In the winter, the sun down, Canal Street is still dense with people looking for treasure. The shops are crammed with things that sparkle in the intense artificial light, boxes that promise exotic smells and piles of shirts proclaiming the love of NYC. In the shoals of such plenty the dark schools of fish nibble and buy.
I love it.
But it is only a small version of the eye feast that is going on in the street. Sliding through the path of hundreds of lights the liquid metal of cars carve out a tidal trough between the caves of treasure.
Below the street, somewhere, runs the actual canal that it was named for. Above is
the variation that becomes more and more fluid as night
develops. The lights of cars, the street, the shops and
restaurants move into the forward visual field while the larger masses become negative space. As the illusion becomes true the tiers of rhinestones glitter that much stronger, their tiny prismed daggers like a rain of military arrows among the heavy aquatic creatures in the street.
