New York: Chapter One

                                                                             (Left: Somewhere over the Atlantic Right: Long Island)

“It is necessary to find one’s own way in New York. New York City is not hospitable. She is very big and she has no heart. She is not charming. She is not sympathetic. She is rushed and noisy and unkempt, a hard, ambitious, irresolute place, not very lively, and never gay. When she glitters she is very, very bright, and when she does not glitter she is dirty. New York does nothing for those of us who are inclined to love her except implant in our hearts a homesickness that baffles us until we go away from her, and then we realize why we are restless. At home or away, we are homesick for New York not because New York used to be better and not because she used to be worse but because the city holds us and we don’t know why.” (Maeve Brennan)

 

                                                                                                                                    (Manhattan streets) 

What I love most about traveling to another city is being subjected to a totally new environment and having no choice but eventually becoming familiar with it.

The name and specific details of the street you cross every morning when leaving and every night when returning exhausted, 64GB of data on your camera, feet swollen, dehydrated and smiling – to your temporary residence.

Dwane Reade, the 24/7 corner shop you always come back to looking for chips, energy drinks and candy because cheap crapola is the only thing you can afford and you’re really hungry, the “best pizza in town” pizzeria from across the street where you’ve already eaten a milion times because of their “two slices of cheese pizza and one (non refillable!) drink for only 5.25$” deal, the Launderette laundromat downstairs where you’ve got to New York style wash your clothes  because…no one in Manhattan seems to actually own a washing machine, the sweet smell of urin coming up through subway ventilation systems, the distant sounds of the city you can barely hear from Dumbo, Brooklyn, the yellow cabs, the accents, the omnipresence of tip jars, the heights, the stoplights, the conversations with strangers, the shoeshine stands, the struggles. Which brings me to what I absolutely can’t stand about traveling to another city – being subjected to a totally new environment and having no choice but eventually becoming familiar with it – the cultural differences, the wars, the common grief, the soul wrenching fear of terrorism, the racism, poverty and high criminality rates. And all the things they don’t show you on TV.

 

                                                                                                                            (Wood Green Cemetery)

 

                                                                                                                                             (Central Park)

 

                                                                           (Trinity Church Chapel and Cemetery, Financial District)

I am grateful for this vacation, although it was more than that – an epiphany, a wake up call, a test of endurance as I’ve watched the myths I’ve based my most courageous dreams on fall apart, but most of all, it was a lesson about life and truth. America is nothing like I’ve imagined it.

 

                                                                                                                                        (Brooklyn Bridge)

In reality, America is a desperate cry for help and so is New York. In the Staten Island Ferry station, on top of an Ice Age umpire rock in Central Park, on a rush hour Broadway Blvd, at the 9/11 memorial, someone is shouting from the top of their lungs something about resurrection, redemption, the Lord, and ending with a Psalm. At any time of the day, there are people desperately praying, looking for answers and a little bit of hope. Something to reassure them that their lives are not completely worthless.

 

                                                                                                           (Cathedral of Saint John the Divine)

  

                                          (Left, Right: Trinity Chapel Center: Street lamplight running on gas, Brooklyn)

New York is not Seinfeld, Uptown girls, Sex & the city, Ally McBeal, When Harry met Sally or A night at the museum. And most people are not actors and musicians. New York can be a cold, deathy place for those without Green Card and health insurance. The streets do not actually belong to supermodels, photographers and influencers. They belong to the ordinary people who wear modest, lifeless clothes, ugly bags and confortable shoes. People traveling from their poor neighborhoods, mostly mexican, asian and afro-american minorities that come to Manhattan to serve the rich man.

 

                                                      (Left: Chinatown in Manhattan Right: Chinatown in Flushing Queens)

 

(Left: Chinatown view from the Manhattan Bridge Right: View from the  cable car to Roosevelt Island)

 

                                                      (Left: Staten Island Ferry Right: View from the Brooklyn Bridge Park)

Ever since our plane landed, an apparently random phrase kept popping through my head. At first, I simply couldn’t understand why my mind was playing tricks on me, bringing up an 80’s Reagan campaign slogan, but the answer was obvious – because America it’s not that great anymore. At least, not the one I’ve experienced.

                                                                                                                                     (Tom’s Restaurant)

And I know that New York is not the essence of America, but some beg to differ:

“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shores of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window – no, I don’t feel how small I am, but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city and protect these buildings with my body ” (Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead)

  

                                                                                        (Left: Williamsburg Bridge, Right: Liberty Island)

There will always be young people who would do whatever it takes to come here and make a living, because here is where the american dream was born. But some of them will end up on a street somewhere in upper Manhattan, Harlem or the Bronx with just the clothes on their back, begging for money, food or water (yes, there are people in New York begging for water). Very few will succeed. Most of them will not afford health insurance. But at least they get to be there, on the land of promise, while the rest of the world watches TV and fantasizes about it.

                                                                                                                                                                              (Coney Island Wonder Wheel)

But a wise thirty-five year old romanian friend who’s been living there for a year struggling with her own problems but loving every moment of her experience explained it to me: “Hey, you just take what you can.”

 

                                                                                       (Details of our Hell’s Kitchen host’s apartament)

Green Eyed Kisses,