Riding the Waves of Humanity

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Of all the joys this wonderful city has to offer, the greatest for me has been simply walking her streets. I have long heard people say that New York is unlike any other city in the world. I always thought they were referring to its pace, its flare, its 24 hour bright light bustle. Wall Street, Times Square, Central Park – these names are almost iconic; developing archetypes of the industrialized age.

What I have found walking these city streets is a very different perception of New York’s uniqueness. It is unlike every city in the world, I think, because in a strange way, it IS every city in the world. Everything is here. Everybody is here. All of humanity – in all its glory, beauty, despair, tragedy, hope, sorrow, and strife. Remember that old Olympics commercial? How the announcer bellowed in time with clips from the games – “The glory of victory and the agony of defeat!” I’d bet those of you who do remember the scenes that went with those lines. That is what you see here in New York. The glory of victory. The agony of defeat. In every context, in every subtle shade, nuance, aspect. I have never felt so at one with the human race as I do in this city.

When I used to walk in Charlotte it was one of my funny quirks to say hi to everybody I passed. I would try to wait until the person happened to raise their eyes to me. Normally I had to reach out for their eyes with mine and often even then they continued to look down, or glanced quickly and looked away. About fifty percent of the time I got a ‘hi’ in return. The rest of the time I was avoided. New Yorkers stare you straight in the eye as they pass – not with animosity as you would perhaps think likely in this reputedly “cold, hard city,” but with a strange sense that they are searching in you for a reflection of themselves, for your place in their world and their place in yours.

I’ve been to virtually every major metropolitan city in the US and Europe and I’ve never seen this phenomenon, this willingness to connect candidly with a passing human being. Sometimes it is just a passing acknowledgment. Sometimes the eye contact transforms into a bright smile – like the doorman I passed today as I was thinking about this article. He smiled at me as if I were his sister coming in for the holidays from my home in Europe – such a genuine, beautiful, bright smile. Sometimes the smiles morph into conversation. As I sat here typing at one of those window-facing computer bars in Starbucks, an attractive young Asian man passed. I was off in my writer’s world searching for a right word when his eyes caught mine. He smiled, dimples forming in his cheek as the smile moved from his eyes to his lips. I couldn’t help but beam back. He turned right around, walked in, bought a coffee, sat down next to me, and introduced himself. Paul and I chatted as he asked about my writing and I about his art until he had to leave to meet friends. I so admire people who make a connection, however fleeting, and then actually stop to see what it is about. Every person with whom this has happened in New York has become a friend to me here. And it has happened, a lot. Sure I met people on the road while I was traveling, but travelers can spot one another; they share a common bond, a reason to commune. In New York the only bond we share is this city and our place in the tribe of man, yet this bond ties people enough to look, to smile, to stop and chat and befriend.

I find myself riding waves of humanity as I walk these streets and traverse the subways – smiling tenderly at the lady in her wheelchair with her poodle in the basket on the front, riding the path by Central Park as they stare, both of them, misty-eyed at the sun setting beyond the trees; feeling profoundly saddened at the middle-aged man, his clothes worn, his hands swollen from edema, so intoxicated for so long you could tell the effort to bring the brown paper bag to his lips was so habitual he needed be neither awake nor aware to do it; filled with the innocence of the occasional toddler, bundled stiff-armed in his parka or wrapped in her stroller; rushed by the memory of the thrill of life unfolding as I listen to the excited chatter of the many adolescents wondering the streets on school field trips from around the world. I revel in the music of the subway musicians, appreciate the efforts of the street entrepreneurs, mourn the elderly with expensive shoes and lost eyes still parading for long defunct social circles along Park Avenue. I watch the yuppies, and boy are they everywhere, with a strange mix of jealousy and pity. I smile at the lovers and wonder about the women in their furs and the men in their limos – are their lives as empty as their pockets are full? And what of the men and ladies with torn coats and smiling eyes? Are their lives as full as their pockets are empty? I especially admire the doormen (and they are always men) who stand in the same place all day long and yet are ever alive and alert and happy to share a smile, as if they all know some secret to happiness. There is all this life and love and joy, all this glory, countered by just as much sorrow and sadness, by agony and defeat. The screamers are the most poignant of these – the lost people on the subways who yell their despair to whoever is or isn’t listening.

Today I found myself crying on the subway for all the suffering I see here – the homeless asleep on the bench in the church I had just left, the mentally ill riding the subway up and down the track just to have a place to sit and be undisturbed, the retarded man who looked so lost in life with worn clothes and none of the spark of innocence they often have in their eyes. The tears were streaming down my face as the subway emerged from underground and into the bright sunlit day. As the sunlight struck my face, I realized I too was on this stage of humanity – the blonde lady in the subway with silent tears streaming down her face. “Why is she crying?” I heard the young boy across the way ask his mother. “I guess she is sad, hun,” she responded. Others glanced around to see who he had spoken about. I felt their looks of empathy for my undefined pain, knowing they couldn’t know that my pain was empathy for theirs. Sometimes I feel the pain of man so deep in my soul I don’t know if I can survive to the next second. Sometimes I feel the joy of man so profoundly I wonder if my heart will simply explode; if I will vanish, subsumed by light, gone, leaving a glimmer of glitter shimmering in the daylight. In New York I feel these things from one minute to the next, riding a roller coaster of human glory and defeat and realizing in the ride what I have known since a time before I can name, that they are one in the same.

I love this city – its filthy rich, its dirty poor (funny those adjectives are the same), its lost and found, and those who don’t know they are the other. I love the seekers, the obnoxious know it alls, the extremists, the apathetic, the young, the old, the beautiful – actually to me they are all beautiful, beautifully alive and real and here, struggling to find their way through this thing we call life. New York in its strange beautiful way is a microcosm of all the world. And I love this world – the suffering, the joy, the struggle and fight, the moments of reprieve, the shadows passing, the light breaking, the dawn and the night. I love the people who call this our home – this one glorious planet upon which we are all born and to which we will all return. This truth beats in the heart of New York – that we are all fighting the same fight, praying the same prayers, crying the same tears, laughing, loving, living. Here. On these city streets. The ones we walk together.

Comments

[John]

Interesting article. I however find that not too many people permit the eye to eye contact as I stroll to/from the subway. It's as if some consider it an invasion of their personal space in this congested city. But, there are always exceptions just as you noted or as I experienced a few weeks ago. A young woman stopped me while I was working outside my place of work at 2am inquiring as to why the City smells. She obviously had been out enjoying the myriad of gathering places to imbibe and I was glad that the cold, cold night required here covering her mouth. She was cute, pleasant and persistent with her inquiry stating that she was from Texas and has been living here for 15 yrs. I thought it odd that one would emigrate from a place held so dear to one where one would "never raise a child." I politely reminded her of the aroma in parts of the areas surrounding Brownsville or for that matter beautiful Corpus Christi (refinery after refinery) and pointed to the congested traffic in the streets at 2am. It was mainly taxicabs and offered that the smell could be related to the numerous vehicles transporting numerous people such as herself so that all may enjoy what this wonderous city has to offer even at 2am. I told her that you can't find this in Corpus - I actually couldn't find that many people there during the day and missed a day of work so that I could gaze from my hotel balcony in search of street pedestrians. I could see the thought crossing her face, she dropped the corner of her coat, planted a kiss on my cheek, the fumes brought a tear to my eye, thanked me for taking the time to listen to her and walked into the crowd down the street.

[Gary]

Fantastic article Sherry! Knowing you so well, I can visualize each encouter as you traveled the city. Wouldn't it be great if everyone could see the world through your eyes.