Living in New York

My attitude to New York City is a microcosm of my attitude to the whole of America. I regard it, just as those strains in the "Kardomah Café" prophesied I should do, as a terrifying chaos in which by the use of a certain sagacity and a few magic tricks you can build a transient nest, the nest of a "Crane of Ibycus", under the iron girders of a steel bridge or against a blackening tree in a death-swamp. Even in these towering cities, the stark elements of the abyss heave up their heads. You peep out of an apartment house to behold a convulsed glacial rock or a distorted scoriac rock, and these inanimates leer back at you with a ghastly reciprocity of inhumanity.