“Conversation is like a tennis match,” my mother said. “You hit the ball to your partner and they hit it back. If someone hogs the ball it’s rude and the game is boring.”
The mothers of my adolescent group of friends used this analogy frequently when advising us on how to be engaging young ladies. We laugh about it today, but it still stands true.
Two summers ago, I was in a “me” place. I was worried about my future in New York City and my long distance engagement. I didn’t seem to have any room for anyone else, but of course I didn’t think about it that way at the time. I just focused on my own problems, obsessions, and neurosis.When I went back to New York City, I needed a place to stay for a few days before my apartment became available. My friend Pam had offered to let me to stay with her when I first got there because she had moved there a few months prior and we hadn’t seen each other in a while. I had gone to school there and was used to it but she was still adjusting. However, when I got there I found that there was an odd silence between us as we rode in the cab to her place.
It was so palpable that I finally asked what was wrong.
“You realize you haven’t asked once about me, right? How I’m doing? What I’m doing?”
My heart dropped into my stomach. I opened my mouth to protest but I couldn’t. When I really thought about it, I hadn’t inquired after her in atleast a month. “I’m sorry,” I stammered shamefully.
“It’s ok. I’m just… You know that’s not cool right?”
My mothers words from so long ago echoed in my head. “No. I mean yes. That’s not cool. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I’ve just been so crazed… and yeah, a little selfish. Just nerves and stuff.”
Pam looked out the window of the cab. She seemed so distant. She’s been the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister and I couldn’t believe that I had hurt her so thoroughly, not to mention the fact that I had been so self involved I hadn’t seen this coming. She had called and asked after me, listening carefully to every development, every description of a fight with my boyfriend. Why hadn’t I asked about life in New York and her new job? “But you know you did that, right? You’re not just oblivious? I didn’t think you were like that.”
“I’m not like that.” I ventured. “I mean, I don’t doubt that I was.” I felt myself tearing up as we arrived at her apartment in Brooklyn. I was so utterly embarrassed. We trundled up the stairs and entered her studio. “I just had a lot on my mind. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I know.” She offered me some water and we sat down at the dining room table. “I would ask about how you were and you would go on and on. You didn’t even ask about me. I just couldn’t believe it. I needed you.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, rather at a loss when considering what to say. I knew immediately that I had done a bad thing as soon as she brought it to my attention.
I mention this story, because Pam is still my best friend and my “sister.” We managed to get past all of this and now things are back to normal. She’s the person I turn to when I’m upset and I try to be there for her in that same way. Because of what happened between us, I am especially aware of conversation and my active investment in my friends, but I am also aware of when my investment in my friends is being abused as I had abused her.
I’m lucky to have a friend with so much history because if we hadn’t, she might not have seen any reason to invest any more time in the relationship.
Living in New York, you come into contact with a lot of people; you network, you meet people at your job, you bump into acquaintances on the subway. There are so many people that walk in and out of your awareness each day that it can be hard to keep track of them. You have to make a concerted effort to make time for the people who really matter and it is important that you choose those people wisely.
I been thinking recently about how difficult it is to make time for all of my friends and because of that, I’m developing very intense feelings about the people in my life who truly know what the two-way-street of friendship means, and those who take me for granted. I don’t have time for those people, especially in situations where I have so little time to waste. Perhaps it’s harsh, but it’s true.
My advice: When it becomes clear that someone calls only to talk about themselves and their problems, move on. When they treat you like you’re around to listen their problems but never want to hear out your possible solutions, tell them to take a hike. Tell them to find a therapist or a mirror and do their thing.
Focus on friends who seek your counsel and work towards results. Seek out the friends that notice when you’re not yourself. Save your time for the people who enter your life and both of you are changed forever by your companionship. Those are the people who are worth your time.
Sometimes I wonder if everything we do in our modern world makes us intrinsically less human, distilling passion and instincts into gray suits and briefcases. Are most of the populous really living to the full potential of our race? Where is the action, the desperation of true love, and the intricate sword play in our every day lives?
