It's a weird thing when a place feels big and small at the same time. The city is starting to feel smaller to me. I have a pretty set routine. I go the same places, work and school, at the same time every week, just like everybody else. I ride my bike the same way most days, because I know I'll make it to where I need to go on time. I do deliveries at work, but a lot of them are in the local neighborhood, and I go to a lot of the same houses and apartment buildings with the same doormen. I go exploring every once in a while, but I've been to most of the neighborhoods in Manhattan, just not all of the streets. So my routine sort of confines me to a few places, and in that sense, the city is starting to feel smaller. I guess it's not surprising, because Manhattan is only a few square miles bigger than the city limits of Lewiston (I looked it up). The only difference is, there are 8.2 million people here.
I've been thinking, and since I've moved to the city I cannot remember a single time when I've been somewhere I couldn't see another person (besides our apartment and the bathroom, of course). Every street, every subway car, every business, every floor of the library, there are people. Even in our apartment, I can hear people yelling outside, or our neighbors shutting their door, or those idiots who ride their four wheelers up and down the street at 40 miles an hour. Where did they even get those four wheelers? It's an odd feeling, never feeling alone. I think that's why people here do such weird things out in public. No one is every truly alone, but on the street or in a subway car surrounded by people you will never see again, in a sense you are.
I think that's the biggest difference for me so far. Back home, sometimes in just one trip to Wal Mart I would see three or four people I knew well enough to talk to, and another three or four who's names I knew. Here in the city, I see literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of people every single day that I will never see again in my entire life. It's something that's difficult to describe, and I don't know if it has any sort of effect on me, but it sure is weird to think about.
When I first moved to the city this is something I didn't enjoy. But now it seems whenever I visit 'home' I almost feel claustrophobic without that feeling of anonymity. The feeling of being able to be invisible amongst a crowd is something you can never really experience in the valley. It's something that I grow to forget but I'm quickly reminded of whenever I land in that airport.
ReplyDelete