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Home from NYC

[Note: Sorry this is late, everyone--just remembered I should probably wrap this up, since all of this happened almost a month ago.]

I woke up the next morning, a Saturday, at the ungodly early hour of 11:30 and headed uptown to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where I missed the tour of the premises by eight minutes. Begun in 1892, the cathedral is still under construction (locals call it “St. John the Unfinished”), and about a third of the structure was wrapped in scaffolding or showed the unfinished look of walls under construction. As one of the largest Christian churches in the world, however, St. John's Cathedral is still an impressive sight.

From there I took the metro back downtown to the site of the World Trade Center. A massive hole in the skyline with the city flowing around it, the site was fenced off and difficult to see into. What small chinks there were in the fencing were crowded with tourists, snapping pictures through the chain link fence. The sidewalks around it were lined with the usual array of T-shirt tables and trinket sellers that accompany any of the tourist attractions in New York.

Perhaps all of this is because of what was happening inside the fence. What was a few years a go a heap of rubble is now a bustling construction site. The American way is one of quick funerals. We had our day of weeping and wearing black. But, though (as the t-shirts read) we will “never forget,” we are already moving on, already building something new in its place. It is perhaps this spirit, this bustling momentum, this loud but brief fear of death, and this stolid dedication to construction, birth and forward motion, that identifies the American people as what they are.

I sat beside the bay, looking out at the Statue of Liberty and across the water at the New Jersey shoreline as the sun set. I had originally intended to take the same bus back to D.C., which would have left around 6:30 the next evening. Because I didn't feel like getting into Washington at one in the morning and trying to find a ride to my apartment in northern Virginia, I had arranged to ride home with the friends I'd met on Friday from where they were staying in Dover, New Jersey. That meant I had to take the New Jersey transit system out from the city at seven the next morning, catching the empty return on the trip that was part of the mass commute from New York's surrounding counties into jobs in the city.

With no real chance of getting a decent night's sleep, and the possibility of sleeping through my phone alarm and missing my train, I made the only logical choice. New York is the city that never sleeps, I thought, so why not see what that means firsthand?

So, I picked up the rest of my things at my friend's apartment and headed out. With plenty of time to kill, I made for Times Square and the endless parade of faces there. I sat for some time against a wall just watching people—drunks stumbling happily out of a ritzy nightclub, three platinum blondes asking a more than friendly police officer for directions, little clusters of tourists from all over the world moving here and there, taking pictures, the flashes from their cameras little more than glimmers against the glare of the city's lights.

At around two in the morning I happened upon two large black men in what looked to be tasseled robes embroidered with stars of David, and hats that looked somewhat, but not entirely, like turbans. One of them was ranting to anyone who'd listen, while the other simply nodded in agreement and through in the occasional affirmative phrase. Turns out they're the (somewhat) famous “Black Jews” of Times Square. Homemade placards at their feet demonstrated how the real twelve tribes of Israel were actually various American and Caribbean black slave groups, as well as several Native American tribes. They also showed a dozen or so supposed black emperors of Rome, and how Obama was going to bring the apocalypse. “This book right here,” he said, waving a Bible at me and the handful of other listeners at two in the morning, “says that the Lord appoints a king over the nation. Well, the Lord didn't appoint Obama, the Illuminati did. And you know what that means!”

I tried to take a picture, was told I had to “pay tribute,” didn't have any cash, and kept walking. I walked, in fact, for the next two hours, just watching people, watching the way the mood and look of the city changed, the way that, by four in the morning, the only people out were tired people walking home from late night shifts, and lost clusters of tourists somewhat awed by the great dark city around and above them.

Finally, I gave up and walked into Penn Station, where I thought I'd try to get a couple of hours of rest before my train left for New Jersey. By now my phone—which I needed to contact my friends—had died, so I searched the station for that perfect combination of a place to lie down and an electrical outlet. I finally found one and dozed off for a few moments. I awoke to an odd sight—that of an old homeless man who had apparently fallen asleep while searching through a nearby trash bin. He was leaning heavily on it, head down, slowly falling to one side and then starting, half-waking, and straightening himself.