In ancient Rome, people walked around armed with swords. There was always a potential threat. A word could get you killed if it landed on the wrong ears. Sex was for anyone who had but a need or a whim for release and everyone was doing it openly with everybody else. If the husband didn’t like being cuckolded, he could simply go out and kill the man his wife was sleeping with. No one would begrudge him this satisfaction.
Today, we have the right to bear arms in this country, but the majority of people that I associate with on a daily basis don’t. Some even openly reject that right, supporting many gun control laws that would keep guns out of the hands of most American citizens.
One observation I’ve made is that the interpretation of the right to bear arms has been distorted. It was originally intended to describe the right to form a militia in order to defend our rights. Now people see the right to bear arms as the right to protect themselves with hand-weapons as opposed to the right to defend the belief system upon which our country was founded. People want to be able to carry concealed weapons or keep guns locked in their cars while they’re at work, or even keep rifles in their homes as if they lived in the Old West.
I am aware that my view on gun control is based mostly on my urban upbringing. If New Yorkers were allowed legally to carry concealed weapons, I think all hell would break loose. Even without a law allowing us to carry lethal weapons, there is sometimes a persistent sense of compression in the city, like at any moment something might pop. Objects could be set in motion that could change our circumstances or our lives at any moment. I feel it often when it’s late at night and I’m taking the subway home with only one or two other occupants in my car. I’ve also felt it as a scuffle between a few men catches my eye from across a crowded street. That sense of compression stays in tact because people do whatever they can, for the most part, to keep themselves cool and contained, with a few exceptions.
Most of the time, when we get angry, it festers with no outlet, eating us alive from the inside out. Rather than attack others, we attack ourselves and blame ourselves for not being able to keep things together. Sure, sometimes we’ll talk things out behind closed doors, but very rarely is there the possible threat of one of us killing another.
Be assured that I am talking from the perspective of a young, private school educated, urban woman. I know that crimes of passion happen every day, but they certainly aren’t happening in my every day life or within the circle of people I normally associate with. I’m also not suggesting that we should all be barbarians and begin killing each other every five seconds and gnawing on turkey legs in our spare time.
The word “barbarian” perplexes me. What does it really mean? The vision of Ancient Rome I described earlier certainly had some barbaric elements, but there was a general movement towards an organized government, which, by definition, is not barbarism.
Then again, I think what I admire most about interpretations and historical accounts of ancient Rome are the more impulsive, passionate qualities of the culture. That is what I mean when I say I wonder if we are “distilling” humanity in our modern culture. I think a lot of people have lost touch with what it means to live in a high stakes environment, to feel the life coursing through their veins or to act on their needs with conviction on a daily basis.
I began thinking about all of this a few weeks ago when a friend of mine from Florida mentioned that people there are allowed to shoot trespassers who come onto their property on sight.
“Holy shit!” I exclaimed incredulously, always the articulate blogger. “But you can’t kill them, can you?”
He just laughed at me and shrugged. “Sometimes when you shoot ‘em, you kill ‘em.”
So even though I often wonder where the passion has gone while I’m making my commute to and from work amidst the milling herd, wondering when we all got slipped our daily dose of “soma,” I am also horrified at the opposite end of the spectrum. It just shocks me that in some parts of the country, entering someone’s property is enough to warrant violence without warning and murder without much punishment. There’s just something about that idea that doesn’t sit comfortably in the pit of my stomach.
It gives me this image of an orange farmer screaming, “This. is. FLORIDAAAAA!” while brandishing an AK-47.
When I was a kid, I used to play with flashlight lightsabers and go to the movies with my friends. From what I hear of rural childhoods, “blowin’ shit up” is a regular after-school activity. YouTube is overflowing with videos of kids from throughout the center of this country blowing up whatever they can find in front of a camera. I even stumbled across one video where a few teenagers were wading into the Mississippi River to find tube worm mound colonies, a staple of that particular ecosystem, and setting them on the ground, followed by shooting them to kingdom come with rifles. The had no clue that they were probably destroying the ecology of that part of the riverbed and were more interested in seeing the strange gooey blobs get blown to smithereens. I also got the impression that they wouldn’t have cared much if they did know about their possible eco-footprint.
