Now, the 10th Anniversary is generally celebrated with tin and aluminum, representing durability and flexibility. We all know I have no interest in those things, so let's focus on the food-- New York City style. This week, I thought, 'why not focus on all of the things that I have grown to not hate about the good ole Apple'. And by "all of the things", I of course mean 10, because that's more kitschy and, let's be honest, I had a hard time coming up with 10. So, with our critical eye and pragmatic judgment leading the way, let's take a look at the 10th Recipe for Disaster: Organic New York City.
- 1 full jar of quality salsa that you shatter on the ground of the grocery store, expecting to have to pay for-- except the employee who sees you straight-forwardly assures you it's OK, you're fine, he'll clean it up, don't worry about it. Either he sees so many people come through this store, has been up working all night because it's open 24 hours, or needs to clean it up quickly before any of the city's happy bugs find the party. Regardless, you walk! (Shout out to the best grocery store in Upper Manhattan, hey there C-Town!)
- 2 young actors: 1 very blonde actor teaching a fellow non-Indian actor how to do an Indian dialect, but whilst sitting a table in none other than a traditional Iranian tea house
- Thousands of possible locations to meet your friends that make the littlest but greatest of sense
- $__ that you actually don't feel bad spending on a taxi cab, because it's to arrive to your babysitting job on time because you know how important it is for the family to leave on time that morning because you woke up late and took the wrong train. But you care. They're now like your family. And that's called being a nanny.
Oh? This is going to happen? - Unlimited feelings in your tastebuds as you seriously savor every taste of any food that is not made by you and does not involve cereal grains
And by "trail" you mean the subway lines and
streets of New York, correct? - A Planet Fitness gym, preferably located in a Spanish-speaking area. Where else will you be able to watch the closed captions of Univisión and be able to figure out via visual context clues and your basic understanding of Spanish that the main female character cannot date the cute boy in school who truly likes her because she's truly in love with Justin Bieber. "Pero yo amo Justin!" makes any workout worth it.
- Between 3 to 5 futons and couches across the island of Manhattan that symbolize how much your friends care about you, and how much they secretly don't trust your capability to take a single train to a location very near your apartment. In the kindest, friendliest way possible.
What trendy apartment near the ages of college
does not have a futon? Synonymous with fashionable. - Continuous feeble attempts to only partially hide what you write in your notebook on the train, or what you're stapling to the back of your headshot, because you hope that maybe someday the peeper sitting next to you is a big shot casting director-- or at least someone who knows a guy who is married to a girl who used to live with an agent who worked on a show with this one man who now folds the laundry of a casting director. Or Kelly Ripa.
If you don't know that this isn't Kelly Ripa,
(I'm not even going to finish this sentence). - Apprx. 1-2 times, every couple of months, that you get to feel this: in the rare occasion when a train actually pulls up as soon as you step down into your respective subway station (or even within 5 min.) at the 42nd Street station, your body and soul is transported to an elevation of joy, as if the gods are smiling down specifically on you, their chosen one.
- 1 instance that is simultaneously the most annoying and yet honestly open, wonderful interactions you've seen:
A couple, a little older than my age, is standing together on the train with the most PDA I've witnessed en route so far-- and, naturally, right in front of my seat. I repeat "gag me with a spoon" over a few times in my brain and plug my headphones in. Since my music is at a respectable and hospitable volume for a train with other humans on it, I am able to hear parts of their conversation. The girl takes out her cell phone and, scrolling through, searching for something, says (real sentences, but I can only pick out) the words "I wonder... wanna see if... everything we've said!" Oh my gosh. They're not. All of the things? No, they can't be looking through-- "I've always wanted to do this on Facebook, but..."
So, yes. This couple is going to stand in front of me on the train and read through EVERY TEXT MESSAGE THEY'VE EVER SENT TO EACH OTHER EVER. My eyebrows were probably very telling, especially as my eyes darted to the other 4 or so riders sitting in this tight enclave at the back of the train, to see if they were witnessing what I was witnessing. No. They were pretending not to listen (admittedly just like I was). By now, I'd paused my music while still wearing my headphones, seemingly not listening to the couple relive the birth of their relationship. Which is exactly what they did.
