Rilan Keathley

Having won Monopoly in a past life, I'd thought I had conquered the ellicit draw of domination in urban settings. So shooketh was I when I ascended the tarried peaks of Fort Tryon, the topological epitome of what-they-don't-know-won't-hurt-them, coined after the British general of the same name and William. It was, in a word, as contentious as a Buzzfeed quiz that asks readers whether each quote was written by Shakespeare or Taylor Swift.

The larger park was apparently "acquired" by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (most well known for being indistinguishable from his father but an utterly unique breed famously called "unrecognizable" by his grandfather) from the early 1900s. I sent sundry telegrams to the park service to ask what was meant by this terminology and can only pass onto my readers the assurance I received that the land was at every point in its exchange freely up for sale and of course Rockefeller like all real estate bros always forever paid a fair price and that is how the market works and he earned it and actually no we don't have open records of the sale but I'm sure that the families of the anonymous people who sold would be happy to speak with any interested parties if they were contacted directly STOP. At least one previous tenant was a millionaire so perhaps truth is real.

After restructuring this lush forest into greenery, Rockefeller then generously donated the land to the public and in so doing earned the reverence we owe him for this - the ultimate sacrifice. I even tracked a small sparrow who, for reasonable compensation, was ready and willing to follow in Rocky's steps with this testimony:

Stay still. Wait. Silence the parts of you that
Thrill to make noise for the sake of motion,
That match the momentum of the world to
Stop the drop of drowning in the ocean.
They can only ever float though they strive
To reach reality on ev'ry dive
And dive again, hoping this time they will
Catch what they seek if they can stay alive
But though currents are meant to sway and roam
They cannot help but carry us back home.

His name? Taylor Swift.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to get off their feet in the midst of a hectic publicity run - such wears the whimsy of Tribeca Park at this moment, nearly folding in on itself with the sunglass-bedraggled hordes of festival goers clamoring for sweet release from their self-inflicted congratulatory charms.

One can almost feel, thick as Cassandra's song obliterated into smoke and turned orange as an homage to a social media trend housed in the reputation of a filmmaker whose tastes ran toward the pastel, the push and pull of New Yorkers who call themselves native with the newcomers lighting upon the area they have chosen for their annual carnival of glory, gold, and film. But what are we to do with such anarchy? I am but a humble observer, caught in the mess. We are but pawns thirsting for quench on a hot summer day, aching for release from our feet with the smallest trade from our dignity, unsure what to make of the city's humble claim that it bought this lot for merely $3950 - but from whom? Would that my internet would work on this fine day...

In the area was an overpopulation of starry-eyed sophistocates drowning their ennui in pointing this way and that, striding fast past infrastructure and unbothered by demands on their time, in fact thriving in the knowledge that they are scarce and the world has no right to them and this they earned through achievement, and also pigeons. I stopped one on its commute to ask its opinion on the local comings, goings, and stayings, and in return for the question it offered this:

There are hopes I hold for the far future -
Change for which I wish I could rush the fight
And find the battle fair and the road steep
But not ruined, rough but not gone, and might
I find myself there, would you come? Would you
Keep us safe together on the path, or
Soft in the grass? Would you walk with me too?
Would you remind me what the walk was for?
For fate was always Orpheus to me
And I forever its Euridice.

They say we ought not loiter in the park after dark, but they who dare to say this ought not take for granted the boldness of those who scale boulders. That said, I twisted my ankle but it was not for naught, as I was also blessed with some fine findings on this night. See here:

The trope of the eleven o'clock jogger struck true thrice this evening, though at that point I had to leave to attend to my SnoCone, having dropped it off a rocky ledge. What possesses a human to jog, and why we should draw lines between the joggers and the runners and the very fast and very desperate subway hunters, all of whom pursue their passions with ferocity and velocity and deign to define their roles without falling in line, except in the cases where marathons and 5Ks run rampant, this author will never know. The word itself was spawn, after all, of a town in Greece where a battle was fought and because that battle was fought a man had to rush across a city to tell other men a very important message, and so important was the message that so fast he had to run that he lost all his clothes in the process and by the time he arrived in Athens he announced that they had won and promptly dropped dead. So the lesson is, of course, that if a marathon is named after the origin of the race then it ought to go in a circle and the rest of the situation isn't of much importance and certainly not of such importance that one would run a marathon at all.

Supposedly there are a thousand bats in Prospect Park. Perhaps they are the They who say we ought not loiter in the park after dark, but if so They're uncommonly silent for the type to be those Theys who warn en masse, precluding the following talkative fellow who seemed all too ready to parse philosophy over his midnight coffee:

We were born knowing these things, weren't we?
Up and down and right and wrong and unreal -
It doesn't take too long to seek them, friend.
No matter how long they've been lost, to feel
That moment of finding them again makes
Ev'ry rock and stone on the path over
Worth tripping on a hundred times again.
Would you like to look behind your shoulder?
If I told the truth, I suppose I do,
But thankfully reality's all too true.

In a word, the Grand Canyon of New York City. This sumptuous ledge perches on the edge of a purgatory of fall foliage, a veritable comme sonne comme sonne du san if one can catch it in the right moment. Locals will celebrate the changing modes of growth, from the tall to the short, and those unfamiliar with the flippant character of the city will never recover. The Ravine stands, as it were, on cusp of modernity and on the tail of Gothic amnesia.

I saw several humans enjoying the sun in the hours I was out, exhibiting the following behaviors that seemed central to their interactions with the Ravine (in order):
- looking up, often with a single hand shielding the top of the gaze as a salute to the powers that be.
- looking down, without any modifications to the hands or other limbs.
- looking side to side.
- looking in various other directions.
- peering at leafy things.
- ignoring rocky things unless those rocky things were particularly large or pointy or arranged in a rare shape.
- pointing at animals.
- exclaiming at birds, especially those birds who were particularly precious with their time in the Ravine and moved quickly onto their next locations.
- pointing at plants, especially those that the human purported to be able to name. Rampant among men wearing shorts and sunglasses, modal among these men who were in loveless relationships, moderate to rare among other demographics.
- walking very fast so as to avoid interacting with the space at all, in some ritual which the author has concluded could only be a sign of perceived witchcraft.

Without spoiling the rigor of the moment, I recommend heeding the words of a local chipmunk, as accounted here:

What is a ravine if not a warning?
To fly forward or to stand watching all
The world wax and wane, that remains to see -
Or perhaps only to witness the fall.
If pride could come to claim its peace, only
Three questions would remain: what we should do,
Who we should be, and why it matters in
Any case? So maybe it's cleaner to
Hold onto dignity long as you can
And find your footing wherever you stand.

When I told my colleagues that I had seen a waterfall, they refused to believe me. Perhaps it's the cynicism of reality, taking its final toll to cement its solidarity with progress. Perhaps they had only explored the surrounding paths and tunnels, turning a blind eye to spectacles detached from utility. Perhaps they hadn't seen it. Only Xeus knows.

That said, the waterfall satisfies a certain playful childish instinct, balanced with the precariously piled rocks that stand as metaphors of aspirational music video moves to uncoordinated passers by.

There was a stray spring peeper rounding a corner as I made my way by the boulders, and he offered the following testimony:

I am not a religious frog. They tell
Me to stop and listen, and questions of
Morality will reveal themselves to
Me, followed by full answers from above.
That said, I've been spending many sunny
Afternoons on these rocks by the water,
Asking and hoping for notes on nature
In itself and of gen'ralized fodder.
I haven't heard anything yet, but I'll
Sit here a little longer, for awhile.

He ran away. Can't trust an amphibian in this climate.