Vertical New York is making it hard to see.

I don’t know when things changed and everyone started to lose sight of themselves in the haze of other people’s lives. All the time is the constant humming of other people’s lives in our ears, sometimes loud, sometimes drowned out by our own questions that have been testing us.

Because we deep-down-know, (don’t we?) that we’re just another face on just another subway, holding just another railing, hand over hand, the railing that helps us up and helps us along, helps us out of the haze. Lost, (aren’t we?) even after so much happens, that at times we can’t help but look back and wonder how we ever made it through, how we’re still here, right now putting foot in front of foot, walking forward, walking home. But we can’t really forget, (can we?) who we really are in the midst of all the confusion.

Being in New York it’s easy to feel like you’re not measuring up, like you’re not as good as the next person, not as pretty, not as successful, not as important, not as smart, (and) without the: better bag, better career, better apartment, better boyfriend, better reservation at the better
restaurant...how are we, in a city full of so many people who know exactly what they want, supposed to fit in and find a place of our own?

Seems like things pass so fast here that if you spend too much time thinking about what you really want you’re going to miss out on it to the one’s that already do, (and they do, don’t they?)They know and you don’t know why, or how, or what led them into the arms of such extreme clarity that they’re able to go through each day with it all seemingly figured out.

Wish we had our own personal copy of TONY delivered secretly to our apartment door every week that would tell us exactly where to go to get everything we want: Time Out New York would suddenly become Time Out [insert your name here].

Maybe that’s the thing about this city that makes you start to lose sight of yourself in the haze of other people’s lives, makes you want to skip town altogether and find a place that isn’t so threatening to your dreams - too many people all wanting the same things always means that someone is destined to end up blind and empty-handed.