Reflections
from New York
Part 4: Overloaded with emotions
Each morning, I was sitting on the subway on my way from Queens
to Manhattan, and there were so many colorful people there,
and I was enchanted, I couldn't help but looking and exploring,
but not even once did I cross eyes with someone.
They all seemed so disconnected
from what is going on around them. All into their inner thoughts,
into their morning paper or book or some article for the university.
Or into their music, earphones stuck in their ears so they
won't have to hear anything from the outside world. Not lifting
their eyes even once, to look left or right, to become aware
of what's around them. It felt so isolated and cold to me.
True, there was something
comforting about that. Coming from a place where everyone
knows everyone, notices everyone, talks about everyone - it
seemed liberating in a sense to think that I could dress any
which way I like, talk about anything I want, do whatever
is on my mind at any given moment and act as I please - and
no one will look at me funny. But then again - it must feel
so lonely. Hundreds of thousands of people from all kinds
- and you feel so alone. So which is the better option?
That's what I thought on my
first night in New York, while the full moon was hanging big
and bright in between the tips of the sky scrappers, emerging
here and there from within the concrete mountains, spreading
a silver-light all around, on the flashing dazzling lights
of Times Square, where you can easily get a head-ache from
all those changing lights and colored screens, everything
is moving right in your face and all is humming in your ears
- such a huge place with so many colors and it is all shinning
and glowing, it's beautiful and grotesque both at the same
time.
I was tired, and over-loaded
with emotions and experiences from the week before, and this
enormity just made me silent.
Nir was surprised, he didn't
see or hear my usual child-like enthusiasm from my first exposure
to the Big Apple. It was all inside. The amazement and the
backlash and the excitement blended with the sense of repletion
- I have met too many people, known too many intense moments,
seen too many sights and events in the last week or so to
be able to truly take in and respond to all I was seeing now,
in my second part of the trip.
And the great tumult that
is New York City only intensified this confusion. To be excited
and numb both at the same
Part 5: All
on my own
this
travelogue is part of the subside travelzine
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