An ode to New York City.

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

It was just 6 months ago that I took my first step in New York City, and in what seemed like a flash, here I am, on my penultimate day in the city, trying to express all that I have felt and experienced whilst living in this city for the past 6 months.

When I woke up this morning, with most of my items (not so neatly) packed in 4 cardboard boxes I bought yesterday night from the Staples next door, I felt odd. It was one of the very few times I felt a bit lost in this city. With only 2 days left, I did not know what to do or where to go. How should I spend my last 2 days of living in this city? I remember that I felt like this on my first morning in the city, mostly because I was overwhelmed with the myriad of possibilities of the things that I could see and explore. I told myself, as well as friends and family with whom I chatted this morning, that the source of my confusion was mainly due to the fact that I have done everything that I wanted to do in the city.

But, deep down inside, I knew that it was a lie. The source of my confusion was still the same as it was on the first day, the overwhelming possibilities that the city has still lie outside my doorstep. It was actually the thought that I would not be able to explore it all was what made the feeling even more acute. But then again, I do not know anyone who could comfortably say that they have ‘finished exploring’ the city. It’s just downright impossible. This is a city that is in a constant state of flux and change. Where things come and go so rapidly that they make lines of light as they pass by your vision. This is a city where every nook and corner, no matter how grand and beautiful, or dodgy and smelly, hides a special meaning and history. This is a city of a thousand lifetimes.

I suppose it is apt that now I am writing this in one of New York City’s most beautiful rooms and one of my favourite places in the city; the Rose Reading Room at the Schwartzman Building of the New York Public Library. I have visited the library quite a few times during my stay here, but never did actually do any sort of reading or stuff you usually do inside a library whilst I was here. So now, sitting at the very far end of the bench at the back of the reading room, it felt like I finally took another step closer to discovering the true spirit and soul of the city.

“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”

— Tom Wolfe

New York City is an odd city. It’s overwhelming. It’s noisy. It’s quiet. It’s mean and rude. It’s gentle and kind. It’s beautiful. It’s ugly. It’s poor. It’s affluent. It’s crazy. It’s sane. It’s cold. It’s human. It’s everything and anything you want it to be. It’s a city of wonderful and confusing contradictions. A friend of mine once talked to me about why he loved New York City and why he could not dream of living anywhere else. He told me that New York is one of those rare places in the world where you can be whoever you are and immediately you’re a New Yorker. It’s a place where it doesn’t matter how you dress, your beliefs, what you do and who you want to be, everyone can become a New Yorker. They don’t even have to try. I found his observation to be very true. Of my 6 months in the city, I have encountered New Yorkers in every shapes and sizes imaginable, coming from all over the world, doing all sorts of different things and leading all sorts of different lives. It’s a city where differences are embraced and that there is no such thing as a normal or a typical New Yorker. All there is, is that, a New Yorker. And I found that I could be one too.

It’s a city that seduces you with its bright lights, opulence, glitz and glamour. But behind those bright and shiny exterior, you will also find the dank, dark and dingy corners of the city; hiding just behind the very veil we choose to look at. It’s where anything and everything seem to coexist at the same time. Where so many things are happening at any given point in time, it is difficult to know what you really want to do. It forces you to choose amongst its many wonders and faces, which one would you like to see. It’s a city that belongs to no one and everyone at the same time.

“The most reckless, most ambitious, most confused, most comical, the saddest and coldest and most human of cities.”

— Maeve Brennan

Yesterday as I was walking back from a wonderful farewell lunch with some colleagues from work, one of them told me that for her, living in New York City was like being in a relationship. She lived in New York before, when she was younger, and absolutely hated it. She thought that the city was overrated, far too dirty and noisy, insanely expensive and cold towards its inhabitants. She hated the fact that it gets arctic-freezing cold in the winter and sweating-like-a-pig hot, smelly and rank in the summer. As we were weaving our way through the post-lunch crowds on 8th avenue and 48th, she told me that she thought she would never live in the city again. Yet here she was, two years going to three, living and working in the same city she thought she hated.

