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All About You

“Horses scream, the nightmares dream
 and the dead men all wear shoes” –  John Prine

“Once you’re down in Texas, Bob Wills is still the king” – Waylon

I figured I could do better than that. Not Prine or Waylon, of course, but what I wrote previously about New York. Someone once told me that I possess a particular form of bravery and will look some things dead-on that others won’t touch. If it’s true it exists in conjunction with an equally potent brand of avoidance; not cowardice exactly, but the kind of deal that makes you not want to walk out the door in the morning. Some days I just don’t want to see anybody and will indulge the option. Lately, though, the option hasn’t been there. I’m a cynic. It’s ingrained to the point where it doesn’t register internally. I said it recently — “I’m cynical about a lot of stuff” — and the other person burst out laughing. So be it. Here, however, are some things about which I am not cynical: New York City. It smells like garbage and subways in the summer and can possess a particularly bleak, cold and grey winter quality. But it’s too big to be vilified, classified or marginalized. America never stopped being great and you need look no further than where I am now .. for a few more days, anyway. To quote Letterman post 9-11 “If you didn’t believe it before — and it’s easy to see where you might have been skeptical — New York City is the greatest city in the world.”

Loss provides perspective. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Too many cooks .. well, you get the picture. “In order to win,” says the great and grumpy Van Morrison, “you must be prepared to lose sometimes .. and leave one or two cards showing.” So it is with New York. I’ve been coming and leaving since 2003 and within that context I’ve learned to appreciate the place. I’ve heard it since I arrived “it ain’t what it used to be” .. “Times Square is Disneyland” .. etc. New York City is immune to old money, new money, white kids, black kids, rich kids, Alec Baldwin, Williamsburg, Trump, DeBlasio and the Knicks. (And if you can be immune to the Knicks you’re doing OK.) Stand at its perimeter and feel the place buzz if you don’t believe it; pulsating like an old person refusing to die. It swallows, absorbs, embraces and spits out, but it isn’t going anywhere.

I’m no theologian .. this can be documented. But I’ve been talking to a Higher Power of late. Not sure if it’s God, the Universe, or the guys who designed and built the Golden Gate Bridge. (And for the record and with deference to New York’s many impressive overpasses, there is none like that bridge anywhere.) But it seems to me, if we’re to extract one usable instruction from most religions, it would be “it ain’t all about you.” Where they go from there gets a little shaky, but never mind that. Point being, no city emphasizes this idea more than New York. Here you will get your balls busted, regardless of how you choose to avoid or engage. Resist at your peril. Don’t be a sucker, but don’t be a stiff or a pussy either. There’s been a lot of buzz about that word lately, but in this context it refers to self absorption. A true New Yorker — and at thirteen years in, knowing I’ll never be one myself, I use the term sparingly — set me straight on this. “It isn’t all about you.” Never confuse self-absorption for sensitivity. New York embraces, is shaped and even hardened by the sensitive and is too big and bad to pretend otherwise. But it ain’t all about you.

And so the place again washes over and hits me with a fresh dose of reality. It’s there picking up the tab at a ten-dollar an oyster, overcrowded bistro down Court or sitting at the bar down Henry with a great plate of rigatoni and more than palatable glass of five-dollar red. Or sitting alone at a table in the back of Great Jones, remembering the first time I stopped in back in 2001 and observing that they still have Bob Wills vinyl 45 in the jukebox. It’s the Russian woman noting that she didn’t know she’d have a “big strong man” helping her load my $200 end-table sold for $40 into her Chrysler minivan. Or the beautiful brown-skinned Manhattan girl wheeling away my IKEA dresser as deftly attached to a dolly by her male companion. (“He was trained in European furniture repair ..”)  It’s there in Ismail my super, changing the “probably” to “will” in my noting the likelihood of return. Or seeing Springsteen at Giants Stadium before they tore the place down and Philip Seymour Hoffman performing “Death of a Salesman” before he shot himself up. It was in the Old Man, still in OK shape and between visiting melt-downs, marveling at the “energy” everywhere and noting “it’s a good hat” after scoring him a four-dollar beanie on a cold day in Central Park. And it’s there in every box I triple-tape and ship UPS ground from the packaging place across the street. In savoring just being here, again, for a while, while the apartment grows more spacious by the day.

I read and wrote essays when I arrived here and recall one by a young woman noting how difficult and isolating this city can be. It ended with the cheese falling off the top of her frozen pizza and to the floor as she pulled it from the toaster oven, alone in her Brooklyn studio. “I sat and cried for two hours that night and knew that was it .. I was done with New York City.” I got it, sure. But the top had fallen off my pizza long before I arrived. Better to walk a few blocks and stand in line with the other lonely souls waiting on a slice at two in the morning, noting that you can’t do this anywhere else. No, I’ll never be a “New Yorker.”  I know a few things about the place, though, and it’s inside of me. Tell me about your city and I’ll tell you about a few others .. we can chat on it all night. But there’s nowhere like here.

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One Comment

  1. cookierojas wrote:

    Nice one chief…Just got around to reading this

    Monday, March 13, 2017 at 11:14 pm | Permalink

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