New York City, for so long a passport to joy. has never felt so distant and unappealing

WHAT IS the dominant emotion as our senses are assailed night after harebrained night by the bronchial Trumpian death rattle of American decency?

- ROY CURTIS

For the very many of us for whom the United States’ most celebrated city - Trumps home town - has long offered a passport to joy, a place that exists as a triumph of the human imagination, a beloved bastion of gritty, unfiltered magic, the prevailing sense is one of suffocating despair at the potential rupturing of something precious.

A waterboarding by sadness and dread.

As the ruffian wind of America’s new age sweeps across the Atlantic, I am consumed by one entirely selfish thought: Will I ever again set eyes on bewitching, intoxicating, heart-quickening New York?

Though 3,000 miles away, a vast expanse of ocean between here and there, so many Irish regard Gotham as a home from home, a 33rd county comfort blanket, perfect for an uplifting long weekend or a coming of age J1 adventure.

The spluttering engine of a tired psyche is instantly energised by the city’s mighty jump leads.

Yet, as Trump, an architect of chaos, makes America a cold house for outsiders, NYC has rarely felt so distant or unappealing.

It is a grim truth that bruises the heart.

Manhattan, with its exhilarating, trip-hammer vitality, its avenues towering like groves of immense, sparkling, glass redwoods, a glimmering super-yacht anchored by the Hudson, is a poem to the notion of being alive.

I nod in agreement when I read Ayn Rand’ line: “I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline... What other religion do we need?”

So many of us find spiritual uplift from the simple act of worshiping at this always animated cathedral where the extraordinary is everywhere at every moment.

CHUTZPAH

Many of my most memorable days on the walk through life have been spent amid Manhattan's 22.83 square mile acreage, a playhouse where hyperactivity and serenity happily co-habit.