Central Park. A home to the vagabonds of New York, the athletes, the puppeteers, the performers, the actors, the lovers, the cheerful and the sad. the list goes on and could very well extend for pages upon pages with all the good and the bad. While all these different personalities mix to create a blob of a personality for Central Park, the park did in fact stand for a rather distinct philosophy at the beginning of its creation. Frederick Law Olmsted, one of America’s most influential of park designers, and Calvert Vaux, a British-American architect and landscape designer, transformed the swamp infested land into the well-crafted paradise that is Central Park. Its metamorphosis seems all too poetic in its pair up with Olmsted and Vaux’s plan: to create a place free of distinctions of social classes where everyone could come and get away from the tight living areas of the city. The philosophy was to create a park that would act as a filter to teach civilians on how to care for the park which in turn would be taken outside the park and civilize the city with proper manners. Take what you will from it, and whether their philosophy was problematic or not. The goal was rather clear: to teach city dwellers on how to care for nature and in turn learn something about themselves.
On an individual level, Olmsted and Vaux’s philosophy of properly treating a park has transcended time to teach New Yorkers and tourist alike the proper ways to treat nature. From my own personal memories, my favorite individual memory must be freshman year, Fall semester. Or perhaps it was Spring, maybe. Never mind. It doesn’t really matter all too much. All that you need to know that it was a dreary day—dark heavy clouds hung above and started trickling out a few droplets of rain here and there, but nothing enough to force any New Yorker to take refuge under an umbrella or a store front. I had just gotten done talking with my brother about potential career paths as a finance major. Yes, a finance major. The word ‘finance,’ even then, made my stomach twist. Not only did the subject horribly aggravate me, but the people aggravated and bored me. They weren’t fascinated by the wonders and curiosity of the world like I was. No, they wanted their education, their easy-to-get job from their parents or a relative and move on with this chapter of their life. The whole ordeal, really, was just draining.
The spirit of the English major in me yearned to break out. I just wanted to be a writer. But writing didn’t make money, or that’s what most people said. At least, not enough to get by. Or so that was the myth. The truth is, I have learned years down the line and, ironically, through my time as a business major, is that there are plenty of jobs in the city for writers. You just had to look. My brother, a money centric man fueled with a compassionate philosophy of love and happiness was the first person I confronted about my almost delusional dreams. At the time, when I told him I wanted to be a writer I assumed he’d just brush me off and lecture me about money. I thought he’d say, “that doesn’t make money.” But instead he said, “I understand making money isn’t as important to you. You do what makes you happy.” And quite honestly, I was shocked. Although, now that I look back on the situation, I didn’t really need his permission, but I did need his support. In truth, I was afraid of being a writer. I thought of all the times I’d be flustered about writing block (which I now know doesn’t actually exist), the many drafts being rewritten, and the countless number of pages being thrown away. Most importantly, I was afraid that no one would ever read my writing. Would it ever matter that I was a writer if no one ever read my work? That would certainly be a waste of a life. Anxious and afraid, I headed over to Central Park to be alone with my thoughts, to reconnect with who I am, and to straighten my head out as best I could.
I intended to head off to the Bethesda Terrace, my favorite part in Central Park. I thought maybe I could rent a row boat, only fifteen dollars in cash for an hour, just alone. Just so I could drift around in the lake and observe everything around me. The little ducks splashing around, the small turtles occasionally popping their head in and out of the water. I thought I could just become the boat, a cog in the machine in charge of the direction of the boat, drifting aimlessly with no direction other than the direction of the current. No thinking. No feeling. Just me being the boat.
But I never made it to the Bethesda Terrace. Never made it to the boats. Never became part of the boats. Just a few paces in from the south-west entrance of the park, or more specifically the Columbus circle entrance, I, in the fashion of an over exhausted college student, got tired. And I don’t know exactly what particularly possessed me to believe that this was a good idea, but I found a rock, just off the side of one of the roads, and I sat down. Now, before you think me stupid for even thinking about taking a nap, I did not actually intend on napping. When I came into the city, I intended to go to Central Park to write. I brought my satchel and with it a single notebook and a pen. I wanted to just observe the park and practice my descriptive writing. But my head was a jumbled mess from the lack of sleep, what I was going to do to my C history paper where the teacher never gave A’s, and what my future was going to be like. Like a college student would, I took a nap. Don’t worry. I found a rock where other people were sitting, including about four people and one hobo also taking naps. They were my nap buddies. Now, I didn’t think I was going to fall asleep like a college student would because, like a college student, the anxieties of not doing any work normally kept me up all hours of the day and night. But, in a very romantic and poetic manner, I got to take a nap in Central Park. Alone. And then in hindsight I realized my parents yelling at me when I told them now made some sense. But, as I said, I had my nap buddies and the busy road was right there. Of course, I was aware of the stories of people falling asleep on the train and getting stabbed in the head or being set on fire, but I thought I was safe. To be honest, it was a 50/50 bet.
I fell asleep there on the rock with the hobo and my four other napping buddies right by the busy street, and then felt an unusual sensation. No, it was not someone robbing me, or stabbing me in the head, or setting me on fire. It was a lightweight feeling, the same one when you were a kid and you’d fall asleep in the car and wake up after parked outside the house and you would swear you only fell asleep for a minute. Or when you lie your head down on a week end in the morning, hoping to get a few hours of sleep. And you dream of the wildest, most thought out dreams to the point where it feels like a three-hour movie, but you wake to find that only thirty minutes had passed. For me, it was both of those feelings at the same time. And instead of a two-hour movie, well thought out and without any plot holes, my mind expanded like an infinite mold of clay out to the boundaries of the park, in between the trees and the bushes, and even the small crevices where only the little furry critters crawl. I did not, however, dare to go where those damn millipedes go, the one’s where you stomp the back part, and, for some God forsaken reason, they can still walk alive. And no, I never, ever smoked weed before. Or took any drugs. So that was not that.
Instead, it was a transcending experience where I was reminded of how I small I am in the world; how the world, at any given random and wild moment, could snuff you out right where you stood. I felt part of a collective of people who transcended and recognized a greater good beyond themselves. And all these people, the biker, the puppeteer, the annoying jogger with his obnoxiously short shorts in weather that was too cold for that sort of thing, and even the screaming, crying baby who, due to the unfortunate forces of gravity, dropped their candy bar on to the pavement and decided wailing about it was going to reverse the permanence of time. Despite what they all needed to do, whether it be something as small as grocery shopping or something as big as helping construct an eighty floor office building, and, despite, in the instance of the child, what they were expected to do, they all took the time out of their day to come here to the park in order to get away from the overcrowded, dirt stained, and fume spewing city. And, perhaps I hope, they’d take that little piece of tranquility and quietness within their hearts and spread it to someone outside the city. That day I left the park not just with a piece of personality of the park, but a full and complete version of myself. I was reminded by the park of why I write, and the importance of telling stories. I wrote stories so that someone could understand themselves just a bit more by the end to the very last period, so they can come to the end and say, “ah, I’m not alone in the feeling.” I write so that some people could take that small piece of me away from my writing and add it to the bits that make them themselves. And if that someone is just me, then so be it.
What’s funny is I never did make it to the boats that day, and, quite honestly, I’m not exactly sure they were open. But I did get to myself. And, like Olmsted wanted, I took a piece of the park into myself and took myself into the city and shared it with the rest of the city.