“There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy. It lays its hand upon a man’s bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die.”
– Walt Whitman

“The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.”
– E. B. White

“Every city is a living body.”
– Saint Augustine

As the masses shopped on Black Friday, I stayed back from the fray and watched the quiet streets of Woodside and Sunnyside ebb and flow and tried to find a pulse to this ‘living body.’

And then I turned a corner and found myself on Northern Blvd.

Strip malls and car dealerships.

And suddenly I was reminded that sometimes the heartbeat is so frenetic, you can’t find a pulse at all. Just a continuous rush of blood.

But then you lean forward, take a closer look, put your ear to the city’s artery, and you start to feel a rhythm.