Beautiful read. Thank you for sharing your relationship and reflections of your time there.
I’ve only been to New York City once. While I don’t really have a longing to go there (I much prefer more natural and quiet places), I dream about New York City surprisingly often. In these dreams, I know my way around the city and have “memories” of certain places. It’s honestly a little strange and has definitely made me more fascinated about it, even though I don’t really want to go there haha. All that to say, the part of me that dreams and wonders about NYC really appreciates this post ❤️.
I have spent less than two days in New York City. On the first, I tried to do all of the things - Times Square, Central Park, Met Museum - in 10 hours or so between rolling in on a bus from upstate and flying out of JFK. A couple of years ago my one-hour morning layover at JFK turned into 18 hours and - wanting to do the least city thing within reach - I took the rattling not-subway down to Rockaway and walked almost the whole length of the beach.
I am someone who grew up ten miles from a town of 1200, and NYC feels like Coruscant to me - so incomprehensibly many humans and buildings that it might as well be another planet. I have no desire to ever live there. And yet it is intriguing, equal parts decaying and vibrant, dying and alive. The way that bland concrete and steel become imbued with story, the way that life takes root in the cracks and decaying edges. The miles of empty streets in Rockaway, pavement and sidewalks but no houses (all destroyed by Sandy?), returning to grass and shrub and blowing sand. The bored lifeguards keeping watch upon acres of empty beach, as if perhaps they exist simultaneously in a different dimension or a time-warp filled with frolicking children that I cannot see. The sheer volume of embodied human labor, steel upon concrete upon brick, not designed to last centuries as in Europe, seemingly destined to ruin as the old foundations crumble and neighborhood wealth is hollowed out by corporate greed and the end of Progress, glitzy digital signs and towers of speculative wealth a thin veneer over the end of cheap oil and American empire. The millions of rats beneath and among it all, the sparrows that roam the corridors of JFK, reminding us that we are not the only life that is well adapted to the habitats we create, that the wild cauldron of creation and decay will forever grind away at our blueprints and boxes and straight lines, that beneath our fear that we are destroying Nature lies a deeper fear that can also be a solace: that control is a temporary illusion and all of our plans and works and experiments in atmospheric chemistry will be woven into a greater story of constant change and relentless creativity.
I appreciate reading a perspective on NYC from someone who sees more deeply and who has found home and belonging there.
Beautiful enough to make me reconsider how much I dislike nyc 😊
Beautiful read. Thank you for sharing your relationship and reflections of your time there.
I’ve only been to New York City once. While I don’t really have a longing to go there (I much prefer more natural and quiet places), I dream about New York City surprisingly often. In these dreams, I know my way around the city and have “memories” of certain places. It’s honestly a little strange and has definitely made me more fascinated about it, even though I don’t really want to go there haha. All that to say, the part of me that dreams and wonders about NYC really appreciates this post ❤️.
I love your descriptions of NYC, it made me smile.
I have spent less than two days in New York City. On the first, I tried to do all of the things - Times Square, Central Park, Met Museum - in 10 hours or so between rolling in on a bus from upstate and flying out of JFK. A couple of years ago my one-hour morning layover at JFK turned into 18 hours and - wanting to do the least city thing within reach - I took the rattling not-subway down to Rockaway and walked almost the whole length of the beach.
I am someone who grew up ten miles from a town of 1200, and NYC feels like Coruscant to me - so incomprehensibly many humans and buildings that it might as well be another planet. I have no desire to ever live there. And yet it is intriguing, equal parts decaying and vibrant, dying and alive. The way that bland concrete and steel become imbued with story, the way that life takes root in the cracks and decaying edges. The miles of empty streets in Rockaway, pavement and sidewalks but no houses (all destroyed by Sandy?), returning to grass and shrub and blowing sand. The bored lifeguards keeping watch upon acres of empty beach, as if perhaps they exist simultaneously in a different dimension or a time-warp filled with frolicking children that I cannot see. The sheer volume of embodied human labor, steel upon concrete upon brick, not designed to last centuries as in Europe, seemingly destined to ruin as the old foundations crumble and neighborhood wealth is hollowed out by corporate greed and the end of Progress, glitzy digital signs and towers of speculative wealth a thin veneer over the end of cheap oil and American empire. The millions of rats beneath and among it all, the sparrows that roam the corridors of JFK, reminding us that we are not the only life that is well adapted to the habitats we create, that the wild cauldron of creation and decay will forever grind away at our blueprints and boxes and straight lines, that beneath our fear that we are destroying Nature lies a deeper fear that can also be a solace: that control is a temporary illusion and all of our plans and works and experiments in atmospheric chemistry will be woven into a greater story of constant change and relentless creativity.
I appreciate reading a perspective on NYC from someone who sees more deeply and who has found home and belonging there.