I love New York City

Everyone who lives here has stirring moments where they realize their place in the city. I wrote this to my friends February 1 on one of those days.


Today was one of those days where I fell in love with the city all over again. This place is why I wanted to study here - it is a model of the world where you go to find the richest and poorest living on the same block. Stepping out onto the 34th street hub where I'm literally moving faster than my feet can keep up with me, I hear the crowd before I see it, braced against the wall and slamming on breakbeats, the NYC float committee showcasing breakdancing to yelling and clapping, and kids making streetnoises of joy. The arrested motion lights up the crowd as it does when those crowds come together, snapping photos, throwing money, enjoying themselves with each other. Back to the trains where people are talking about the neighborhood I live in, in Queens County, of which a cross section taken reveals one of the most diverse places in the world. Where the Italians yell at the Jews who make the meanest pastrami for their Macedonian landlords whose children walk home with ill-tempered Jamaican crossing guards in front of the gay Latino club who donates their internet to us. And when I cross the street I hear them yell the world's language.

The energy binds the people like the snow gently covering all the flat rooftops that mirror the birds arcing in wide array over the 7 train, whose schedule has become a part of my life (and my dreams). Then to the class where I sit in front of the airy Senior UN Fellow who teaches my class and tells us that women are slaves to fashion, so that when we choose to follow fashion we are simply acknowledging that we are monkeys; in the same vein he tells us that the only way to exercise human rights is to raise hell. I come home at 10 pm on the trains feeling like I have brushed against the live wires that blink like lightning on the train tracks and find the city is kind to sleepless people. On the block of my apartment I can smell the best gyros (really, he was voted best vendor in the city), made by a Pakistani man who proudly displays his picture next to a trophy that is NASCAR-worthy in its absurd size.

My friend Imran says the thing that distinguishes this city from all others is hustle. Everyone here is looking for that better thing, or improving their hustle. I have noticed that even my boss's driver has something I have seen in natives here - fierce and steady pride in their work, so that almost anyone on the street is happy like the neighborhood kids or my teacher or the breakdancers to talk of their work with sincere interest, even the simplest of jobs. Maybe it is, as Imran says, because they are screaming to be noticed, and the talking is how they won't go unnoticed, but the pride is why people feel like this city is communal, more than Chicago or DC or Houston. Their pride, like the music played daily in the subways, or the smell of frying food cutting across awnings, or the earnest students walking their ideas down the street, is undeniably human.

So thanks for those of you who helped me get here, and are celebrating it with me.

peace,
Ambereen