I wouldn't necessarily say New York is kind, but it is true that I have never experienced so much help anywhere - at least not when somebody is in trouble. I never saw a half dead beggar in the street with nobody around already taking care of him. People in New York care a lot. They don't have time, so they don't care about trivial problems, they do however have an eye for when being nice is appropriate. I don't think I ever had to carry a suitcase up the subway stairs in New York.
I admit that I'm in love with New York, and when I say this, I mean more by that than just saying a sentence like "I love ice cream." I am seriously in love with New York and I truly love her too. I think of her as a woman more than a man. Sometimes she's a man. She's like a mother, but also like a sexy seductress, a constant one-night stand, a buddy to get trashed with, a beauty who looks good without make-up, when she wakes up in the morning next to you... she never fails when it comes to grace and dignity. She even wears her rats like a fur coat, and nonchalantly ignores a roach here and there.
There would be so much to say about New York. Coincidentally I came across a quote of E.B. White this morning as well:
"There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuters. The city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last — the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York's high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company."
"Here is New York" by E.B. White
Oh yeah, what a great observation. I've never met so many dreamers elsewhere. They are not the kind of silly dreamers, who never come through. The New York dreamers are dreamers who sat down and made the scary decision that they would give anything and everything to help their dream become reality. And by everything they mean it, otherwise they are gone back home after a year or two.
These adventurers are on a quest with such enormous power and the will to sacrifice, that not only the outside world can get the notion - in utter ignorance of what these dreamers need to go through - but also each fellow dreamer stands in awe and respect of the other. We silently know. That is why we care.
You, young, 6 foot tall girl with the Slavic cheek bones might have traded your body against dinner with a sleeze, who took pictures of you for your first modeling set card. And you, pretty boy in your flawless dandy outfit might have slept in the corner of a basement in a Midtown office building for a couple of months. If you danced in a strip club, stood in the food line at Tompkins, if you put your grandma's wedding ring in pawn, if you lived through any of these New York stories that are on a regular basis way too absurd to even spell out, none of that matters when the lights go out and the spot light blinds your eyes. You're in the middle of it all, if you make it or not. This city loves you back endlessly every day.
"Here is New York" by E.B. White
Oh yeah, what a great observation. I've never met so many dreamers elsewhere. They are not the kind of silly dreamers, who never come through. The New York dreamers are dreamers who sat down and made the scary decision that they would give anything and everything to help their dream become reality. And by everything they mean it, otherwise they are gone back home after a year or two.
These adventurers are on a quest with such enormous power and the will to sacrifice, that not only the outside world can get the notion - in utter ignorance of what these dreamers need to go through - but also each fellow dreamer stands in awe and respect of the other. We silently know. That is why we care.
You, young, 6 foot tall girl with the Slavic cheek bones might have traded your body against dinner with a sleeze, who took pictures of you for your first modeling set card. And you, pretty boy in your flawless dandy outfit might have slept in the corner of a basement in a Midtown office building for a couple of months. If you danced in a strip club, stood in the food line at Tompkins, if you put your grandma's wedding ring in pawn, if you lived through any of these New York stories that are on a regular basis way too absurd to even spell out, none of that matters when the lights go out and the spot light blinds your eyes. You're in the middle of it all, if you make it or not. This city loves you back endlessly every day.
