New York City
Ever a woman of geographical ADHD, I’ve been in three cities since returning to the U.S. about 10 days ago. A few days in New York, a few days in DC, a few days in Chicago, a few weddings… but now we’re settling back into the City that, at some point in this silly exercise that is adult life, became my home.
Eight million people live here–2 million less than Kinshasa, but in New York, they all seem to be on the same part of the sidewalk as me, all of the time. This works fine most of the time, when we practice our sidewalk waltz, each person dodging to the next bit of open space on the concrete. Somehow, we all know where the other person is dodging, and where we belong, and we manage to weave seamlessly past each other, most of the time.
This city, then, feels less like 8 million people and more like 8 million discrete little worlds, each one just grazing the next, in an accident that counts as human contact, as we whizz past each other. Within our own orbits, we dictate everything: we do and say what we want to do when we want to do and say it; we spend what we want to spend–you can swipe even the teensiest denominations on your Visa card, and deal with the consequences later; we go anywhere we want, almost immediately, and go home when and with whomever we want; and we avoid each other, sending texts and leaving voicemails, for as long as we want.
And so I miss the slow “dysfunction” of East Africa, where whatever it is you want to do is going to take you twice as long as you’d wish, so you might as well talk to the guy next to you. I miss feeling connected, instead of wedged into a wrongly shaped slot in someone else’s day. I miss the idea that if I miss an appointment, or disappear traveling for a few months, people will notice, and even be a little pissed off. Because that’s just not what people do, there.
I miss, I guess, all the things I was so bad at. But I can sidewalk waltz with the best of them, which will get you farther here than being good at all those things I was bad at. But it’s still not the kind of person I want to be.
Jina, I have never met you except through your articles and this blog, but I feel as if I could come to NYC and stand on one of those sidewalks, and be bumped by a hundred, and not know one, but when you swished by, I would recognize you instantly. Please continue to write write write, from whichever hemisphere, or sidewalk you are inhabiting. I read every post and forward many to friends. And by the by, small towns in Vermont (well, not Woodstock in the Fall because of the leafpeepers) are more like Rwanda than the rest of the USA. As for me, no matter how empty or full the sidewalk, I will never master the waltz.
yes, all again familiar…but how about those roasted peanut stands! there is the UP side! 😉
“Welcome Home.”
I get it.
Love x
I love the sad accuracy of “wedged into a wrongly shaped slot in someone else’s day. ” It’s most big cities, or small ones with that bzzy energy (like SF). And it hurts even when we don’t consciously know it.
Writing now in a small city which sits somewhere in between, I think dislocation and connection and home are all threaded together. You do the best job I know of making sense of it all.