This sort of dispassionate violence is what frightens me. A majority of our youth is disconnected from the fact that guns are not toys. They are absolutely lethal. The NRA famously insists that “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” However, I’m going to have to jump on the band wagon with British comedian and actor Eddie Izzard here and say, “Yes, but the guns certainly help.”
I remember holding a water gun and pointing at my Dad when I was a little girl.
“Bang, bang, Daddy!” I shouted, holding the gun at his face, point blank.
He moved the gun away from his face with the palm of his and looked at me very seriously. “Never point a gun at someone unless you mean to kill them.”
Sure, it was just a water gun, but my father made certain that I knew what that toy represented. He said his father had imparted the same wisdom to him.
Dispassionate people own lethal weapons in states like Texas and Florida and they can use them without much cause or repercussion. I’m perplexed and torn. On the one hand, I think it is our right to protect ourselves and our families and that people, given the proper licencing, should be able to own guns, though I realize it’s still hard to control how many guns get into unqualified hands. Plus, the dramatic part of me wants my life to be an epic and adventurous tale worthy of the Odyssey. On the other hand, I don’t think we should be teaching our children that guns are a worthwhile “pass-time.” Hunting for food when food needs to be hunted is one thing. Blowing up bear bottles and Indiana Jones action figures for no reason is another. Plus, in terms of our humanity, I don’t think we need the danger of weapons or our lives constantly hanging in the balance to spur us into living a fulfilling life.
Violence isn’t the answer, but I think dispassion is an epidemic.
How do you cure dispassion? How do you light the proverbial fire under humanity’s ass?
When Prometheus stole fire from the Zeus on Mount Olympus and brought it to the mortals below, he took a risk. He wagered his life to bring warmth and knowledge to his fellow man. His story isn’t famous today because of violence, but because of his daring and his contribution to mankind. There is also the bit about how he was punished by having his liver be eaten out by vultures only to grow back every day for all of eternity, but that’s beside the point.
Maybe, what we all need to spice up our lives is a little calculated risk taking. Set your sights on something and go for it. Don’t let opportunities pass you by. Listen to that little voice in your head when it tells you to do something. Listening to your instincts is what keeps you from being a sheep in the middle of a herd.
I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe in this:
Sooner or later, everyone will drop anchor in New York City.
Be it a year, a semester abroad, or a long weekend, people from all around the world will pay a visit to the place my father reverently calls “The Center of the Universe.”
I’ve said a few disparaging or disheartening things about this urban labyrinth, but I wouldn’t be living here if I didn’t love it. However, I’m not so in love with this city that I can’t recognized the misplaced overconfidence in this statement.
There is an undeniable dream-like quality that accompanies the uttering of the words “New York.” I want to be a part of it. My little home is on the 100th floor. The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down. It’s the city that never sleeps. Lets face it, if Amy Adams endorses New York City as the perfect place to unfold a fairy tale in her movie Enchanted, I’m inclined to believe her. She’s just so darn cute!
In my five years living here, I’ve ventured to tourist hot-spots like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ve also discovered my own treasures, like the gorgeous story-book fountain by City Hall that is lit with gas lamps, their flames flickering like smoldering ballerina feet in the night. I’ve enjoyed a disparate array of cuisines from street food to five star restaurants. No matter how long I’m here, the infinite well of the city provides me with more scope for the imagination and my taste buds. Where else can you get pad thai delivered to your door at 3 AM?
I love the ability to disappear amongst the metal spires of skyscrapers and at the same time, I stand by the fact that even in this massive city, I still run into friends on the street. They vary from close friends to long lost coworkers. While this may not be everyone’s last stop, it certainly makes everyone’s “must see” list. I’ve crossed paths with almost every important person in my life while treading the metropolitan asphalt.
