NY, NY - 4. Sawaya and the Living Pavement

The best part of travelling is discovering small, unplanned joys during walks that you would never discover if you always had a schedule.

One of the things I love to do best in large cities is just walk.

Walk down streets, by shops, sit and watch people, meander through parks – letting the tactile experience of the world wash over me.

Today, we started out from the Guggenheim, where an Italian Futurism exhibit was on, but found ourselves poking into a Lego exhibit in a back-alley museum off 44^th called, ‘Discovery’ instead. This was a rich find. Nathan Sawaya, an ex-Manhattan lawyer, would come home each night from the office and unwind by building Lego structures of one kind or another. Soon, he found that he was spending more time making Lego creations than law articles, and chucked his law career to build Lego full-time! Law’s loss, was the art world’s gain because Sawaya’s medium for art, through Lego, is astounding. There are sculptures in his collection with over 80,000 pieces, and they range from fun interpretations of Whistler

to 3-dimensional portraits and abstracts.

Sawaya’s art is inspiring. It demonstrates what can be created with the fearless courage to follow and commit to work you truly love. As Sawaya says, "art nurtures the brain, whether made from clay, paint, wood, or a modern-day toy."
Happening upon Sawaya’s exhibition left a spark of joy in our NYC walk-about.

Making our way South, or downtown, from the Discovery exhibit and Times Square, we had time to enjoy a rare day of sunshine in the parks along the way. Union Square, for example, is host to a huge market, and any city worth its weight in gold makes room for green spaces and ‘market days’. If you live in an apartment the size of a walnut, you are going to want to get outside once and awhile. Diners and unexpected ‘bridges’

between buildings and streets south lined our walk. There were even birds out bathing in the freshly melted puddles, and drying in the sun. It was the first nice day to be outside.

This sunny, tranquil roam led us right down to the 9/11 Memorial. 13 years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, crowds of visitors still flock to pay their respects. We were stunned by the lineup, on a weekday, in the Winter, but entry is free (by donation), and what has been created out of the tragedy at ground zero is stunning. A marble cavern the shape and size of the each of the original twin towers has been dug down into the ground, and water now flows in a continuous cycle where fire and ash once were. The names of those who died in the site are listed around the edges of the tower pool, and the depth of the waterfall gives an immediate sense to the enormity of death at the Center.

There is also one, lone tree that survived the calamity, a pear tree, and it still stands, still growing, the middle of celebrity and fame now as hundreds of people take its photo.

Our walk back uptown was silent and retrospective, ending with a meal at the famous ‘Brooklyn Diner’, home to hundreds of celebrities and films,

and a “farewell NYC” with a ‘You Bred Raptors’ post-rock concert in the subway home.