This Must Be the Place

a city of extremes
When I applied to Duke’s arts
and media program in New
York City, I wrote a personal
statement in which I detailed how Liza
Minnelli’s rendition of New York, New
York always makes me cry — how, no
matter what, once she croons, “If I can make
it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” I find myself
shedding tears, a mixture of happiness,
sadness, and desire. At least, I used to cry.
Whenever I hear it now, I just feel the urge
to change the song altogether.
I don’t hate New York City, but I
don’t really love it, either. I’ve heard people
say that it has to be one or the other, that
you’re either completely and relentlessly
infatuated with the city, or you’re utterly
spiteful of the whole damn place. And,
while I don’t necessarily agree with that
dichotomy, it’s a microcosm of the place
itself: Everything in New York City —
its people, its problems, its excitements,
its tragedies, its achievements — feel
as though they’ve been shoved under a
magnifying glass, where tiny dramas and
comedies play out every minute of every
day across all of the city’s gridlocked blocks
with immense grandeur and importance.
It’s a city of extremes.
It makes sense: in Manhattan, there
are 72,033 people per square mile, which
makes it the most densely populated
metropolitan area in America. We barely
have room to breathe. Everything seems
that much more personal, more immediate
— you can walk down a street in the
city and encounter both affluence and
extreme poverty, homelessness and excess,
neighborhoods functioning like small
towns. Land and space disappear into
skyscrapers, and your physical proximity to
both the world’s wealth and inequalities is
no longer a choice. And the worst part of
it all is that you barely have any time to
stop and process what you’re witnessing —
extreme wealth and extreme poverty — so
you hustle on like it’s normal or acceptable
for someone to be sleeping on the sidewalk
in the dead of winter.
Living in New York City is
exhausting. Almost every moment I’m in
public, I have to be alert, weaving between
people on the sidewalk or keeping myself
upright on the subway or looking out
for potential obstacles. If I let my guard
down or allow my mind to wander, I’m
liable to get run over by a pedestrian, or
worse, a taxi. And, as wonderful and kind
and thoughtful as people can be, it’s hard
to never be alone. I was on the subway
the other day when a man began singing
and talking at a loud volume, trying to
engage people in conversation and yelling
at them when they wouldn’t answer his
incoherent questions. No one on the
subway dared meet his gaze, and kept to
themselves until their stop arrived. The
needlessness of it all — the unnecessary
harassment, the omnipresent possibility
of conflict, the discomfort of everyone
on the train — made me feel tired and
upset, and all of a sudden I wished I was
hugging my mom.
But then there’s the good, and, my
god, New York City can be good. I’ve never
been physically proximate to so many
movie theaters in my life, especially not
movie theaters that regularly screen films
in 35mm or host Q&As with celebrities
afterward. Not to mention, there’s so much
more diversity in the city than anywhere I’ve
lived, more ethnic enclaves and authentic
cuisines and languages spoken. And don’t
even get me started on New York bagels, so
thick and doughy and tasty — I’ll never eat
a stale store-bought bagel again.
Everything in New York City feels
as though it’s on the precipice of something
large and monumental, regardless of
whether it’s a success or a catastrophic
failure. I walk around the streets of my
neighborhood and I’m reminded that Walt
Whitman once resided here, and Truman
Capote, too. Which then forces me to call
into question my entire existence: who am
I, and what am I doing? I came to the
city with aspirations and goals that fell
to the wayside in the face of quotidian
struggles, and I feel the weight of the
city’s collapsed dreams on my shoulders
with every passing day. Family and
friends ask me if I’ll be returning to New
York City after graduation, far more
excited about the prospect than me, and
appear a bit crestfallen when I tell them
I’m unsure. Where else is a writer or artlover
to go?
I have time, I know, but time seems
to be passing faster with each fleeting day,
and I shelve away months of my life without
much to show for them except a deepseated
dread. I want to be great like Capote
or Whitman, but I don’t know if I have
what it takes. Hell, if I can’t even withstand
a few months in New York, how can I be
expected to do anything worthwhile? It
seems like hyperbole, but the city, with its
far-flung extremes, instills that sense of
urgency and necessity within me whether
I want it or not. And, like Minnelli sings,
if I can make it in New York City, I should
be able to make it anywhere. What if I don’t
have what it takes?
I’m always fearful, rarely selfconfident.
Most days, I just feel like a
fuck-up, and it’s hard to convince myself
that I’m anything else. But, then again,
isn’t New York City sort of a safe-haven
for fuck-ups? For people who aimed for
the moon and crash-landed amid the
skyscrapers and subways? I suppose there
are worse places to fail miserably. Perhaps
I’ve just convinced myself to come back
— check in with me in a couple years, and
we’ll see if I’ve made it.
RIGHT: OPEN FISH MARKET IN CHINATOWN. NOVEMBER 2018.