People always want to visit me here to get a proper tour from a “real New Yorker.” I love having them and it’s incredibly convenient and cost effective for me. Like Hermes, the Greek god of hospitality, I accept all visitors and newcomers with dutiful open arms, suggesting interesting off-the-beaten-path attractions and helping foreigners find the best subway routes- and I’m not the only one! Once, when my mom was on business here for her law firm, it was raining heavily and a man saw her without an umbrella and promptly walked her all the way back to her hotel, not taking no for an answer. When they arrived, he said, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you New Yorkers aren’t nice.” Then he promptly disappeared into the sea of passing umbrellas leaving no name and no trace.
However, I find I’m leaving the city less and less. It makes me ponder how this affects my mental health and most importantly my sense of perspective. New York might be a centrifuge for culture and commerce, but I’m not sure that it really is the center of the universe and without question, it isn’t the only place that matters inside of it.
New York sometimes feels like an inescapable womb in the process of breeding and evolving a new strain of subhuman. I shall call them:
Turtle People.
Just kidding.
But not really. Let’s take a ride, shall we?
When you decide to live in New York City, you run the risk of becoming a Turtle Person. I once stumbled up on this phenomena, and by stumbled upon I mean coined this term myself, while discussing what a battle it is to navigate the NYC subway system, pick up your morning coffee, and arrive at work unscathed and on time. I was commiserating with my friend, Pam, about how alone you can feel even in a packed subway car and how everyone moves through their day with their head inside their shell until they require food or some other service, and then they pop their heads out, blazing with this incredibly unattractive, blinding sense of entitlement. If two Turtle People pop their heads out of their shells at the same time…
The results could be disasterous.
This is the danger of letting New York trap you. which I don’t necessarily mean in a physical sense. It’s very easy to get sucked into a grueling routine. Every weekday, when I plunge down into the subway at rush hour, I begin to feel my turtle shell forming and hardening. I bend my elbows, clench my fists, and forge ahead through the flow of people towards the turn-styles. I used my shoulders defensively, protecting my iPhone like a linebacker driving the ball through a veritable phalanx of opposition. I brace myself as I weed through people rushing at me, trying just as fervently to go in the opposite direction, all of our shells thickening as we advance deeper into the underbelly of the city. I arrive at the doors of my train as they are closing. In my way: A tiny old woman who is unsure of whether or not to enter.
“MOVE!” I bellow at her, head emerging from my shell as I try desperately to make my train. I completely ignore the fact that the woman could be a tourist who doesn’t understand English and I disregard that old platitude about “respecting your elders.”
You get the picture? Turtle People. Tell your friends.
That’s the risk you run when you live here. Of course, there’s a degree of expectation that you will get used to all of the people packed into small spaces. At first its just a matter of putting on your headphones and getting to a state of Zen, but eventually, this develops into a defensiveness and a willingness to be combative. It’s a jungle out there and you have to eat or be eaten from time to time.
At the other end of the spectrum, I have also felt the immense power of communal love in New York City. Last summer, my parents and I were in a car accident on the Upper West Side. We were in a cab on our way home from my graduation from NYU. I was in a gentle slumber, leaning on my mother’s shoulder. I was full of good food and celebratory dreams when I was shaken from my sleep by the perpendicular impact of our taxi with a woman’s car that was speeding across town. I woke, crumpled against the divider. Stupidly none of us were wearing seat belts and I was completely disoriented. My mother was gasping for breath, repeating the words, “My chest is crushed.” The combined weight of me and my father had slammed into her and sharply knocked the wind out of her. As I got my bearings, I realized my father was clutching his head. I could see his head had a huge gash across his forehead. He was talking quickly and saying “I’m ok,” not to mention trying to tell a few jokes as he stumbled out onto the street. I knew he couldn’t be too badly hurt because his jokes were at the same degree of “corny” that they always are, but the blood made it look worse than it was.
