the great big arch is half-lit (i'm an optimist)

This is why I really enjoy living here in Brooklyn: I was sitting at the computer earlier tonight, catching up on some e-mails. My aunt was reading a book nearby, and we both froze at the same time and looked at each other.
"Do you hear a marching band?" I asked her.
"I do. Why is that, I wonder," she said.
It turns out it was the lighting ceremony of the arch at Grand Army Plaza, where I live now. There is a magnificent arch, and every year the city decorates it beautifully for the holidays. Because this arch - The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch (aka Brooklyn's Arc de Triomphe) - is less than a block away, we heard the whole thing.
So just now, after dinner with a friend, I walked down to look at the decorations after the crowds left. It was absolutely beautiful, the solemn concrete of the monument with the blue lighting they use at the holiday and a huge "tree" directly under the arch. I like to moan about soggy Christmastime advertising and straight-up delirious commercialism, but being alone at Grand Army Plaza tonight with my notebook and that blue light made me realize something; this Christmas, I have a strange, lovely and sad feeling of being alone but not really being alone - I'm in a city of millions, and all of us are in this together.
Tonight, I stood in the blue light of that tree with tears in my eyes and all at once I felt young and old, lost and found, unsettled and at peace in the city.