NY, NY

O Artur Ribeiro, um amigo cibernauta que muito considero, enviou-me há umas semanas dois textos lindíssimos sobre Nova Iorque (aproveito para fazer um mea culpa público por ainda não ter respondido ao mail.). Ele tem, como eu, uma grande paixão por aquela cidade, e encontrou nestas palavras a definição (quase) perfeita para os sentimentos que nos povoam quando por lá andamos. Quero partilhar aqui um dos textos, que diz verdades indestrutíveis - como as que o Artur disse no seu comentário sobre a passagem de ano em Times Square. Tentem ler com o coração, e não com os olhos. Quem foi e quem não foi. E depois, aqueles que por lá já andaram, digam lá se não é assim...

"There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter - the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities, the greatest is the last - the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York's high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississipi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbours, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh yes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company."