Yes - you can.

As I walk west along Hunts Point Avenue, just past Garrison, I look south and I see her – the emerald city – New York. She beckons, a concussive mix of cultures; salad bowl, melting pot, metaphor for our western world and the beauty and filth that dwell within it. To the southwest, a receding September sun demands my undivided attention, winking with warmth and an inexhaustible radiance just because. Last but not least, hovering in fragility above the dynamic pair is the silhouette of an airplane like freedom arcing toward the great unknown.

A morning view of the Bronx. Beautiful, but not quite the shot described above.

                 

So tell me students – do you want to go there? Do you want to be a man of Manhattan, a titan of industry, a woman of the world? Do you want to chase the sun’s rays and everything that they touch? Do you want to board an aircraft and carelessly coast to the sweetest spaces seen?

                 

Because you can. Yes – you can. And I can help you because I know how. I have been there. I have tasted the mist of the Ligurian Sea with the wholeness of my heart, touched toes with the Trevi Fountain in Rome, shaken hands with history as a welcome friend. And yet, I am still searching recklessly for something special and I hope to find it in you. Perhaps your next adventure is both of our destinies. I am a firm believer in the fate that we choose for ourselves. Let’s choose work. Let’s choose focus. Let’s choose a future that is ours, OURS for the taking.

               

Yesterday a woman was shot dead a block away from our school – a case of domestic violence. How silly it is; how sad. The tangible tension that surrounds us in a place of such profound possibilities. But I will never lose hope. Unflinching I face the realities of the Bronx with a heart saturated in stubborn love and an eye for majesty. I see it everywhere.

             

 I see it in you every day.