claradoti: “The original 1811 Plan and...

claradoti:

“The original 1811 Plan and Regulation of the City of New York had little provision for public parks. The commissioners argued that there were perfectly good rivers on each side of the island to serve this purpose.

This oversight was rectified by the city in 1853 when they acquired 700+ acres of “a bleak, rubbish-strewn area littered with squatters’ shacks,“ and over the next 16 years constructed an English-style manicured public space – Central Park.”

And of course, the question is like, “Who is everyone?” I mean, it’s just what I had said. And I mean, whoever that is under the white comforter, cuddled up with 34th Street and Broadway, existing on the concrete of this city, hungry and disheveled, struggling to crawl their way onto this island with all of their machinated rages, and hellishness, and self-orchestrated purgatories, I mean, what does that person think about the grid plan? Probably much more on my plane of thinking, my gradation of being, which is let’s just blow up the grid plan and re-write the streets to be much more a self-portraiture about our personal struggles rather than some real-estate broker’s wet dream from 1807. We’re forced to walk in these right angles. I mean, doesn’t she find it infuriating? By being so completely allegiant to the grid plan, I think most noteworthy is this idiom, “I can’t even imagine changing the grid plan.” She’s really aligning herself with this civilization. It’s like saying, “Oh, I can’t imagine altering this civilization. I can’t imagine altering this meek and lying morality that rules our lives. I can’t imagine standing up on a chair in the middle of the room and changing perspective. I can’t imagine changing my mind on anything. And in the end, I can’t imagine having my own identity that contradicts other identities.”

When she said to me, after my statements, “Everyone likes the grid plan,” isn’t she automatically excluding myself from “everyone”? “How could you not like the grid plan? It’s so functional. Take a right turn, and a right turn, and a right turn. And then there’s a red light, and a green light, and a yellow light. It’s so symmetrical!”

By saying that “everyone likes the grid plan,” you’re saying, “I’m going to re-live all the mistakes my parents made. I’m going to identify and re-live all the sorrows my mother ever lived through. I will propagate and create disfunctional children in the same disfunctional way that I was raised. I will spread neurosis throughout the landscape and do my best to re-create myself and the damages of my life for the next generation.”