to be baptized in New York: you start belonging to her when you step on your foot, and the filter holds forever.

Nadia Foskol (www.nadiafoskolou.nyc) is a New York -based theatrical director.