Tag: New York City

  • Walking New York

    I have been taking walks in the City again. I just seem to be finding myself doing it. Such as, I get done having a drink with a friend, and instead of heading to the subway and going home, I just decide to walk to the next stop. Or walk around the stop and see the neighborhood. Sunday I walked down Columbus Ave, down in the 80’s, just to look at the place.

    I have gotten into a rut in this City. I only exist in the neighborhood I live in, the one I work in, and that’s about it. With this large city around me, I only see Harlem and the Financial District. It’s a forty-minute subway ride between them in the morning, and it is like living in two different worlds.

    From the bottom of the island, I walked up Broadway, which at that point is heading up hill. I passed all the tourists at the Charging Bull, and made my way to City Hall. Technically, I think I entered into the boarder of Tribeca, and then, the boarder of Chinatown. SOHO popped up, and then I had to call it as I entered into the Village. I think I walked for little over an hour. I watched the people on the streets ebb and flow. I thought about how Broadway used to be a path the Lenape used. I tried not to think about all of the craziness that is going on in the world right now.

    I tried to clear my head, and look at the people who all live here. That we try to exist in the same place, to make it work here. Millions of people have walked the same route I did, in times that were way more dangerous than now. I want to believe that we are moving the ball forward, making things better. I wonder if there is a place for me, still. It is the question that seems to have been dogging me since I was eight years old. Do I belong? Am I supposed to be here?

  • No Headphones and Other Thoughts

    I didn’t think I left this morning in a hurry, but clearly, I did. I left so fast that I forgot my headphones. I was forced to not listen to music, but read the news off my phone. I felt defenseless and vulnerable. On my subway ride to work, I had to hope that someone wouldn’t discover my state, and then think that I was a person who was willing to engage in a conversation, or worse share a glance of recognition.

    My headphones allow me to be and not be present at the same time; open for business but the door is locked. I cannot deal with human contact that early in the morning, and I am an expert of being on a crowed train and not touching another person. I live in the most densely packed city in America, existing in tight spaces, but nothing is worse than accidently touching a stranger on public transit.

    This is me is the great paradox of living in NYC; actual contact with other people. The fact that I choose to live here to me is a statement that I like people and I accept diversity, but at the same time, if I don’t know you, don’t touch or bother me. I wouldn’t be the first person to write about living in this City, and there are still times that I feel like that no one has touched on the modern elements of living here. It’s not the same City that I moved into 11 years ago, but somehow still the same.

    Bottom line; don’t forget your headphones.

  • Mid Life Contemplation

    This is not a crisis, but I clearly am at mid-life, and I have been finding myself wondering very often if I am truly doing what I want to do with my life. I have been speaking to my wife about it as well, and she feels in the same boat. Our life is not bad, like all people, it could be better. We are not in some sort of melt down, and I do not feel the urge to buy a sports car. Are there still challenges that we want to accomplish?

    I had drinks with a friend the other day, and we both talked about starting new career paths, and the fear we both had of doing that. That fear of starting over from the bottom, and that we are too old to do that. That is not true, and the fear is not real. If it’s important you find a way, right? You make the sacrifices to make it happen, right?

    I do feel a bit handicapped by being in NYC. In one respect, I feel that all the options are before me, but in the other respect, living in the City is a tight rope walk, and if that income suffers, it throws everything off. (Having written that, I now realize that you could say that about any place.) I moved the NYC to take part in the creative fields, and I can say that over the past 11 years, I have done that. Maybe it’s the work/life balance is out of whack… Too much work and not enough life with the wife and kid.