New York, New York.

I finally understand how isolation drives people mad in New York City. It takes a very special city to be composed of people 18 million but at the same time to make each and every person feel disconnected from their fellow human. The allure of the city is obvious: success, love, happiness, actualization of grandiose hopes. But what if you don’t find someone to share all this with? No family, no friends, not even a lover? Just the superficial glowing lights, a bite out of a rotten apple. I see this woman in Queens every once in awhile on the way to the bus stop, she simply walks around pushing a cart with the few belongings that she has and talks to herself. I often find myself wondering what her life story has been, and how she ended up so… alone. There are definitely clinical reasons for insanity but whether crazy, or simply anti-social, isolation makes you unapproachable. I have learned that your relationships with people quickly define how you are viewed at by society. So at what point was this woman considered a big enough outcast to end up alone, murmuring thoughts that no one wants to listen to? I greatly believe that this city has an influence on people that no other place does. It’s contradicting and ironic to no end but also inhumane in its irony because people feel the need to study things such as how you can see a person living in a box like a wet cat while someone else drives by in a Bentley instead of actually seeking ways to change this cruel situation. The divisions in boroughs are like a geographical caste system and no one does a thing about it. Everyone accepts this by recognizing that different societies inhabit the regions but this does not mean in any shape the people are welcoming to one another. At the same time, all about the place is so beautiful. The everyday interactions among people depict a kindness that New York is characterized by as missing. Granted, these interactions are as external as sweat leaving the body. I used to be so extremely paranoid of moving because it wasn’t poverty, failure, or even UFO’s that I was scared of but of mean people. And through time I have seen that yes, there is a sense of hostility that can be cut with a knife in New York City but so far there was not a person that did not give me accurate directions, there was not a person that hesitated to let me know that I dropped my phone or my jacket, and in general there was not a person that didn’t help when I asked aide of them. I also discovered that the cold-heartedness of people in this city comes from just one source: money. My most unpleasant experiences in this city have happened because of this reason. Whether on 5th Avenue or Bed-Stuy or Jamaica, the disapproving looks of people when you hand them an incorrect payment could burn a whole in your throat. Granted everyone is just trying to survive, and this is all on such a small scale compared to the corporate world and these are all such miniscule examples but isn’t it funny how accurately they relate to the seemingly important values of a superficial world? Humans worship their own mechanical creations and trample over nature and morals but the fascination is a mutual, global understanding. A place is beautiful because it is constantly funded. A tall, black, shiny rectangular prism shooting up at the sky is inducing of awe because of its magnitude and its power; both are nouns that often describe New York. We all want magnitude, we all want recognition, and we all want popularity. New York is ultimately inexplicable, indefinable, which is why poets, artists, writers are endlessly praised for their attempted descriptions of a place that drop’s people jaws, inhabited by people who will not hesitate to tell you to close your mouth and walk faster. It’s common language in paper, in song that the people of the “Greatest City in the World” seek to feel like they relate to their fellow stranger with something more than being part of the same species. A shared set of thoughts, a shared set of disagreements. Whitman attempted to connect us all while on a ferry in this enormous city which is a noble thought but lest not forget people’s undying desires to be individuals. The critics and the fans. There is no way to acknowledge the common air around us so we choose to ignore it. And through ignorance, a fictitious truth is created. And through generations this fictitious truth is passed on. And as it is passed on it eventually becomes no longer fictitious, but a common truth. A common guideline of don’t ask, don’t tell. All that is recognized is that hey, New York is the best city in the United States because we are all undoubtedly unique so let’s follow the norm to mark its solidarity all while somehow still remaining enticing.