conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'The Colossus of New York'.. Start with the sentence 'The Colossus of New York
  OUT THERE slow barges cart away tires and exiles, black arrowheads sailing through blue air'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Colossus of New York
  OUT THERE slow barges cart away tires and exiles, black arrowheads sailing through blue air. Wooden contraptions provide sure footing. Along the top of the pier, fishermen skewer hope on hooks and drop this bait, wait for a little nibble. Along the sides of the pier, barnacles cling with telltale rent control tenacity. Up and down the boardwalk visitors establish their cruising speed. Underneath the boardwalk is where they store failed mayoral candidates. Improbable clam shacks. Hot dog vendor to the world. What was true for citizens a hundred years ago remains so. Generation after generation marvel over the salt air as if they are the first to remark upon it. They keep to themselves the odd feelings brought on by the novelty of a horizon after so many horizonless days. What to do with these notions. Old-timers have seen it all before. We're the reruns they can't help watching. Old-timers will tell ya that every plank on the boardwalk has a story to tell and a secret name. This is in fact untrue. It's just dead wood after all.
  OFF SEASON this place is dead. Don't tell anyone but the Wonder Wheel is a gear in the great engine of the metropolis and when it stops moving systems fail. Amusement park rides are disguises for other things. Taken medicinally, periodic trips to the bumper cars can prevent road rage. Cherish the fear in loose bolts, statistical inevitabilities, the substance-abuse problem of the operator as suggested by his glassy stare. The ancient metal seats get repainted every season. Dark metal like a stain where people put their hands. They have yet to invent an amusement park paint that can withstand the corrosive agents in fear-sweat. There is no way to avoid it, all must ride the Cyclone. A loop of ribbon lifted by a breeze, sloping down here, twisting up there. Seems so rickety. Struts and girders, toothpicks and straws. The old scares are the best ones. Couples on dates queue up nervously. The country cousin in from the country is egged on by sadistic kin. They make up scary stories about the fatality rate to scare him but when the restraining bar slams shut are swayed by their own fictions.
  TOO LATE to back out. Scream if you think it'll help. Clutch my thigh according to plan. Citizens of this new vertiginous city. Up and down. Reel this way and the ocean is upon you in a wave, in beckoning gloom, reel the other way and slam into highrises, into broad brickfaces. A rollercoaster is your mind trying to reconcile two contradictory propositions. Earth and space, cement and air, city and sea. Life and death. Choose quickly. The city and the sea don't get along, never have. Two trash-talking combatants, two old bitter foes. This ride is them throwing punches and you ride on their arms, dip and rise and coast and roll on shifting muscle and sinew. If only they would stop squabbling over us. Dizzy now. Punchdrunk on the view, tide-tossed and beaten, staggering between what is and what could be. Why doesn't the ref do something. It's a massacre. Close your eyes. Relax—it will all be over before you know it.
  SO SQUINT. It's over there, that striated island, cut up carved out and waiting. Pick your favorite cuts and gorge. You can always tell the hungry ones by how they move. Case in point, this one approaching the bridge. Her steps give her away: she has appetites. Her whole history hordes behind her with its unfashionable area code and immigrant spices. The names of her streets commemorate the city's less famous heroes. Mayors and back-room fixers. None of the syllables that built this city, just seeing their names on her mail leaves her famished. Sometimes the wind shifts and ferries aroma across the river. You're hungry, admit it. Grab your forks and knives to get your piece of it.
  MULTIPLE BRIDGES but this is her favorite. Various anchors hold the island in place so it won't drift away.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: IMPROBABLE as it may be, the day still has a few indignities left. The day waters down indignity with frustration to make it last longer. Abomination, thy name is Subway. He cannot enter. They flood through turnstiles, hips banging rods, and will not let him enter. He must get home, but it's all he can do to get halfway in before another one charges at him. A fish out of school. Everybody knows how it works except for him. All of them from every floor are crammed into this one subway car: the makers of memos, the routers of memos, the indexers filers and shredders of memos, the always-at-their-desks and the never-around. How do they all fit. Squabbling like pigeons over stale crumbs of seats. Everyone thinks they are more deserving, everyone thinks their day has been harder than everyone else's, and everyone is correct.
