Bryant Park

Bryant Park sits on almost 10 acres in some of the most exclusive real-estate in Manhattan, serving as a well worn oasis for the busy cross roads of 5th Avenue and 42nd  Street.  What it truly beckons, like moths to a flame, are an assembly of models, wanna-be models and trying-to be models who scurry along the lawn or emerge from the adjacent Bryant Park Hotel where they can be seen and scouted.

Each year, the large fashion tents go up and the Mercedes Fashion Show dominates the landscape of the park, where only the most beautiful people convene and converge on this lawn and pull up in their convoys of Escalades and Range-Rovers.  I walked by these people for years...I watched them as they arrived, long legs emerging from back seats, brush-kissing greeters.  I watched them as they departed, slinking into the Hotel, pirouetting on deliciously high heels.

I saw eyes the color of the Caribbean shallows, eyes the color of earth from space.  Eyes that looked like shadows and eyes that barely gave me a glance.  I saw pointed elbows and lithe limbs, colt-like gaits and smooth bare shoulders.  I saw these girls in daylight and I saw them in moonlight.  I saw them breeze through like ghosts on a runway, tall and skinny...barely there sometimes.

I saw them return after the shows were long over, in the heat of summer or the ice of winter.  I saw them in their latest fashions, their latest dresses.  I saw the gathering of union-men, on the wallsteps leading to the park, watch and revere these lasses as they paraded by with their skinny lattes in hand.

I did this for three years....just watching, never interacting, never emoting...just watching this array of what the world found beautiful flowering outside my office.  I never spoke, never gestured, never smiled and god knows never got a response even if I had attempted to.

They were inordinately beautiful, uncommonly gorgeous.  They were never in need of make up and they were never in need of fixing.  They were never in need of anything that I might have even attempted up to offer. 

These girls.  These bits of skittles running around and showing off who they were to the world that might pay attention.

And they compare not a wit...
not a note...
not even a fair fight with one arm tied behind the back...

to the utterly incandescent beauty that is uniquely and exquisitely yours.

And saying that won't change you, nor your feelings, nor your insecurities...but maybe, in a speck of a moment, you might see you as I see you...and you will burn white-hot and nod your head up and down in the moment that you find yourself beautiful.