I Heart New York

wrapping up a deadly week at work, trying to get materials out to print for the next training wave before i leave for new york city tonight. i am going for a small conference with some other objectivists i know. i am excited because i am staying at the W New York and i have always wanted to stay at one of the W hotels there. it is important to me that i am surrounded by beautiful things, especially in a city like new york. at the conference i am speaking about the defiance of "the ordinary", and what place on earth better suited to such a topic?

That particular sense of sacred rapture men say they experience in contemplating nature- I've never received it from nature, only from...buildings, skyscrapers. I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pest-hole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.

Ayn Rand--The Fountainhead

Friday 09-Aug-02