new-york

Gentlemen. You are looking at the true Abraham Lincoln of Arabia. And in order to end our internal bickering - our civil war, if you will - I have solicited your aid.

Next time -- we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren!

She went weak in the knees and could barely walk as she followed him, trembling with fear. Her hopes for a happy future with Jordan came crashing down. Whoever had told Jordan she was free to travel under the name of Maria Brooks must have misled him.

This women's orchestra made a demure picture in their muted dove grays, alright, but they played like they were gowned in scarlet and gold.

Moonlight does things to a street scene that no other natural or man-made phenomenon can effect. People walk slower, their smiles lingering on contended faces. Horses that usually move along fast enough to stir up the dust off the street plod lazily in the clear, cool night. And in dark corners where people forget to look, the goons come out.

When I had to work Shea Stadium for a Mets-Braves game _ Atlanta pitcher John Rocker had recently given an interview in which he denounced New Yorkers of all Colors and preferences _ I was assigned to a parking lot, where numerous drivers asked me for directions to various highways. When my first answer _ __ have no idea_ _ seemed to invite denunciation and debate, I revised it to __ake the first left._ For all I know, those people are still lost in Queens.

She likes the mystery of that changeover, those fifteen minutes of sundown when the streets and trees and people and parked cars are delicate and immediate, every sound and smell and movement amplified by the lowest light or the lightest darkness. Even a city that__ broken and dirty can, in that time, be divine and intimate.

Only criminals and madmen walk into Central Park after midnight...or, occasionally, an actor. (Dark City Lights)

It was possible in this wonderful city for that nameless little boy -for any of its millions- to have a decent chance to scale the walls and achieve what they wished. Wealth, rank or an imposing name counted for nothing. The only credential the city asked was the boldness to dream. For those who did, it unlocked its gates and its treasures, not caring who they were or where they came from.

Elizabeth ran her finger along the windowsill, gathering dust. The view was almost exactly the same as from her own bedroom, only a few degrees shifted. She could still see the Rosens' place, with its red door and folding shutters, and the Martinez house, with its porch swing and the dog bowl. She'd heard once that what made you a real New Yorker was when you could remember back three laters -- the place on the corner that had been a bakery and then a barbershop before it was a cell-phone store, or the restaurant that had been Italian, then Mexican, then Cuban. The city was a palimpsest, a Mod Podged pileup or old signage and other people's failures. Newcomers saw only what was in front of them, but people who had been there long enough were always looking at two or three other places simultaneously. The IRT, Canal Jeans, the Limelight. So much of the city she'd fallen in love with was gone, but then again, that's how it worked. It was your job to remember. At least the bridges were still there. Some things were too heavy to take down.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.- Mark Twain

Then, one sunny September morning, the illusion of a personal God that I tried so hard to believe in, exploded over the skies of Manhattan. Even as the ashes and ruin of this horrific act of blind faith settled over New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, I watched people across the country scrambling to that same irrational altar for their answers. In the fierce storm of emotion that rolled across this country, one realization rose to the surface of my mind with blinding clarity: certainly this mechanism of unassailable blind faith is one of the greatest risks mankind faces today.

Arnold had never given much thought to whether or not he loved America__ut now it seemed pretty obvious to him that he didn__. Not in the way Nathan Hale had loved America. Or even in the way his late father, a Dutch-Jewish refugee, had loved America. In fact, he found the idea of sacrificing his life for his country somewhat abhorrent. Moreover, it wasn__ that he disliked abstract loyalties in general. He loved New York, for instance: Senegalese takeout at three a.m., and strolling through the Botanical Gardens on the first crisp day of autumn, and feeding the peacocks at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. If Manhattan were invaded__f New Jersey were to send an expeditionary force of militiamen across the Hudson River__e__ willingly take up arms to defend his city. He also loved Sandpiper Key in Florida, where they owned a time-share, and maybe Brown University, where he__ spent five years of graduate school. But the United States? No one could mistake his qualified praise for love.

The messages must be stuck somewhere in the tube of light underneath the ocean that connects London and New York.

It was October 2001 and I lived in New York City. I was twenty two. I, like many of my female friends, suffered from a strange combination of post 9/11 anxiety and height of Sex and the City anxiety. They are distinct and unnerving anxieties. The questions that ran through my ming were something like this: 'Should I keep a gas mask in my kitchen? Am I supposed to be able to afford Manolo Blahnik shoes? What is Barneys New York? You're trying to tell me a place called 'Barney's' is fancy?'Where are the fabulous gay friends that I was promised? Gay guys hate me! Is this anthrax or powdered sugar? Help! Help!

I don't hate it here," she said automatically. Surprising herself, she realized that as much as she'd been trying to convince herself otherwise, she was telling the truth. "It's just that I don't belong here."He gave her a meloncholy smile. "If it's any consolation, when I was growing up, I didn't feel like I belonged here, either. I dreamed about going to New York. But it's strange, because when I finally escaped this place, I ended up missing it more than I thought I would. There's something about the ocean that just calls to me.

A year earlier my parents had moved us out of the city to a split-level on Long Island, their idea of the American dream, which meant it as now an hour-and-a-half commute via the 7:06 Hicksville to Penn Station every morning. (Dark City Lights)

So many lights you__ think we were living in a constellation