Posts tagged: new york
I had an epiphany this morning while walking through Grand Central Station. As usual, I was cutting a way through the sea of disorienting people, some going too slow, stopping and looking, unsure of which corridor or staircase or escalator to head toward, some changing their mind mid-stride and turning around, some wheeling their luggage or pushing their stroller obtrusively over my path, some taking small steps while looking down at their phone or talking on it or talking to someone next to them, some in a bigger rush than I am, zipping urgently ahead of me, and most of us going in different directions, barely able to keep from colliding into each other.
Every weekday morning and evening, I am annoyed with all these people in Grand Central, but today it occurred to me that I can no more blame them for being a hindrance than I could blame myself. At one time or another, I had wandered aimlessly in busy train stations, airports, malls and had not known where to go. I had stopped short and realized I needed to go the opposite way. I had taken up extra space in many places with my various baggage. I had gotten distracted by a text or a conversation and had become oblivious to my surroundings. I had been desperate enough to get somewhere by running across oncoming traffic. And I, of course, have bumped into countless people everywhere.
I am forever trying to be more Zen, and this is a good lesson on it: things eventually even out in the end. Other people get in my way as much as I get into theirs, and in turn, I get in my own way as much as other people get in mine with my own faults, stupidity, ignorance, hang-ups, and ever reconsidering mind.
At first it felt like I was camping in the wilderness. Besides my bed, I really had no furniture, just empty space. I had no microwave; everything had to be heated up by fire on the stove or in the oven. I had no plates. I had no cable or internet. I had my books, and that seemed like enough, but eventually I did get internet.
I hunted down every noise. The radiator was the loudest; it clanked and banged all through the night. At first it was annoying, then it became comforting. There were encounters with various creatures: earwigs, centipedes, most recently a mouse, or mice. I caught that mouse in a trap this afternoon and took it down to the dumpster and prayed that that was it. Then I walked a few blocks down to Grand Army Plaza and into Prospect Park just as the sun was setting. I sat on a bench by a big meadow and listened to Otis Redding on my iPod for 20 minutes. I left as it got really dark, walked back out that tunnel that reminded me of the last scene in Cloverfield, and came upon the street to behold this:
I stared at it for a moment and snapped it in my Blackberry to remember that I do love Brooklyn and I love New York and I love living here and all the things that seem bad are actually making me good and strong and wise.
Sometimes when I can’t sleep at night, I imagine looking down at myself from a bird’s-eye view, then zooming out of my bedroom to my apartment to my street and to all of Upper West Side as it pans across the urban landscape of Manhattan. Then I’m flying downtown past the Chrysler Building, Empire State, Flatiron, Wall Street, looping around the Statue of Liberty, and then higher up until New York is just a dot on the Eastern seaboard. The earth spins and I always find the dot. Then my mind grows more at ease and my eyes and brain shut down in slumber.