"Here we go..." "This is going to take a long time!" "Good thing we're gonna be on here a while!" (Oh, joy.) "I wonder what the first thing we said to each other was. Probably 'Hi!' 'Hey, what's up?" They laugh. ..."Oh, here-- 'Sorry for running away so quickly this morning!'" "Oh, yeah, that was when you woke up, showered, grabbed your things and ran out of my apartment."... "When was this one?" "July 1st" (Oh my gosh, they've only been dating for like three months!)... "I remember-- this was that trip when you were in town for only a month."... In midst of this, they recounted, apparently for the first time, how they moved from being just friends to becoming a couple. Simply, one of them texted the other person for the first time, they decided to hang out, they hung out more, and then they dated. That's it. No fascinating story, rather a very obvious and natural chain of events that birthed the now loudly public and seemingly quite successful relationship they were in.
They looked at that phone in mostly silence, smiling to themselves, the entire way from 42nd to 155th. At one point, they sat down in two open seats, right next to me (as it should be). Then, all of a sudden, the guy noticed that they had reached their stop. "This is us." "Oh! I didn't even realize." The train doors opened, they popped up together, phone still out, and left together. And that was that. Now, come on: you'd find this totally annoying at first, too. I hoped so strongly that one of the other passengers was going to share in my complete surprise that this was how these two people were going to pass their time on the subway. However, the longer it went on, the more I realized how cool it was. Normally, and those I've spoken to about this have agreed, if a person is going to do the read-through of all of the messages they've sent their significant other, whether on their phone or their Facebook or email, they're going to do it on their own. This act can be seen as, let's be honest... a little clingy! It's sappy! Sentimentality equates vulnerability. I'm not saying I agree with that, but that's how we're socially encouraged to look at it. What if the other person thinks you're too involved, serious, or even immature for wanting to do that? Keep it to yourself.
Not. This. Couple! Yes, I'll admit, to the outside eye: I did think it was dripping with sap and soaking the surrounding air with their puppy love, BUT I have to applaud them-- because, you're right (I know you were thinking it), who cares what I think?! Albeit annoying to me, they shared an entirely open experience. Both of them seemed to enjoy it equally and didn't worry if the other would judge them for doing so. They were both pretty awesome together. And, thankfully, they left to be awesome together somewhere else.
Instructions
What's there to say? There's a lot surrounding you in New York City waiting to be hated. There's a lot waiting to be loved. I don't enjoy living my life in such black and white terms, though. I choose to vacillate vaguely in the grayscale that most of the skyscrapers live in. To elaborate:
My mom recently gave me a bunch of old Prevention Magazines to take back with me to read on the train. I just read one in the bathroom (TMI? lemme know) with an article subtitled, "If you're looking for a hug, Caroline Myss isn't your gal. But if you're looking for a soulful reality check, you've come to the right place." It opens with a tale of Myss eavesdropping (my jam already!) on an 89-year-old mom and her daughter. The daughter is going on and on, not letting her mom get a word in, about who's divorced who and who looks terrible now and why, until her mom finally interrupts,
"You know what, honey? I don't remember those people. I don't remember a lot of things. Why don't you just remind me of what I loved? I don't have time to think of anything else."Ms. Myss goes on to speak of the importance of no-nonsense truth over BS (short for Bachelor of Science, for my friends under the age of 13). She believes that negativity, namely letting it rule your life, is what's going to get you sick. That is not, though, an invite to live your life in black and white, aka negativity = sick and positivity = popsicle puppy pickle happiness over a pastel rainbow in the Gulf of Mexico. My favorite quote is this:
"That's total nonsense. If that were true-- if only negative people were ill-- we wouldn't have to fill prisons! Rapists and pedophiles and the Senate would be gone. There's no one answer for every one problem."Gotta love the Senate. New York City isn't a place to live in the stars and sing "The Hills Are Alive"-- and not because you can't see the stars and there are no hills. You have to be realistic. Still, focusing on the darkness, what you hate, and all you fear is even more unhelpful. I'd settle for searching for a tall hilly area, or a roof, where you can see one or two stars, and hum to yourself a little "Edelweiss." Embrace the city's grayscale, if you think it has one, and learn to at least identify what makes this city unique. It really is unlike any city in the world, for good and for bad. Not all of your ingredients are going to be tasty, but they are, at least, full of stories.
(Yes, you may think of Abuela Claudia singing to Usnavi in Hundreds of Stories.)
