a sense of scale, 11-30-2006
I don’t see the stars in New York. There are beautiful sunsets, and city lights, and headlights, but no stars. Just an inky orange-black miasma. Sky muck. And yet, I’ve grown to love it here.
I could wax clichéd about the hustle and bustle, the endless variety of things, the local color—but these are not the stuff of dreams, at least not my dreams. I am no country bumpkin. I didn’t even like Times Square, when I first laid eyes on it as a cynical 16-year-old, and I don’t like it now, either. It’s the most hollow place I’ve been outside of Breezewood, PA.
No, I love the city because it’s so utterly possible to lose yourself. Goneness is just on the other side of every façade and every subway stop streetlamp. Like the “bustle” is nothing but a quaint and slightly gritty watercolor, and all you have to do to break out is to know how to flip the canvas over. And on the back of the canvas? Well. A whole other place. Something really exciting.
Walking down the street is an exercise in nihilism. The emptiness lurks, but I relish the feeling of its proximity. Like wandering around inside the mouth of a giant beast. Skycraper teeth. Street vendor molars. Incisors with mechanized parking. Red-rimmed gums lined with streetlights and and everpresent danger, but you are so small your tiny little nerve endings register only a vague sense of excitement, not pants-pissing fear… you don’t see the whole context. You don’t know enough to be afraid, only titillated.
It’s freeing to be in a place of such magnitude. You really don’t matter. You can’t save the world—you can’t even stop traffic. People come to New York to make it. They think they’re gonna strike it rich, become famous, be on MTV, make their mark on the world, proverbially speaking. But it’s a farce. The city laughs at such people.
And, if you ask me, they’re missing out on the best part.
