I find myself sitting here, as I have every morning for some time now, on this bench in Central Park full of scents and various shades of green. And as always I bend down to pick up a tuft of grass, sniff it and closing my eyes I return to when I was a child sitting between my grandfather's knees in the garden of my house. Time does not seem to have passed and the noises of the city, so soft and ethereal make me smile wistfully. The clean air I breathe refreshes my soul. Exactly 15 years ago the gray world seemed near its end and instead here, among birch leaves and magnolia petals I can reopen my eyes and rejoice in the new day that is beginning.