I'm leaving today

They say if you stay in a place for 3 days, you come home and write a book, you stay there for three months, you come home and write a page, you stay there for 3 years and you come home and write nothing. Too lazy to write a book, I shall condense my ignorance into a few paragraphs and tell you of New York and it's surrounds.

We drove for several days through the country, on highways that boggled my mind. They were huge and repetitive, same scenery, that of trees in autumn colours, with long straight roads that occasionally veered gently left, or right, with pit stops at set intervals, all reminding me of some kind of ancient computer game. Once we got off the main highway, the scenery became reminiscent of a movie, big red barns, tall roved old houses, American flags jutting out proudly from the front porch, big orange pumpkins in time for halloween, rockingchairs. The make-up of car drivers changes here too, white white white. We stop at a crossroads where a willow tree hangs over a river. My father sleeps on the grass. Big gas guzzling S.U.V's roar by, into a nearby mall, one of the many that seem to be even out here in the sticks. I relieve myself in the river. It's a nice little place, a quiet spot surrounded by trafic. Kids probably swam in this stream once, I reflect, and who knows, perhaps they will again, though they should probably wait at least few minutes, I figure.

We carry on to New York City, which is of course, huge. This could possibly be the biggest concentration of grand buildings in the world, many of them crowded together on Manhatan Island. Central park, huge, absolutely massive, itself containing a sizeable lake, 30+ tennis courts, a zoo, a museum, and I do not know what else. I imagine it would be a great place for vagrants to live, if they could get away with it.

The people are multiracial, with whites seeming to be a minority, even in the richest areas. There are many Hispanic people coming to and living in America now, doing the jobs no-one else wants to do, kind of like Pacific Islanders and Indo-Asian people in New Zealand. I get the feeling Al-Quaeda and their ilk have a skewed idea of what America is. Had they detonated a bomb in the more rural setting, I feel they would have struck those they were really after.

I cross Brooklyn bridge, I walk through China Town. Posters advertise a "made in 24hr" play starring Julia Styles. Anything made in 24 hours I figure will be severely distorted by caffeine, hysteria and sleep deprivation, but I do like the accessability of the stars, and had I been there on one of the nights it was playing, i definitely would have gone.

I meet a few Irish guys at the hostel. I ask them what they think

Guy one: It's great, it's been a real blast

Guy two: Funny though, cos we're Irish, everyone keeps telling us about ancestors they have, and how their grandfathers brother's friend is from ireland

Guy one: Yeah, what about that girl who said her ancestor was a O'Andrews or O'Craig or something, you know, I swear she just banged an "O" on a last name, and made the whole thing up I rekkon. White people seem to want to have some kind of identity, loik bein Italian, or Jewish, or whatever


I walk past front steps into brick apartment buildings that remind me of sesame street, and I see city hall, and picture the Marshmellow man against the skyline, the ghostbusters powering up to nail him. I look at the statue of liberty and imagine all the people coming in from European deprivation, desperate for a different kind of life. It's a little like visiting a giant movie set.