27. I ? NY

My love/hate affair with the city that never sleeps

Happy first Friday of summer! If you enjoy these newsletters, consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5/month. That’s less than an oat milk latte. :)

I have this irrational fear that someone is going to make me move to New York City. I won’t be able to find an apartment, and when I finally do find one, I won’t be able to afford it or fit my stuff inside. I’ll get lost all the time. I will never stop feeling anxious and overwhelmed. I’ll hear an incessant buzzing in my head, and that sound, combined with the ruckus of traffic and the screech of the subway, will slowly drive me insane. 

Can you tell I just spent four days in Manhattan? 

Despite not wanting to live there, I do (mostly) like visiting. It’s a dramatic change from my daily routine in Somerville, Massachusetts, which is removed enough from the heart of Boston that it feels quiet, spacious, and green. New York City, on the other hand, leaves me feeling like I am about to get crushed—between sheets of metal or by the steamroller of capitalism and the machinations of citylife or by the sheer number of bodies that are pushing up against each other, trying not to fall off the island. 

For many people, this crush of life is a huge part of the appeal of New York City. The fact that there are so many people and so much to do means that infinite options are available. Life never has to be boring. Whatever you are looking for, even if you don’t know what you are looking for, you will be able to find it. 

The busyness is also what unsettles me. I often wonder if any time we are drawn to excitement and hubbub, not just in a specific city, but in life generally, perhaps we are mistaking busyness for fullness. In the overstimulated year of 2022, I prefer to be occupied by my phone rather than my thoughts. I’d rather feel productive than take the necessary time to feel restored. I feel pressure to monetize my hobbies rather than immerse myself in them for pleasure. More and more, I find my default state to be one of restlessness, and the busier I can keep myself, the better I can distract myself from my Millennial malaise. 

New York City is the metropolitan manifestation of this drive to never be still. And maybe that’s why some people think they could Never Live Anywhere But New York—because it’s the city that never sleeps, the metropolis that promises constant stimulation. When people tell me they couldn’t dream of living anywhere else, I’m often skeptical. I’ll think, How ridiculous! Of course you could live somewhere else, you just don’t want to try. 

And yet, I’m telling myself a suspiciously similar narrative: that I could Never Live In New York. I probably could. I just don’t want to. I’ve built up a list of reasons why I’m poorly suited to a life in NYC, as if I have to be prepared to enumerate them on demand: I am overwhelmed by an abundance of options; I need a lot of quiet and time to myself; I like being part of a smaller community; I like being able to afford my rent; I want proximity to nature, or, at the very least, as Ada Limón says, “more sky than just this little square/between the bridges and buildings.” 

In the Limón poem those lines are excerpted from, “Someplace like Montana,” Limón runs into her friend T at the grocery store in Brooklyn and they go for a drink instead of buying groceries. They sit at the bar and imagine what their lives might be like if they moved to someplace like Montana—two good friends constructing alternate lives for themselves, and then laughing at how it all feels so far away and not at all like them. But Limón writes the poem from Kentucky, where she has everything they’d imagined back at the bar, more sky and a different life than the chaotic, careening one she led in Brooklyn. 

---

I had a boyfriend once who, while we were breaking up, said that we “lived our lives at different speeds.” I like things measured, even, predictable, slow. He liked things last-minute and late, exciting, off the cuff, all the things and all at once. He operates at the speed of New York. I do not. 

We often have ideas about the places we’ll be well-suited to, thinking that we’ll be happiest when we find the city or town that matches the person. I don’t dismiss these instincts out of hand—there is often a nugget of truth to the push or pull we feel toward or away from certain places. But I think we also underestimate our inherent adaptability. We adjust to new circumstances and settings, new rhythms and routines, all the time. We are constantly navigating minute changes that feel uncomfortable until they feel normal.

Moreover, there is no one-to-one mapping of person to city. Places, like each of us, contain multitudes. We do ourselves a disservice by labeling ourselves as people who could never leave New York or never live in New York, one-dimensional characterizations that leave us without the opportunity to discover what we might find in ourselves when we step out of The City, or, in my case, what I might find if I remain open to the idea of a life there. 

On my last day in Manhattan, a Sunday, I rode the subway up to the Cloisters with one of my best friends from college. We got off at Dyckman Street, the penultimate stop on the A train at the northern tip of Manhattan. Walking into the entrance of Fort Tryon Park and hiking up the path drenched in the green of summer trees, I felt the metal grip of the city soften. Life felt more livable in a place like that. 

The 9th century cloisters were acquired by the Met from various French abbeys and transported to New York in the 1930s. Once there, new construction brought them all together in one exquisite Medieval museum. Walking through the gardens, chapels, courtyards, I half-joked to my friend that I thought I could live a monastic life if I could get past the religious component. I felt at peace looking out over the Hudson and the Palisades, where there were fewer people to stumble over, to push up against. I felt a reverence for all that New York is: everything and everyone it contains, folding us all into the creases of the streets and avenues, each of us a small part of this vast city for a little or a long while. 

Peace was not something I expected to find there. I anticipate a high-decibel anxiety when I visit New York. But that reverent quiet stayed with me, even as we rode the A train down 200 streets, sitting on the yellow and orange seats, talking about commitment and love, how you know things, what it feels like to leave a place. Riding underground for most of an hour with this friend, the seats around us filling, emptying, filling again, I felt like I was beginning to understand the rhythms of New York and its intermittent motion: quiet on a subway platform, then quick interchanges when the metal doors slam open. Noise in fits and bursts, peace in other pockets.

Busyness is easily attainable in New York, but so is fullness, and so is rejuvenation in whatever form each of us needs. It’s easy for me to think that New York is all metal skyscrapers and heat trash and hustle, but the feeling of wonder and restoration I found in the Cloisters is also available. I took it with me back into the sweaty concrete jungle, then to Penn Station and all the way back to my apartment in Boston where I’m writing this essay and beginning to miss the sounds of a city that isn’t mine but maybe could be.

Fortnightly Faves

1. This sharp-edged short story by Jess Zimmerman: “Theory of Knowledge.”

2. This song by Ohmme, my new favorite band of the moment after I had the honor of hearing them open for Waxahatchee. Worth paying close attention to the lyrics.

3. All of Heartstopper, and then all eight episodes again in the next 48 hours. And then all of the graphic novel Alice Oseman has written so far. In the graphic novel, beyond what made it into the first season of the Netflix show, Charlie struggles with an eating disorder and Nick, his boyfriend, handles it so well. It’s all very touching and gay and makes me wish I was in love haha.

4. “The Future Isn’t Female Anymore” by Michelle Goldberg for the NYT. A looooot to process about the feminist movement and what its (our) future looks like.

5. First smashburger of the summer at Curio in East Cambridge w/ my sister. Truly divine and if you live in the Boston area you gotta go. Order it with onions.