Then I noticed others, leaning against walls, against other trash bins. Only one was laying down, feet wrapped in plastic bags, across the room from me. As I watched, a police officer walked by and nudged the man with his foot. The man got up, protesting, and shambled out.

A moment later the cop was standing over me. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “You're going to have to find a place to sit up.”

Then it was clear. Being the last few days of November, the city was frigid, and this was one of the few warm places open at this time of night. Were the station to allow people to lay down and sleep as they waited for their trains, they'd be overrun and unable to do business. To stay open, they were forced to keep people standing—to keep them, in other words, awake. The technique is used in prison camps to torture prisoners into talking or insanity. It's hardly surprising that, after years and even decades of life on the streets, there are so many of the homeless with the psychological and mental problems they have. Later I saw a cop prod some teenager who was dozing off in a corner and chew the kid out for mouthing off. When he came to the homeless man sleeping in a chair a few days down, his voice was gentler—and, I noticed, the cop waited until the last possible moment before the ticket booths opened and the passengers started filing in. The plight of these homeless, at least, was not caused by cruel police officers or an unfeeling corporation. Their plight is, very simply, a flaw in the system.

I slept most of the two hour train ride out to Dover, New Jersey, and was awakened suddenly. “End of the line,” the conductor said, and I stumbled blearily out into a frigid wind and ground covered in ice, bleary gray skies in every direction. My friends from Patrick Henry were staying at the home of Rebecca Beach, a half hour drive from the station. She picked me up there and we met with the others at her house for a home-cooked breakfast.

And then home, on roads covered in ice and traffic almost as frozen. What was usually a five hour drive took us nine, including a stop for horrendously greasy food at a “family-style” roadside diner along the way. Whoever the family was, I suspect they've long since died from heart failure and clogged arteries.

But at last we arrived back in small town northern Virginia, with an evening to spare before classes began the next day. All in all, another Thanksgiving break well spent.

Touristing

Being in New York didn't seem to affect my normal vacation sleep schedule. The day after Thanksgiving, I woke up late and had a later brunch, then headed out into the city. Several of my friends from Patrick Henry were also visiting the city over break, and I met them for dinner at an Irish pub. Fish and chips with a pint of Guiness; not too different from some of my meals in Bermuda last spring. I suspect that pubs like this one will be a staple food source in the years to come. For comfort food, one could do worse.

Another stop was The Strand bookstore, on 12^th and Broadway—“Home to 18 miles of new, used, rare, and out of print books.” The top floor, accessible only by elevator, was home to some truly beautiful books, some hundreds of years old, bound with leather and fading cloth. I could have spent hours there, just looking, examining 15^th century French texts and wishing I spoke the language.

That would have to wait until my next visit. I walked around with my friends until they headed back for the night, and then walked around the city by myself. Seeing new things with friends is a wonderful way to build friendships, and is a lot of fun—my Bermuda trip and countless backpacking trips are evidence enough of that—but walking alone forces your attention to the place you are standing, to the people walking around you. There is something about New York that cries out for it. Millions of people in constant flux, through the day and through the night.

Social structures here are constellations, patterns formed out of nearly limitless potential by vocation, geographical proximity, and chance. A group of teenagers, laughing, take a group picture on the subway; you smile knowingly at the person sitting across from you. A moment shared with a stranger. In a small town, the actions of everyday life—buying groceries, taking a walk, seeing a movie—would be one of thousands of similar moments shared with acquaintances and friends. The city's endless parade of unfamiliar faces must surely affect the psyche in some way new to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It would certainly make an interesting study.

From the base of the Empire State Building, where I left my friends, I walked north through Times Square, with its lights—even the subway signs blink and glow—and past, up to the edge of Central Park. A low mist lay on the ground, lit by dim park lights scattered among the trees and benches. From beneath the grass and fallen leaves came the sound—faint, but clear—of metal striking metal and the sound of a foreman shouting orders, the subways under repair. Seanna informs me that many New Yorkers use Central Park to “get some Nature,” the capital N audible in the pronunciation of the phrase. But Central Park, with its boulders and streams and groves of trees, is like an animal in a zoo: nature behind bars, dozing under electric lights, atop a thin bed of grass built on a foundation of concrete.

