Most of the time I think we’re all just getting by. There are always problems, frustrations, people telling me how much they’ve given up to be here, how much they’ve lost, how much better they could have it (bigger apartment, reasonable rent, less stressful job) if they just forgot about this big, dirty, foul-smelling place and moved somewhere more practical. And I get annoyed just as much as the next person living paycheck to paycheck and wondering what’s the point of all this effort just to get by, wondering what is the matter when you call home the same place where people sleep on subway cars and in stairwells and you sit next to them and walk over them without even thinking twice.
Starbucks closed stores all over the country this afternoon so all of its employees could re-learn all the things they’ve started to forget (like the people on Hudson Street have forgotten the overall difference between a caffe latte and café au lait). So I got my fix early and passed quiet corners on my way home, the windows darkened, the chairs empty, and started to wonder if perhaps all of us need to just shut down for a while. Just a few hours to re-learn all of the things we’ve started to lose, all of the things that used to be important, used to mean so much, that have now faded into the far off distant past of what it meant to live in a place like this without just getting by.
Because I have forgotten things like keys, my subway pass, clothes at the dry cleaners (this time almost two weeks!), how to take a chance and what it feels like to be happy . I’ve lost things like my patience, my mind, hope, my savings, my ability to let people in. But in a place as big and dirty and un-practical as this there’s no getting away from the things that every day make us question why we don’t just pack up and go. So what’s important, I guess, is to remember the reasons that make us choose to stay.
I think that at the end of the day there certainly are a few things I too, could stand to learn how to find again.
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