I just stared at people.
They’re everywhere. You sit in Times Square and every five seconds is a new language, some new food clutched in the hands of some new person you’ll never pass by again because The City is infinite.
The air is thick.
You go to bed at night and The City is still there, the lights pulsing through your curtains.
I just stood in Times Square.
Look! The buildings eat the sky! Look at them!
Everything is happening all at once everywhere and nowhere is quiet because everyone is awake.
Here. Now.
I come from a world of 10PM closing times.
Of “ethnic cuisine” being Chinese takeout.
Of sleepy white people in their sleepy hovels that their grandparents built a century ago when they first came to America.
But New York City is alive.
New York City is breathing, and it’s breathing with you.
You tell me it’s all the media and I’ll tell you no.
No. I’ve planted my boots in the thick soil of New York and it is exactly what it is made out to be.
Energetic. Intangible.
You’re running into her arms and she’s gone, just like that.
I’ve been to London. I’ve been to Philly and Boston and Washington DC and Seattle and I can tell you that nowhere puts flames beneath your feet like New York City.
I don’t know if I’d ever live there—perhaps I am better suited to a sleepy small-town life.
But to a small-town gal, New York City is a dream.
It’s what everyone says it is and more.
Matti Karttunen