I followed him, trying to help him settle on the curb when I noticed how many people were rushing out of their stores onto the street. Apparently the crash had been rather loud. People gathered around us, trying to help my dad and steadying me as I dropped my diploma and my program. They carefully began checking my face and arms for scrapes and blood.
“I have to get my mom,” I said to the woman who was leading me to the sidewalk, but when we turned towards the cab, a gentleman was already helping her, supporting her weight on his arm. As an EMT student who happened to be passing helped my dad into the neck brace he was carrying with him, a shop-owner brought out plastic chairs and bottled water for me and my mother.
The traffic on Broadway had been brought to a halt and as my senses reawakened and the pounding in my head subsided, I realized that for every person that was helping us on our side of the street, just as many were helping the female driver who had hit us on the other side.
When I looked at my dad lying on the sidewalk, bleeding profusely from his forehead, I started to lose it and began to cry. I didn’t see her approaching, but a homeless woman put her hand on my shoulder. Normally I would have glared and pulled away in disgust, but that day I didn’t. She squeezed my shoulder with her warm leathery hand and said. “He’s going to be OK, Mama.” She smiled reassuringly. I stopped crying as we locked eyes and she calmed me down with her steady, concerned gaze.
I kept dropping the papers I was holding. The woman who was looking after my mother picked them up for me. She noted the purple NYU insignia on them and smiled. “I went there. What a great school!”
“I g-graduated today.” I stammered. It was all I could think to say.
She giggled good naturedly and looked between my mom and me, taking both of our hands. “You’ll remember this day for the rest of your lives!” We all laughed.
That day was such a testament to the spirit of New York- the spirit that got this amazing city through immense tragedy and hardship during 9/11/2001, the spirit that made that Wesley Autrey Sr. leap onto the slippery tracks of the New York Subway in order to hold down 19 year old epileptic, Cameron Hellopeter, saving his life by keeping his shaking body still as the train passed over them.
So yes, we run the risk of becoming Turtle People, but being here isn’t always a battle. Sometimes it’s the greatest opportunity of your lifetime and an absolute honor to be a New Yorker.
I really am filled with hate right now. I tried to update my iPhone with 3.0 software and AGAIN it went into recovery mode and is in this odd loop hole where the computer tells me to restore it and then says there is an error and it can’t be restored. This happened once before and I took it into the store. They managed to restore the phone so that I could use it, but I’ve never updated it to the new software again for fear of having this very thing happen. I wanted to try to download it today so that I could download the Wordpress App, but it seems I have entered this annoying “You-need-to-restore-but-we-are-unable-to-restore” vortex again.
I made an appointment with the Apple Store, but there’s not an available time until Saturday, two days from now, at 5:50 PM. Even though that’s an inconvenience and it may ruin my plans for the 4th of July weekend, I HAVE to go on that day because my phone has to work. I can’t live without it.
I had forgotten what this is like. I actually feel naked. I’ve grown so accustomed to all of the tools on my phone, not to mention its run of the mill ability to, you know, make phone calls. I have plans to hang out with two people this weekend and without my phone, that may not happen. If it doesn’t, I’ll be a sad panda.
Ugh, who am I kidding? I’m already a sad panda.
I’m also pretty disgusted with how reliant I am on my iPhone. A few posts ago I wrote about how I was addicted to my iPhone and its different bells and whistles. Now I’ve progressed to going through actual withdrawal. I’m not kidding folks. I’m restless and I keep pacing around the apartment and trying to sleep this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach off. I keep wondering how people will contact me.
Would it kill me to be incomunicato for a few days?
Maybe I should just… move to the jungle and live off of fish I catch with my bare hands and water tempered with iodine tablets. I could even fashion a spear out of a branch and hunt boar. Maybe I’ll meet John Locke from ABC’s Lost. Ah, let’s face it. I’d never make it.
