New York City confounds me. It’s unmanageably large, bafflingly complex and so impossibly incomprehensible as to make you feel that you will never, – not even after six visits to the city – ever, wrap your mind around the place and “get” it.
I’ve found myself often preferring “smaller” cities in response to the unnerving brain jumble that I feel in New York –“Give me Kathmandu or Chicago, but please, oh please, get me out of Bangkok!” has often been my motto. But something in my perception changed on this trip to New York. It wasn’t that I suddenly felt that I knew every nook and cranny or that my mind felt un-jumbled, un-fuzzy, and clear this time – I don’t think I will ever accomplish that in New York! But I think I finally got what the NYC-fuss is all about.
For in the course of a single 48-hour period, what other city in the world will allow you to transport yourself around the entire world?
A good trip around the world starts off with an amazing 42ndfloor view of the New York City skyline. What else could be more purely American? From America, I travel to the land of spices; the land of tamarind sauce drizzled on savory samosas, sweet yogurt-topped puris, warm, feel-good daal, and spicy vegetarian curry, the sound of sitar and tablas playing softly in the background. From India, I am whisked off to Broadway to see the new, Tony-award-winning musical, “Once”. From the moment I walk into the Irish-bar-stage, I am in Ireland, where the Irish whisky and pints of beer are best enjoyed with a group of foul-mouthed friends and an 8-piece Irish string band.
The next morning, off to Flushing in NE Queens to drink bubble tea, buy cheap goods, and nibble on egg-drop soup and rice with chop-sticks in China town. Being in China feels even sweeter with the knowledge that, later that night, I’ll be cha-cha-ing my hips back and forth to the latin sounds of salsa, meringue, and bachata.
But the chef-d’oeuvre of this trip around the world is surely an afternoon visit to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. On a summer Sunday afternoon, the entire New York City multicultural world is out. My friend Ryan and I meander past America-city-hipsters beckoning us to their afternoon artsy festival. We walk through the fields hosting Latino, Middle-Eastern, and Asian family picnics, with all the foods and music and festivities of their respective lands. And we follow the beat of the distant drumming sounds, finally stumbling upon, first a black-American hip-hop style drum circle complete with high tech MCs and speakers, and secondly a massive Afro-Caribbean drum fiesta, oozing with culture.
We stand there for a while, feeling amusingly uncomfortable in our own whiteness as we watch a few “cultural” white folk participate in a culture as foreign to them as it is for me to not be the only white girl participating in “culture”. As we stroll away, with the vibrant drumming sound fading into the constant background hum that IS New York City, I smile. I had just witnessed such beauty, such variety, such remarkable moments in this city. There is so much culture here that it oozes out of the windows and doors of homes, it pours out of people, surging, tumbling, flowing and cascading forth like the Zambezi River I’d just come from one week before.
Honestly – what more could a girl who travels the world in search of culture and human beauty want?
I think I finally “get” New York City.
Brittany - I figured you would, New York lover! You were indeed in mind as I came to this conclusion!
Ashley - <3 I love this