Some days are crisp, the icy wind from the north keeping hands firmly in pockets. Wrapped up like swaddled babies clinging to any remnants of warmth inside. Other days it’s a little warmer, a brief respite. But mainly it’s cold. Cold as seal noses.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the cold and the snow. It’s romantic and melancholic and reminds me of those cuddly technicolour afternoons at home in youth. Yule time, mistletoe and mulled wine. Snowmen and mittens and frostbitten hands anxious to never let it stop. But the miracle on 34th street has faded over time. I don’t get the same glee as I once did at the sight of snow or the immunity to the cold. It’s still beautiful, and real, and rare but my body seems to feel a deeper cold and much more care is taken on ice. I know too much. Sometimes I wish I could momentarily unlearn these things so I could see it all again with those ignorant childish eyes.
And in this cold I walk. For miles. I see and listen to and watch a city as it stirs and wakes.
Early morning is my time. All is still and yawning. Early walking dog time, city working trash time, window dressing time, stepping over bedroom time.
Sky bound scrapers loom in the distance. I’m in West Harlem. Three miles to the centre. A beautiful walk the length of Central Park. It’s a peaceful haven in the centre of the commotion. New York is noisy, a cacophony of crazy. Another blessing from the early morning stroll.
The trees are bare, all the flowers sleeping. I love the park. It’s quiet and busy. Runners run in their breathless bubbles focused and furious. Walkers are walked in their winter warmers by undeterred dogs eager to make the most of the allotted time. And squirrels hunt for those elusive buried treasures.
I can imagine this place in the heat of summer, park benches bustling. Chattering chaps cheerfully cheating at chess. Freaks furiously fuming in flightless flocks. Breathing in the bliss and blasting out the bother. But here, now, it is more. It’s mine. I own it. And in it I find calm.
This, too, is a cardboard metropolis. Full of ingenious fabrication. Styrofoam cabins even Uncle Tom may turn down. Logo’d card and paper homes. Amazon, the bringer of plenty. A conglomeration of doomed consumerism. It speaks a thousand words. Abundant bounty in the canopy, the city floor littered with the detritus of unachieved dreams to be recycled and reimagined as other mens homes. But that’s not just here. That is everywhere.
Harlem is Harlem. It is our home and home to the homeless, a sub-city of sadness. Drugs have prevailed. The war is ongoing but it has lost the fight. When asked for a dollar for a coffee or I’m cold can you help? My heart melts. But I haven’t the funds to furnish desperate hopes. It would be so easy but yet so hard. My budget allows for a couple at most. Each day I try to be generous and kind. But some are more pushy. They press ever more. I shamefully look downwards, counting my steps til the earshot ends.
You may think it’s all grim and dire by what I have said. But these are the harsh realities of city life. No large conurbation is immune to shattered dreams. Even my home town, tiny in comparison, has its own fare share of hardship. I only mean to convey that. Nothing more. It would be wrong of me not to. This is everywhere, and nowhere.
There is light, though, and there is joy and there is a pleasant friendliness here too. I have found the New Yorkers to be very kind and considerate people. I have been offered sturgeon from another mans plate who couldn’t eat it all and didn’t want to waste it. I have been embraced by our neighbours as a welcome guest and an oddity perhaps. I get the feeling they wonder who would want to spend such an extended time in this city when there are much nicer places one could be? Well? Me.
New York is a pleasant and diverse place to experience. Usually it’s a stop over or a long weekend kind of place. Do the sights and leave. Take in a show on Broadway, maybe ride to the top of the Empire State. But after all these are done it is just another city after all. But unlike any other.
I like to walk a city. Breathe in its smells, and sense its pulse. Absorb and digest the guts of it. Become acclimatised to its low rumble. Ride the subways and witness its pace. For me the best bits of a city are only found here. And what I have experienced I like. It’s loud, fast, impatient, busy, tangled, oversized and yet frail. It’s a runaway train, rickety and fragile, could leave the tracks at any time. But it doesn’t and it won’t. It has proven itself many times over. And, though the ride may be bumpy, it’s a beautiful place to be.