I used to be way more outdoorsy. I have taken several “adventure” trips in the course my blessed life. I went horseback riding with my parents in Arizona for two weeks. I’ve camped and rafted in Alaska for three weeks and gone on glacier hikes near Valdez. I went into the Montana mountains for three weeks and stayed out in the woods on solo for one of those weeks. I visited the Galapagos Islands and took naturalist tours. I worked with the National Park Service tagging sea-turtles and living on a boat in the Caribbean. I went white water rafting in the Colorado River and hiked out of the Grand Canyon.
So now I live in New York City. Rewind. What? How did that happen?
When did I become so tirelessly urban? Where has my inner cowgirl gone?
I think she’s still somewhere inside of me. I feel her stir in me whenever I can see a large expanse of sky, even if its only over Washington Square Park. I actually felt her today, of all days, while I was sitting in Grand Central Station.
I was trying to get a few moments of escape and serenity from my boss, who was making me do all sorts of annoying little tasks like canceling her Visa card and changing her legal address, both of which are real headaches for the actual person, let alone an assistant who is trying to remember all of her boss’ personal information.
As I sat on a bench, I noticed that there was a bird twittering and tweeting away. I knew immediately that it wasn’t a pigeon because pigeon’s coo.
Actually, if you ever get a chance to hear pigeon sex, its coo-rific. It makes me die laughing. I’m not a pervert, for the record, but they used to roost right outside of my window as a child. I often convulsed in giggles when I heard them going at it in a rousing “coorus.” Get it? Coorus, Chorus? Come on people! I digress.
As I looked for the source of the sound I noticed something tiny and dark running across the floor. I almost shrieked because I thought it was a nasty New York rat. Upon further observation I realized it was a red breasted robin. Phew.
My father is obsessed with birds and he taught me long ago how to identify one. Actually, we used have a huge one that lived in our backyard in Chicago. This type of bird is also significant to me because I loved The Secret Garden as a child and Mary Lennox, the heroin of the story, was guided by a “Robin Red Breast” to the gate of her Aunt Lily’s garden and he flew around the ivy covered, overgrown walls and kept the girl company while she planted seeds. That story was so gorgeous, both in text and on stage as a musical.
So there I was, overworked, underpaid, and sitting on a bench looking at my very own Robin Red Breast. This one was singing beautifully but upon closer inspection, I realized his wing was broken. He must have flown into the building and banged into a window or other reflective surface while trying to get out. It was so tragic because you never see anything but pigeons (AKA the rats of the air) in the city. Atleast I don’t. Then again I’m not specifically looking to identify birds.
It is a fact: This poor creature that reminded me of my childhood and a beautiful story will die. I didn’t know how long he’d been there. Perhaps he was singing for his supper. Perhaps it was his “Swan Song.” He must have been in so much pain. Maybe it’s stupid, but it made me tear up a little bit as I watched him waddle about. He even hopped over to me and just looked at me for a while, completely unafraid and uninhibited. It reminded me of how the animals had acted during my visit to the Galapagos Islands. The sea lions and marine iguanas would just sit and sun themselves on the beach. They hadn’t been introduced to fear of humans because they’ve never been hunted there. That whole trip made me feel like I was living in the Garden of Eden. The guide warned us not to touch the sea lion pups even if they approached us because the mothers would stop recognizing the scent of their young and disown them. They were so adorable. You just wanted to pick one up and squeeze it so badly. I don’t mean like Lenny in Of Mice and Men. I mean a comfortable cuddle rather than a life threatening clamp of doom.
As I watched my doomed bird-friend, I felt a similar conflict. I wanted to pick him up and mend him, but as we all know, birds are ridden with disease, germs, and God knows what else. Also, who am I to think I could “mend” a broken bird wing. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater. I’m not a veterinarian.
That thought reminded me of how when I was on my Outward Bound “solo” in Montana, I had decided to make a woven basket and failed miserably. I don’t know what made me think I would just naturally have the ability to do something like that. Did I expect it to be written into my homo sapien DNA? However, it was undeniably fun and it gave me something to do during the lonely days. I sort of remembered singing through the entire score of every musical i could remember and even the ones I was less clear on as I worked.
