New York: Getting Used To Not Getting Used To
I’m awakened, not by the impatient tugging of ma ma’s hands on the side of my shirt, but by the blaring sirens on police cars, a consistent cycle of crescendos and diminuendos.
“It is never healthy to over-romanticize anything, whether it is people, things, or places,” ma ma once reminded me. Great, a hopeless romantic choosing to live in one of the most romanticized cities in the world. Just my luck. I’ve learned to manage my expectations. Cities in China are no doubt urban and sophisticated, but I’ve never been to one remotely comparable to New York City.
The air back home is humid, warm, paired with the aroma of stir-fried vegetables and steamed pork buns. New York air is dry, crisp, tainted with the scent of automobile exhaust fumes and sweet curry from halal food trucks. The sounds back home are quiet, relaxed: the laughter of children chasing each other across boulevards and the ringing bells of evening cyclists throughout the boardwalk. New York sounds are blaring, exaggerated: the impatient honks from yellow-skin taxis and the loud hollers of street vendors selling their hand-made jewelry.
People back home don’t walk, we stroll. Grandparents and infants calmly navigate themselves through city parks, the former holding their walking sticks and the latter grasping battery-powered miniature race cars. In New York, everyone walks with a determined sense of purpose, like they all know exactly where they are going. I rarely see children or elders on the streets. Everyone is young and robust. It scares me at times, the fact that everyone looks like they know what they’re doing.
Then there is the lights. All the lights. Buildings. All the buildings. Funny they call Manhattan an island: sure it’s surrounded by water, but tropical palm trees or sandy beaches are nowhere to be found in this concrete jungle. The streets are lined up in rectangles and squares; every building perpendicular to one another. The highly saturated billboards stretch themselves across neighborhoods, displaying everything from car insurance plans to the latest horror movies. They scream at me, they draw me in, they make me look.
In high school, I used to take my electric bicycle everywhere, to the supermarkets, to the nearby McDonald’s, to the movie theaters, and even if it’s just a few blocks down the road to meet a friend. But now, I am faced with the daunting prospect of navigating public transportation. I find myself fumbling on Google Maps to find the different-lettered subway trains, was it the L, Q, or S line? The rattling of carts against railways and the scurrying of rats across platforms replace the high-pitched chattering in Mandarin I’m used to back home.
If someone were to ask me to describe a landmark of New York, it isn’t Times Square nor Central Park that comes to mind. Though these locations are well-known to the public, they are too touristy and extravagant, and in that way, disconnected from my daily life. So, if I had to give an answer, it would be Washing Square Park (a response both generic and genuine). It is because of the people: the old psychic directing us to the closest ATMs so we can get 5 dollars in cash for a pre-quarter-life crisis reading, the shirtless skaters waiting for the fountain to turn off so they can attempt ollies in its center, the occasional poets reciting their lines proudly by the black-rimmed fences, passersby running enthusiastically up to the people holding signs for “free hugs,” and the students dragging out their piles of hoarded clothing for an end-of-semester closet sale. I don’t get that type of stuff back home. Now, when the weather is nice and the cafeteria is filled with people, my friends and I would pack our lunches to have a meal outside. People-watching has become one of our favorite past-times.
Home is comfortable. New York is, for a lack of a better word, uncomfortable. I’m using this word not with a concretely negative or positive connotation, but simply as an informative adjective. The monotony of home is safe yet mundane. But here, you must learn to expect the unexpected, to welcome people and opportunities with open minds and open arms. To be a New Yorker isn’t to be accustomed to life; to be a New Yorker is to understand that we may never be accustomed to it; it is to cherish the lack of consistency, to embrace the unknown.
New York, I think I could get used to never getting used to you.
