Don't you feel the breeze from the subway...

Why must the best photo opps occur when one does not have a camera?

I rarely visit Central Park without bringing back a mental keepsake whether delightful, disturbing or disorienting. Today's find may border on all three categories. Enjoying the luxury of a mid-week day off, I took my first ever jog through Central Park, running from 60th to 90th and then around the Jackie O Reservoir. Finally! Though my endurance has yet to grow, I felt like one of those people. Those people who run through the park,  such fine human machines stretching, flying across the urban savannah, past my leisurely and unthreatening mosie, faces anguished, t-shirts drenched. PAVEMENT FEARS ME.  IN MY MIND I'M A KENYAN.  I RUN THEREFORE I AM. I was one! At least for about 30 minutes.

Resorting to a brisk walk on the way back from the reservoir towards the subway to Astoria, I passed a group of seven girls, no older than 12, dancing on top of a vent attached to the Museum of Natural History. I noticed their long brown and tangled hair blowing around, some with skirts flying up over their leggings, some bending forward puckering up their lips. A couple less shy than others. Odd, I thought. Oddly cute (they were still young enough for this to be benign). I realized they were reenacting that oh-so-famous Seven Year Itch vent scene, when I vaguely heard one them say "Marilyn." Other little girls looked up at them enviously. I can get into a discussion here about the perpetuation of gender roles and the conflicts arising from such...but I won't.  That famous vent scene was shot for the first time, not so far off from where these young girls were posing and dancing to the delight and criticism of others--Lexington Avenue and 52nd Street.

What is even more eerie is that as I was trying to find an image, I noticed this scene was filmed on September 15, 1954, 55 years ago today! Synchronous or intentional? I'm not sure, but ponder-worthy all the same. 

There are so many layers to the city, it always makes me stop for a moment when some of those layers intersect in such unexpected ways.

Photo courtesy of gabrielleteare.com.