We hopped over a few puddles left by the torrential spring rain which happened earlier that day and she went on to explain the relationship analogy to me. She told me that when you are young and you get into a relationship, it tends to be more unstable and tempestuous. You could start out by falling passionately in love with someone to find that you will end up passionately hating that same someone. That was how she felt about New York when she first lived here. She loved it at first, but bit by bit, she grew into hating the city as it fell short of all the dreams and expectations she had. But one way or the other, the city seemed to draw her back, and coming back as a more mature person, she thought that she was much more of an adult in the relationship now. She grew to be able to appreciate that no city is perfect and that sometimes it was really the shortcomings of a city that truly makes it unique or beautiful in its own way. With that, she fell in love with New York all over again and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, at least not at this moment in her life.

Listening to all that, I felt like I understood what she meant. I suppose I’d like to think that I came into this city as an adult and was able to appreciate it as it really is. Before I came, I have read so many accounts of how people hated New York City. Some of my friends who have lived here felt that they much prefer the quieter and more orderly London, in comparison to the hectic frazzle of New York. They complained about the noise, the crowd, the subway, the heat, the cold, the prices, the streets, the people, anything and everything under the sun. Hearing all that, I was a bit apprehensive about going to live in New York and I tempered my expectations accordingly. I approached the city cautiously, with a shy and sheepish smile. I asked preliminary and mundane questions. Going out for a coffee first instead of a proper meal and making small talk without expecting anything to happen. But there was a spark. The coffee turned into a dinner and the dinner turned into a 6 months long affair. I am not ashamed to say that it wasn’t long before I fell madly in love with this sprawling mess of a city.

“I love New York, even though it isn’t mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.”

— Truman Capote

Looking back to the past 6 months, I felt that the some of the most beautiful highlights of my experience in this city had really been the small vignettes that I had the opportunity to bear witness to. The small conversation I had with a woman next to me when our subway train was halted mid track due to ‘an investigation’. The scene of someone giving up their seat in the subway for an elderly person. The musicians playing by the streets, heartily strumming their guitars or passionately playing their violin as if they were playing in Carnegie Hall instead of the stretch between Broadway and 8th. The ordinary Monday I had in Central Park. The father dancing with his daughter on the subway platform as a group of musician played a lively reggae styled tunes with their drums. The sight of people falling asleep amidst the sunshine in Bryant Park. A regal woman standing on her impossible heels by 6th avenue trying to flag a cab. And so much more.

These vignettes felt like chains, connecting beads of larger experiences, such as visits to museums, tours, parties, bottomless brunches, restaurant hopping days and wonderful times spent with friends and colleagues out and about in the city. These larger beads of experiences are easier to write about sometimes. They felt bigger, more permanent and more significant. But I do think that the moments when I was witnessing the small vignettes was really when I was able to feel closer to the true spirit of the place. Closer to the beating human heart of New York City.

Of course you are free to chalk my writings up to melodrama or just a case of early withdrawal symptoms, knowing that I’ll leave the city very soon. But at the end of the day, I just felt incredibly lucky and grateful to have been able to experience this wonderful city. Even though I have only lived here for 6 months, it feels like I have lived here forever. I feel like I truly belonged in the city. I have been accepted and am now one of the gazillion gears twirling and running at the heart of the giant clock of the world that is New York City.

So this will mark the end of my chapter in New York and a small but very significant chapter in my life. I feel that I gained a new confidence in myself and who I want to be in New York. I was inspired and I learnt to be happy on my own, to be truly independent and to be much more comfortable in my own skin. I learnt how to find the beauty in ordinary things and to appreciate that the ordinary sometimes hides extraordinary meaning and significance if only we choose to see it.

New York City have taught me so much, things that I don’t think I will ever be able to properly articulate. I know that I will sorely miss New York, but London awaits, and I am curious at what I will discover of London, coming in with the new perspectives I brought back from New York. I suppose, maybe at some point in the future, I will be back. No, scratch that. I know that I will definitely be back. The spell this city cast on its inhabitants is not one that can easily be dispelled. Someday, I know that I will once again wake up in this city that never sleeps.

But for now, I bid you adieu, New York City.