New York makes me nervous. The constant rushing, people walking every which way, mobs of people moving shoulder to shoulder – it makes me irritable and brusque at the same time it stimulates and invigorates.
It doesn’t help to stay in the theater district during Thanksgiving time. Broadway around Times Square is one packed people mover, everybody with their own agendas and absorbed in their own worlds. And if it’s raining? Forget it – expect to be poked and prodded with umbrellas – no body part is off-limits as people rush in every direction hurrying to their destinations. Me included, by the way. I have no patience for strolling tourists who block entries to stores and stand gawking at the galaxy of mega neon signs in high-rise city. They stand in the middle of the sidewalk, oblivious to pedestrian traffic around them. This is every man and woman for themselves time and I find my temperament adjusting accordingly.
When we finally make it to the hotel and into the pint-sized elevator to our closet sized room the quiet becomes a deafening respite to the symphony of noises outside. Sigh…. and collapse onto the bed. At home in Tennessee, every window invites a view of the woods and gardens. Here on the 6th floor of the Amsterdam Court Hotel on 50th between Broadway and 7th – I get a peek through a dirty window at an even dirtier building next door. There is no nature to soothe the senses until you make it to one of the many small parks – and the mother of them all, Central Park.
And yet – I love it. For a short time it’s the only place I want to be. Enveloped in a myriad of foreign languages, I love the direct and forthrightness of life in the Big Apple. Listening to New Yorkers yell at each other as part of casual conversational discourse is refreshing and reminiscent of home in Philadelphia. That’s just the way North Easterners talk to each other, thank you very much. A brusque, in your face, no holds barred style of conversing. Say it like it is, no hidden agendas. Ahhhhh… home.
The sophistication, the melting pot of nationalities, the open-minded acceptance of every creed and sexual identity is what America is about. Should be about, anyway. And I appreciate the individual expression of it all.
But I’m also glad to come home. To take a rest from the crazy, bustling, busy busy busy world of NYC to the woods, hills and mountains of Tennessee. The nervousness fades, the irritation subsides and the deep breathing resumes.
Carry on…
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