Union Square park is an illusion. It is a false oasis surrounded by the realities that we choose to accept otherwise. A few trees, benches, and carved pathways are enough for us to suspend the real, to find the sublime. A crack in the pavement separates the world of honking taxis, billows of smoke, and dripping rooftops to another one, where the trees and musicians act as the invisible forcefield of suspended belief. Union Square park works like any other greater-than-life concept. The lives of Santa, the tooth fairy, and even God are founded upon the same ideologies of a park in New York City. We enter the park and see fabricated pressed grass, unnatural trees, a few sickly squirrels, and recognize that everyone believes in this unnatural nature. The reality of the park’s existence is created on the mere basis that everyone else believes everyone else believes. Musicians set up shop, parents walk around with their children, and suddenly the illusion of the delicate reality that a park in New York City can truly exist is not so far-fetched.
