Turning Over
What is it about leaving a place that causes the human brain to turn nostalgic? Is it a biological need, like checking the room to make sure we haven't forgotten anything before we left the house? Is nostalgia a by-product of not wanting to forget your keys and getting locked out of the house? Perhaps we have a built-in safety gauge whenever we leave some place where we turn introspective, analyze our memory bank, and ensure that we are indeed making the right decision to leave.
I'm turning reminiscent as New York fades from view. So to borrow from NY Metro, I've made my top 2 reasons of why I love New York:
1) Thinking is rampant. As the great American filter, the city strains lifestyles and personalities and dreams into a mad maelstrom of ultra-competition, self-introspection and incredible work ethics. The result is a vibrant thinking city, where assessment of the human condition is inevitable as the populace – from high society to misfits to schoolchildren – jockeys for position and prominence in careers, in ideas, and in reactions.
New York exhibits social Darwinism at its most cutthroat stages, and as the vise of the great American dream compresses tighter, its inhabitants are forced to clamber on the strength of their ideals in order to survive. Where the safe havens of suburbias leave little room for contemplation, the jungles of the city breeds a hardy stock of inspired thoughts.
2) Surprises are commonplace. A walk home turned into a pretty good night for Kerry and I this week. We were walking to Brooklyn due to the MTA strike when we passed an open theatre running Candida for a reduced $10 if we showed our subway passes to the box office. With nothing else to do, we had an awesome pre-theatre Japanese barbecue at Gyu Yaku before settling in to a great two hours of B. Shaw repartee. Good times.
The city, through its everything anything anytime attitude, leaves so much room for spontaneity; it cajoles surprises into play and browbeats monotony into submission.
Here's a typical summer night:
- Grab a kati roll in the Village, then
- Head over to a garden pizzeria for some wine and live jazz
- Meet friends at the nearby hookah den
- Drop by a bar for a birthday party, and
- Drink a late night smoothie at one of my favorite cafes.
And that's only in one neighborhood! On any given night, there are thousands of possibilities. Shuffle 'em up and see what you get. Each night is a suprise. Poetry jams, sex parties, beer gardens, midnight shows, sidewalk concerts, writing clubs, Central Park blanketed by the winter snow, kayaking on the Hudson, used bookstores, Soho shops, hip hop battles, art galleries, jumping in fountains, ping pong in a pub's back garden, checkers at a coffeeshop, curling up with a good book, raves in sweaty warehouses... they're all opportunities for entertainment or disgust in New York.
The city offers so many kinds of temptations and fun and inspirations. New Yorkers can't help but dive headlong into the obscene mess that the city inspires, grabbing the tangled notes of our different lives to make our very own surprising melodies.