I was just walking home from dinner with a family friend who is in the city for work.
I decided to walk instead of take the train. Or rather, I started to walk and randomly decided to get in one of those glittery bike things that play bad music and play it loudly. It seemed like fun and I need some fun. TLDR I got scammed and ended up paying the guy 100 at the end of it. And while I was mad, I was walking home thinking, I can’t afford to lose that 100, but this guy doesn’t have any health insurance—I do. I can call the 100 a loss and well, the 12 minute ride uptown was pretty delightful.
I’ve been struggling a lot with this city—or with life. With all of it. The dismantling, the crumbling, the dissolving of structure of goodness of a world I thought I was living in. I’ve been feeling disconnected to New York, to everyone, to my own life. I’m not sure what any of it means, or what it means that it looks and feels the way it does. After five straight years of chaos, I’m finally in a place to look back and think about the choices I made, the people that came and went, and really think about what I want the future to look like.
I know I’m not alone in saying I have no idea what comes next, things seem to worsen every day. The anger, despair and bewilderment increases each morning and the confusion that my small blip of a life is taking place in this exact moment. None of it makes sense. I think we can all agree on that. As lots of you know, it’s been pretty easy for me these past four years to just walk outside and swoon at something I saw a person do, or animal do, or piece of trash do just because it’s doing it in New York City. Still—this place is untouchable even if I’m out of touch with the heart of it right now. This might mean something bad, or might just be me—but lately I wake up and while I put water into my electric tea kettle, groggy and hesitant the words “what will you do with your one wild and precious life” repeat in my head. Every single day. Every single morning. And I do the same thing—I sit down and go to work (at a job I love for the record) but I do what everyone else does—I do normal things. But it’s not just a challenge, those words, it’s haunting, it’s angry—you are alive in this shitty shitty moment this shitty but amazing but also awful but also beautiful sucky strange moment—can you believe your one wild and precious life is coinciding with all this???
Nope. I can’t. I must, but it doesn’t process well. Sure I’m having a mid life crisis—this time it’s definitely worse than the last time I wrote about it, but it’s a process. The unlearning of things you shouldn’t haven been taught, the learning of things you should have been, the processing of ones life, of why we are the way we are. That takes more than just a year to two or three to get through. The crisis part is just the schlep up the mountain when you realize oh fuck I didn’t bring any snacks, or extra water, or bandaids. I have to just push through I guess? Or stop? or do I go back down? WHAT DO I DO. Who the hell knows—we all figure it out at some point. But, tonight, I got into a bedazzled sequined bike taxi with bright neon pink letters that said “shine bright like a diamond.” And when I asked him to drop me off in front of the Dakota so I could finish walking home, and he charged me 100 which is A SCAM I just brushed it off and walked. It was sunset—dogs were getting their last walk for the night as were the kids, the adults too. But I guess I haven’t been out at sunset for a long time, or maybe tonights was particularly colorful, because everyone kept stopping to take photos. Guys on the way back from their runs, dog walkers, moms with their kids, delivery guys, me. I thought, wow, all of this could be going on, our rights being taken away, people being disappeared, the battle for democracy, for sanity, and yet when the sky appears with bands of oranges and pinks and purples, we stop and take a photo.
For the first time in a long time I got a little chuckle from this idea—we can be so awful— so despondent—humans—but we will never fail to appreciate beauty. Especially the sky. When something is that lovely, it snaps us out of ourselves, even if just for a brief moment. So I stopped, and took a few photos. I sat on the stoop next to my apt and took some more and sat there longer trying to understand why we change so much, how it happens without us even realizing it. I thought about that bike guy buying his family dinner, or going to the dr, or just giving himself a nice night off and I felt better about being bamboozled in a moment of weakness. But that’s New York, sometimes you just need some pink neon and sequins. Sometimes it’s worth it. Sometimes you need to be shocked by a sunset, shocked into stopping. Shocked into noticing the noticing of everyone else seeing what you see—something beautiful that can’t be taken away, something that belongs to us all.
I hope whoever reads this—that you’re ok. Sending you good thoughts from New York.
