0012 — West 83rd Street

There was a person crossing to the north side of West 83rd Street in Manhattan, a few car lengths from the intersection with Central Park West who, for the brief moment that the shutter on my camera was open, appears to stand motionless in the center of that street.

I did not know this person. And I don't remember noticing them as I looked through the viewfinder of the camera, more focused on the perspective offered by the rocky trail at the edge of the park that lifted me two or three stories off the ground.

To live in New York City, as I fondly recall it, is to live among millions of strangers who routinely form tiny, essential, corporeal parts of your daily life by making the place so incredibly vibrant that you, years later, can occasionally find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of love still in your heart for a city full of people who you never met and will never know.