Somewhere along the way I traded simple pleasures and child-like curiosity for iPhone apps and rent checks. Some of that is just a part of growing up, but sometimes I think it wouldn’t be such a travesty if we all tried to retrace our developmental steps a bit and follow our silly impulses. Mind you, I’m not telling you to expose yourself to disease ridden urban creatures on the verge of demise, but a walk in the park to lie on the bedrock outcroppings and read clouds wouldn’t do you any harm.
That’s a lie. I didn’t “kill” him, but for exactly three seconds after the following event transpired, I harbored murderous thoughts in my heart.
I was walking down the street and skipping to the next track on my iPhone when a man, who was apparently walking behind me, RAMMED into my left arm so roughly that I was shoved against the glass window of GNC on Lexington Avenue. Then, this man had the AUDACITY to glare at me and say “Watch it!” while motioning in a frantically pissed off fashion at the device in my hand. The man was older and had gray hair. He was certainly spry and didn’t carry a cane, but he had an undeniable crotchety quality.
Firstly, Sir, you approached from my rear. Even if I hadn’t been looking at my iPhone at that exact moment, I wouldn’t have seen you coming. “Why?” you ask. Well. Simply put, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. If I did, they would be covered in hair. For those of you who are unaware of this fact, I have very long, very full brown hair.
So you know what, man? YOU WATCH IT.
Seriously, after this happened, there were three seconds where I could have killed him. If I hadn’t been regaining my balance at the time, I might have. Plus, as he stalked off, he walked BETWEEN a man holding the hand of his young daughter. That’s right. He’s a homewrecker.
That’s a lie.
He’s not a home wrecker, but what kind of man has the choice of the ENTIRE SIDEWALK and chooses to walk between two people, nay, a man and a child holding hands?
This incident reminded me of a time I was rushing to catch a train to class at NYU. I was transfering like I did every day. Pause. Let me tell you how much I hated this transfer. Firstly, its a long, sweaty, stupid transfer. It looped all around the underground station and I think everyone who had to transfer there hated it because from what I could tell, everyone looked like they were in the calvary in the movie Gladiator. They were bearing down with clenched eyes and brandishing their backpacks, briefcases, and umbrellas menacingly. Their mission was to make it to the platform and race up the stairs to the train. However, this was harder than one would think.
These stairs led to the Sophie’s Choice of subway platforms. The train never came to the same platform, so essentially, everyone would stay huddled between the two stairwells as other people rushed by and jostled you on the way to their other less complicated commuting situations. You had to crane your neck and listen through the ambient noise to guess which platform the train was pulling into and then race at break-neck speed to the correct stairwell. Anyone who has ever been on the NYC subway knows how hard it is to listen carefully to anything. If you guessed wrong you missed the train. Basically everyone was huddled in silence like Anne Frank in the attick or slaves on the Underground Railroad until the train pulled in. Once it did, there was a frantic stampede up the stairs. I’m pretty sure there have been casualties at this station, but everyone is so frantic to get to where they’re going that no one notices if any of their comrades in “commuting battle” fall. You also have to race the closing doors of the train and that damnable vixen who announces them. Every time she says “Doors Closing,” I want to slaughter a white kitten.
On the day in question, I was dashing up the stairs and I was at the back of the pack. The woman in front of me should have had a walker, but she didn’t. No one was helping her up the stairs. I couldn’t even help her because we were sandwiched in so tightly. Time was ticking down and we finally made it up the stairs. People were filing into the train. Me and the walkerless broad SHOULD have been able to make it, but that would be too easy and there wouldn’t be a story, now would there?
She stopped at the door with arms outstretched, looking for the train number, letter, or maybe even a sign from God himself, but for whatever reason, she made no move to enter the vehicle.
“Doors Closing.” Ding dong.
The doors slid shut with her still gaping and scratching at her dry freckled scalp, which yes, I remember quite clearly.
