Central Park, New York
The sun was out so I was in the park. Central Park. The mommy and daddy of all New York's parks, and probably the most famous park in the world. Just as New York is home to Top Cat, Central Park is Top Park. I'm teasing, but it is a brilliant place or amalgam of places, and one of New York's best things, if not the best. I entered through the Zoo, hoping to find the Mall but foxing myself at the Bethesda Fountain (I snuck up on it from the south, unwittingly) I headed off north, skirting the lake, and ended up surprisingly at the Belvedere, a little folly with a great view down upon playing fields and the Upper West Side. I did eventually find the Mall: I love the almost rectangular banks of seats and the Mall itself which stretches like a formal Paris Park of the mind, and leads to a small literary bit consisting of statues of Shakespeare, Burns and Scott - these last two dating the whole conception. Not forgetting Schiller and Beethoven over to one side, plus an American poet I'm sorry to say I'd never heard of.
Last time I was here I walked every inch of the Park, or nearly. I entered at the North-West corner by Cathedral Parkway, passed by the Lasker Rink to cross the North Meadow and then, somewhat obsessively, I circumambulated the Central Reservoir, or Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, as it's known when it's seducing paparazzi. Strange, this: it's hardly the most beautiful landmark. But the fact that I'd seen it so many times without having been here, the fact that Woody Allen's character walks round it in Hannah and Her Sisters, that Dustin Hoffman jogs or really more runs round it in Marathon Man, that it's part of my mental model of New York, means that the physicality of it must somehow be revered. And perhaps there's something religious about going round something, like they do in Mecca.
But on this, my second visit, I only had time to return to the lower half of the Park. Avoiding Strawberry Fields (I dislike modern reliquary at the best of times; I don't even like having a book signed by its author because it reminds me of the Catholic lust for items touched by saints. And when the supposed modern saint in John Lennon, the chances of my feeling reverent are not high) I headed for the Sheep Meadow, surely the loveliest bit of the Park, and the most iconic. It's a gently undulating, open broad green field framed by trees, but what makes it different from Sophia Gardens in Cardiff, say, or Green Park, or the Parks in Oxford is the view. It's not of a river, not a castle, not a palace. The Sheepfold gives the most magnificent close view of the soaring Manhattan skyline, so that you're unmistakably in one particular city. It's also where Parry and Jack lie naked in Terry Gilliam's Fisher King. That film keeps popping into my mind; it's not June, I'm afraid, but I do like New York in May.
I stopped to watch some softball on the Hecksher Ballfields before sadly leaving the Park behind.
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