new york is too big for me (and i dont mind)

the other day i took out a citibike to go get takeaway. maybe i got overly confident with my sense of direction, because i put my phone away and kept cycling for an hour before i it dawned on me that i was still nowhere near my destination, even though the kfc was only a mile away. i should’ve known something was wrong because i had come to a dead end, away from the high rise buildings and corner delis, and was blindly making my way through a random industrial zone with exhaust fumes making me squint in the hard light of a factory on night shift. when i did take my phone out of my pocket to check my location, i found myself on the east coast of manhattan, near brooklyn. i switched out my bike for an electric one so i wouldn’t have to pedal all the way back, since by then i was already a little tired. no one ever talks about how much horsepower is in these electric bikes because by the next time i was reaching for my phone, i was already on the west coast, past greenwich. back in high school i would zoom around my city on my 12 geared cycle — i was lighter and so was my vehicle, my lungs probably weren’t black from cigarette tar, and the wheels were always well oiled. but these citi bikes are heavy, and even to balance yourself on the electric powered ones you expend plenty energy. maybe i was just trying to believe that these almost 4 months here had made me a new yorker; because i know the way to soho by heart and i can tell the difference between the local and express trains so i must also not be a tourist enough to make my way back on my own without my phone. i didn’t beat the tourist industry that day — new york had hinted i should stay in my lane. the map took me home, eventually.

this city is just so big — i think it’s pretty normal to be a little taken aback when you see a 7 eleven right next to a gothic cathedral. but just because everything has made its way here (i want to know what life experiences led this man from a bangladeshi village to end up serving BLT sandwiches from a breakfast truck at the corner of broadway and prince street), i would argue, doesn’t mean nothing looks out of place here. when you look down from way up high, it’s undeniably new york. the empire state, central park, the gilmore girls train station and the diner from when harry met sally — it’s all there, along with all the people rushing on with their $2 deli coffee, looking left and right to check for cars before crossing a street during a green light because they’re in a hurry, jumping turnstiles. but there’s also the other lens if you care to look: each person here is an instance of their own being. its hard to make out whether they’re part of something bigger. even though it’s the city’s residents who make it, who are responsible for the state of new york culture, and they are the ones you want to remember when you’re buying hoodies and trinkets from those souvenir shops in chinatown or times square, it still really doesn’t feel like anyone’s in on it together. new york city culture is ethnographic turbulence, made up of infinite independent agents moving in utter disharmony, but their aggregate motion produces a perceptible resultant. it’s like lying on a field of grass and trying to make out cloud shapes. soon you’ll make out a rabbit, or a turtle. but the water molecules up in the atmosphere don’t have a secret agreement to coagulate into a duck on tuesdays and a bird on wednesdays. they’re just there, but you think they’ve arranged themselves into familiar shapes so you can have a convenient heuristic, so you can point at a cloud and tell the next person, “that’s a bunny.” it’s like if you put an infinite number of monkeys before an infinite number of typewriters in a room, and let them go at it. at some point, they’ll have produced the entire manuscript of hamlet. but that doesn’t mean the monkeys had a covenant. they just did their thing on their own, impelled by whatever, and eventually you were able to make something out of all the flurry. new yorkers are also just doing their own thing.

i’ve lived in a city my whole life but this state of things is still new to me. maybe someone else will say what ive described so far is just the big city life. but if it’s that’s the case, then i can’t help but ask, what is all this for, if everyone’s just on their own? somehow, by being so big and varied, new york seems to make it even harder to belong, when you can’t even figure out what you belong to. the phrase “trying to make it in the big apple” isn’t at all uncommon. and so it seems there’s only two kinds of entities in this city: either you’re a long standing bakery that’s been in business since the last world war where the walls are plastered with pictures of zendaya and jimmy fallon on location, or you’re franz kafka’s the hunger artist. it’s this persistent dichotomy of either having made it or not. the city doesn’t try to please you, it demands your respect for its very being. by being in new york, you’re automatically seeking its attention. the city is just too confident in its own standing. “oh you haven’t been to rockefeller center yet? boo hoo.” this espresso is $6? it’s just new york. you take new york as is. i saw a keith haring branded garbage truck and thought, oh well new york. i can’t seem to figure out who really gets the say here: the mayor? taxpayers? the weed dealers at washington square? or the city itself? if it’s the city moving along on its own accord, that’s probably too much power that the people have given up, i think, and consequences are far too many. all these performers going around those tiny comedy clubs all over the city making self deprecating jokes every night to make a living isn’t even one of the main ones.

i am not disillusioned, rather far from it. i don’t think i would’ve gotten to sit behind ed sheeran and his 6 lawyers in the courtroom and watch him getting sued for copyright infringement in any other city. (i still can’t believe they just let anyone in.) all i’m saying is that if i was the city planner, i would make some changes around here. like rearrange the streets and corner stores, manipulate the subway routes, or put some more stop signs to slow people down — anything to make the city dwellers form some sort of humane connection, to make them stand for something other than just themselves. maybe for each other. i’m thinking about my interactions with the homeless people, when they hold the mcdonalds door open for me and ask in the most polite way if they can have a cigarette. when i ask “do you need a lighter?” and they beam and say “i’ve got one, have a great day.” as the city planner or mayor i would simply orchestrate more real, hearty connections for the people of this city. i just don’t think people make enough time for that here. there’s still so much to love about this city though, maybe not the “i love you but i don’t know you yet” graffitis on the side of the pavement, but i believe the people here do have the potential be something bigger than just the city they live in. when i say they’re on the right track i mean new yorkers walking their yorkies and chihuahuas dressed up in puffer jackets. but maybe when the dogs need to sniff something on the side of the road, it wouldn’t hurt to stop and let them do their job — what’s the hurry? all i’m saying is that given the opportunity, i could really bring this city together. and then maybe i wouldn’t mind living here someday.