Roseate Spoonbill
There is a crooked building, on the Manhattan side of the East River, that just for a moment makes you think that it is falling. This building creates an optical illusion more familiar to a human than any of the perfected parcels lying next to it. No steeple in sight creates the same connectivity, no slanted roof top, no mirrored exterior, no brick, no mortar.
I find it odd that, on the Brooklyn side, there is a bronze and concrete gorilla, with one hand up, almost as if it is saying stop to the atrocity across the river. It is titled the Peace Gorilla, Yet, its gesture seems to be telling the buildings to stop recreating themselves, to stop crafting that long high antithesis of elegance. I can’t help but wonder why it was a gorilla that was chosen to be placed there. I can’t help but wonder where the symbolism lies and with what form of transparency I’m supposed to think about it. Where does the gorilla lie in our cultural history? Where does the gorilla lie in our architectural thumbprint? Where does the gorilla lie in any aspect of our society at this point? Is it representative of the animal kingdom? What brought a statue of a gorilla by Noa Bernstein to the promenade by the fancy Brooklyn, waterfront condos with absolutely no explanation beside it other than the ones we think of as we walk past?
There is a woman in one of the thousands of windows, that comprises the condos above the East River ,overlooking that crooked building and all the straightness of the rest. A woman five floors above the Peace Gorilla. She is doing exercises in a pair of white pants and a small red tank top. She is white, her hair is in a bun. Her exercise consists of squatting and then, each time she rises, pulling her knee to her chest and her elbows to her hips. Maybe she is holding weights, maybe she isn’t. We can see her, but we will never know who she is.
I am allured by these buildings. There is a part of me that wants to live in one but knows I never can. There is a part of me that wants to exercise behind one of those glamorous windows. There’s a part of me that thinks it is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in this entire world. Not so different From the dogs that people walk, whose feces they pick up in those green plastic bags with the writing on them we will never read. What would I look like if I did those exercises, just like so, in the windows above the water every morning. What would I feel like if I took one of those adorable dogs home with me every day, and held it in my arms, calling it over and over, knowing it would come. What if I was Noa Bernstein and placed that Peace Gorilla , just like so, in front of all these wealthy people putting a hand up to the world.? What if I had to wonder where that gorilla resided inside of me? What part of my cultural history it enveloped? What if I never wondered about any of it.