  INTO THE CATHEDRAL. Of course the Dutch were quite shocked to find Grand Central Station under that big pile of dirt. Alas the Indians and their strict no-refund-without-receipt policy. And, lo, as the earth cooled, Grand Central bubbled up through miles of magma, lodged in the crust of this island, settled here. The first immigrant. Still unassimilated. Ever indigestible. The river of skyscrapers flows around it. Travelers swim to it and cling, savoring solid handhold in roaring whitewater. Churches fill up at regular intervals, on a schedule laid out in the business plan. Like the best storms, rush hour starts out as a slight drizzle, then becomes unholy deluge.
  CITY NIGHT swallows stars. Painted constellations on the vault of the Main Concourse must suffice. Substitute universe. The Bears and Cancers and Belts up there do not move, shamed into paralysis by the stars shooting across the terminal floor in homebound trajectory. Rack 'em up. The announcer's voice is cue stick cracking these assorted colors into ricochet, into side pockets, into Track 17 Track 18 Track 19. Always a few standing dumbfounded, stupefied by spectacle and speed. If they can just make it to the information booth. Groan and crawl on elbows. On departure boards departing trains scramble up after promotion. He perks up when the name of his town comes over the PA. Save up for a house two stops farther down the line. Drain into exits for trains. Live every minute as if you are late for the last train. Mottoes for sale, get your mottoes here. They meet here every day at this time to hold hands and whisper. Every once in a while for a second against all odds everyone is looking at some kind of clock. Did you remember to save enough energy for one last sprint. What is that dreadful sound like hell's door scraping open and shut: someone in corduroy walks behind them. Destiny approaches in many different ways.
  JUMPING ROPE, punching the air and shadowboxing especially. The prizefighters warm up for the big bout. So much on the line. The mirror in the corner counsels, Keep your fists up and your head down. Then the bell rings and it's out of apartments, out of workplace personas, into streets, into nighttime guises. Twilight is a mask factory.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: THIS CITY is reward for all it will enable you to achieve and punishment for all the crimes it will force you to commit. It's as if she figured out a puzzle as she stood at the corner waiting for the light to change, look at her face, smiling at nothing we can see. At this pure and flickering light. They always feel a bit awkward when they figure out this place. Stalled at the corner, avoided by crowds as if prophets or homeless. Avoid them as you would any angel who brushed against you. The loneliness is the worst, because this knowledge is something that cannot be shared, only suffered. Just as well. Why should anyone else have it easy. Spoken like a true New Yorker.
  Everything's packed. All the necessary documentation is secure in pockets and pouches. The time passed so quickly. Take a moment to look back and regret all the things you didn't get to do, the places you didn't get to visit. What you did not see. Promise yourself, Maybe next time.
  The airport is one of many conveniently located exits. In the beautiful terminals you can get to anywhere in the world. The names of carriers sort them by destination. Shuffle along and do as you're told. Just a matter of time until you are home.
  When you talk about this trip, and you will, because it was quite a journey and you witnessed many things, there were ups and downs, sudden reversals of fortune and last-minute escapes, it was really something, you will see your friends nod in recognition. They will say, That reminds me of, and they will say, I know exactly what you mean. They know what you are talking about before the words are out of your mouth.
  Wake up. With a shudder finally kicked out of the dream. Impossibly this gigantic creature has taken off. This unlikely gargoyle with impossible wings. How we flutter sometimes. Settle in for the journey and forget. Please forget. Try to forget bit by bit, it will be easier on you. Leave it behind. Then the plane tilts in its escape and over the gray wing the city explodes into view with all its miles and spires and inscrutable hustle and as you try to comprehend this sight you realize that you were never really there at all.