New York in the summer time. New York under a blazing sun that seemed to have transported itself from the New Mexico desert. New York broiled in a heat wave that reminded her of a glassmaker’s kiln. Waves of heat made the foreshortened crowds on Fifth Avenue waver in the distance, as if they were a mirage on the hoof. The lions at the New York Public Library looked up as she passed, and gave her an acknowledging wink. We’re neither one nor the other, they said: neither stone nor flesh.
***
Six Sentence Sunday excerpts in January will feature works that will be published in 2013. Above are the opening lines of The Lost Pissarro.
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Beautiful, vivid description, I love it!
Love that as an opening, specially the bit with the lions that moves the paragraph from a description to a hook.
Why I live in Alaska! Why foreshortened? I thought at first it indicated a view from a high point, like the Empire State Building.
Lovely imagery and I like the slight twist of the lions.
I do wonder if “foreshortened” is the word you really meant about the crowds in the distance. It usually means the optical illusion of shortening when a long object is looked at from it’s end.
“We’re neither one nor the other, they said: neither stone nor flesh.” Beautiful, wonderful; that haunting end that really pulls all of it together.