New Year, New York
4 Jan
I want to start the new year off right. I’m not sure what this entails. Any sort of Oprah-style attempt at manifesting the ‘live your best life’ motto seems rather unrealistic. (We’re already 4 days in and I’m just getting around to actualizing my resolution). My attempts at self-improvement are more modest – I can’t even remember to take my vitamins. I’d simply like to live a life, one that I envisioned for myself ages ago.
For the next two weeks, I’m trying to experience one thing a day – be it a movie, museum, theater production, or culinary delight – that reminds me I live in what is arguably the greatest city on earth (sorry, Chicago). I don’t want to live in an academic bubble, nor in some 5 block Upper West Side radius populated by the same people and places, but in a firey and fluid universe of ideas and culture. After all, isn’t that the truth?
Since moving to Manhattan in August, I’ve been in search of the real New York City. I’m at a loss when people ask me what I think of New York, because there is not one but many cities here. New Yorks, plural, are not laid out side by side but stacked on top of one another, layered dimensions in a city that often makes me feel like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe. I entered one New York when I hung out at a 5th Avenue trattoria eating olive oil gelato and watching beautiful people sip robust looking pinots or cabenets from long-stemmed wine glasses (yes, the gelato was delicious, and no, I did not dip my bread in it) another New York exists in the stinky alley behind my apartment where I go to throw out my trash. It is an unavoidable aspect of living on an overcrowded island.
So where in the world is New York City? It never feels I’m there. Its always elsewhere, in the mess that is Times Square, in exclusive fusion restaurants, in the tight knit ethnic communities, at Ground Zero, on a park bench with a dog wearing a sweater more expensive than my own, or maybe on my fire escape, if I were a wealthy socialite and looked like Audrey Hepburn. Even when I’m physically at these various locations, I often don’t feel in them. Perhaps I’m off somewhere in my own head, but I’d prefer to live where I stand.
I hope that by putting this in writing, I’ll hold myself accountable to my resolution, and find the New York that fits me best. With any luck, soon you’ll be living vicariously though me.