“COME ON!” I screamed at her and threw up my hands. After I bellowed, she turned around and stared at me, her eyes wide and teary with obvious terror at my outburst. After the adrenaline died down, my heart sank and I felt pretty awful. I appologized demurely and walked all the way to the other end of the platform in shame to wait for the next train, praying it would come to the same platform so I wouldn’t have to repeat the whole bloody ritual again.
You can hate me if you want because I yelled at an elderly lady, but I tell you this because I think New York is full of these sorts of moments. Just today I was walking through Time’s Square with a friend of mine. The streets were packed with people here for the weekend of the 4th of July and some tax protest was also going on. I felt trapped and claustrophobic. As we were crossing a street, I felt like we were in that scene from Footloose where they play chicken on the tractors. No one was moving to allow anyone to pass so the two sides of the the street were converging on each other like batallions on opposite sides of the feild. It was as if the sides of the parted Red Sea were crashing down on Yul Brynner and his Egyptian chariots.
Time’s Square is often like this, but today something bizarre happened. My friend grabbed my backpack as he walked behind me. He wasn’t pushing me, but because we were both walking forward, I now lacked the ability to stop if I needed to for fear of tripping him up or creating a massive pedestrian traffic jam. It made me think of how we pass through time. There’s no fast forward or rewind, you just keep moving whether you like it or not. I had a miniature panic attack in my chest and I actually think I yelled out “Stop Pushing me!” even though he wasn’t. I’m told I caused a scene, but honestly, it was such a stressful mom.
Does these things happen to everyone or just me? It must happen to us all. I know I’m certifiable, but I don’t think I’m so far off base that my experiences aren’t relatable.
After a few evening errands, my friend and I ended up in Washington Square Park. I had wanted to check out the new fountain installation because I hadn’t seen it yet. As we entered the park, I was immediately hit by a lilting drum beat and the quivering vibrato of a jazz saxaphone solo. It was divine. We spotted a bench and sat down. The fountain was pumping at full force, pushing and pulsing high into the air. Whenever the breeze moved towards us it took a refreshing, non-invasive mist of water in our direction. We talked of Twitter, recent plays we had seen, and our fears that we might be going crazy, amongst other things. They sky was like a painting. Its not often I take a moment to actually look at the sky while I’m in the city. Sure, I look at the buildings and skyscrapers, but not the sky itself. The clouds were long, fluffy pillows and they were catching the firey orange light from the setting sun. Then, my friend giggled and pointed to a perfect bubble that was floating towards us in the air. At the same moment be both miraculously exclaimed, “It’s a Glinda Bubble!” Then we convulsed in laughter till our sides hurt. A man in the park had a bubble wand and was dragging it around the fountain as he danced to the many different musical strains springing like creative fonts from all the corners of the park. There was also a strange Asian boy dancing with a hula hoop who I must admit was pretty mesmerizing.
After our restful moment in the park, I decided to buy the first installment of Percy Jackson and the Olympians from the “teen fiction” section of the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore. It was kind of embarrassing to buy a book from the teen fiction shelf, but I did it anyways. I can’t be stopped when it comes to modern fictional interpretations of mythology.
So at the end of the night I sit here on my couch and despite the rough start to the day and some comedicly stressful reflections, July 1st had a rather pleasant end. All of these intense moments just seem to add up to the right equation. And that’s just life in the big city.
Two summers ago, I was in a “me” place. I was worried about my future in New York City and my long distance engagement. I didn’t seem to have any room for anyone else, but of course I didn’t think about it that way at the time. I just focused on my own problems, obsessions, and neurosis.When I went back to New York City, I needed a place to stay for a few days before my apartment became available. My friend Pam had offered to let me to stay with her when I first got there because she had moved there a few months prior and we hadn’t seen each other in a while. I had gone to school there and was used to it but she was still adjusting. However, when I got there I found that there was an odd silence between us as we rode in the cab to her place.