I walked down 1^st Ave. By now it was late, and the U.N. building was dark, the flags taken down. Across the street, a sign reading “United Nations Peace Cleaners,” with a picture of a washing machine, flickered above a red “closed” sign.

It was late, and cold. I caught a subway and retired for the night.

D.C. to New York City

There's nothing quite like waking up early the morning of a trip, walking out into the cold November air, and missing your first bus by thirty seconds. Fortunately, it was seven thirty in the morning, and my main bus—scheduled to take me from D.C. to New York City—wouldn't leave for another twelve hours.

With nothing better to do, I took the much slower (and cheaper) connector on its winding route through northern Virginia to Dulles Airport, and caught the transit from there to the Roslyn stop on the D.C. metro. My backpack under my seat, I sat back and read Jung.

It was the day before Thanksgiving, and life in Washington seemed to be carrying on as usual, if with coats pulled tighter and steps stiffened against the cold. Being built on land reclaimed from a swamp (your tax dollars at work), D.C. is hot and muggy in the summer and bitingly cold in the winter even when the temperature still hovers around the freezing point. The springs and their brilliant cherry blossoms are another story entirely, but that is a subject better left for April.

I spent the afternoon killing time in the National Gallery of Art, with a few hours admiring Van Gogh and Monet, and a few hours asleep in one of the lobbies. The DC2NY bus left at 7:15, and I was on board fifteen minutes early. The entire operation seemed to be run by eastern European linguists. “I am from Sweden. You are learning Russian? I know Russian. You will be fluent by spring. I learned in six weeks.” Ticking off languages on his fingers, English, Lithuanian, German, French. Ho hum. Just part of the job.

I slept most of the six hour drive, only awakening around midnight as we entered the outskirts of New York city. Thick white plumes of steam drifted up from factories in the moonlight, with the accompanying wet sawdust smell of heavy industry. We dropped through the Lincoln tunnel and pulled to a stop at Penn Station. So, with a fifty dollar bus ticket and a school vacation to blow, I stepped off the bus onto the New York City streets.

Thanksgiving morning I had breakfast with a friend I'd known back in Montana—Seanna, an NYU philosophy and art student. She'd been there since August, and was glad to show me around. I'd been used to Washington, with its squat massive neoclassical architecture and the constant smell of politics. New York—especially the Village and Lower East Side—was something else, with its narrower streets, old brick buildings, rusty fire escapes, and of course the ubiquitous yellow cabs.

As it was Thanksgiving, nearly everything was closed. Fortunately, Seanna knew French and, as a result, the owners of several of the French cafes and bars in the area. We met one of her French friends on the street. Following a liquid conversation in his language, he bid us goodbye with a wave. “Happy chicken day!”

He groped for words at our puzzled expressions. “Chicken day,” he said. “Day where you eat chicken.”

Ah. We grinned. “Happy chicken day to you too!”

After breakfast, we met up with Faisal, an NYU student from Kuwait, and three of his Kuwaiti friends, who attended schools around the states and were visiting him in New York over the break. We walked around until evening, stopping here and there for a bite to eat at one or another cafe, and then went for drinks. With as many interesting places to eat and drink as the city has to offer, it's no wonder it costs so much to live here. If the rent doesn't sink you (quite likely in Manhattan), the sheer number of opportunities to spend money will. In New York City you could go to a different restaurant every breakfast, lunch and dinner for your entire life without ever seeing them all. If that weren't enough there are the shops and street vendors, countless unique people and places.

I went to sleep that night satisfied. The soul of a city is its people, the buildings and architecture its body. One cannot know the one without the other. I had spent thanksgiving being introduced to the soul; over the next few days I planned to begin to see the body.

That is to say, I intended to be a tourist.

(to be continued)