The thing (Humanity)
New york adventure.
In the beginning of my fundraising campaign I came up with a little adventure idea.
Donate to my cause, and give me an adventure, somewhere in New York you've always wanted to go, or somewhere that has some personal tie for you and I will go there and write a story about it.
Today was such a day.
I get out of class and find my way to the subway station.
Walking with so much humanity on 8th avenue takes a little getting used to, but I'm getting the hang of it now. Just as I am with the subway; the rhythmic swoosh of the swipe of your subway card and the clank of the bars letting you through and the fast paced click of steps as hundreds of people hurry along to the lives they have waiting.
I take the E train, heading towards Brooklyn. The seats are cold and an awful shade of yellow, used to be cheery in decades past, but now they look careworn and a little sad.
The car fills up with people. People listening to music, playing tetras on their iphones, ones who ignore the world and look out the window at the back underbelly of the city with closed eyes.
I switch trains, somewhere along the way and it is evident when I climb the steps to the street again and I am definitely in Brooklyn. The Streets are hard and hot, the sun beating down on the awnings of the deli on the corner and the hard tacky feel of the air.
I wonder down Manhattan Avenue. In what turns out to be the wrong direction, but I figure this out soon enough and start heading the other way. The streets are peopled, but not crowded like they are in the city. I pass a catholic church, it's steeple enormous against the sky.
Eventually I find it. Tucked away, it's shabby exterior littered with boxes of donations. A clothes rack hangs, garment bags and old cotton knit sweaters half off their hangers, swaying gently in the heat of the mid afternoon in Brooklyn.
I push against the door, and it gives. Inside I am met with the loud outdated sound of 70's and 80's Rock. Loud and tangy. The man behind the counter, who is wearing a scruffy black T shirt, cut at the waist and shoulders, and with age holes that expose his hairy beer gut, looks up as I enter. His thick, black mullet is impressive. He nods to me and then goes back to riffling through a box of slides, tapping his fingers on the side of the cardboard box along with the screaming steel guitar. I look around. The shop is long, rather than wide, it is a jumble of boxes and books and records, haphazardly strewn on shelves, both high and low. In the front there is a small kitchen section, I amble over and start there, picking up a wok, and peering beneath it, at a pair of crystal glasses, but beneath them, almost comically staring up at me, is an old outdated magazine of porn, it's cover so blatant to shock. I blink, replace the wok and start towards the back.
Perhaps I should explain why I am here in this dingy shop in Brooklyn.
I am in search of that gritty, hard to put a finger on, thing (thus the name) that fills all of our humanity. That thing that overflows in cities and out of books; it's that something that ties our incredibly fleeting lives together for an instant, and also for an eternity.
My friend Nate, who happens to be a phenomenal photographer in the pacific NorthWest sent me here. He has spent hours pouring over boxes of slides - you know, the kind that you project onto the wall- he's looked in many cities, for many hours and has found in his own words:
I believe that every photograph ever made, when taken instinctually, no matter how "amateur" or "professional", that image is laiden with meaning. It was based on an emotional reaction, a decision was made, a button or screen was pressed.
In the beginning of my fundraising campaign I came up with a little adventure idea.
Donate to my cause, and give me an adventure, somewhere in New York you've always wanted to go, or somewhere that has some personal tie for you and I will go there and write a story about it.
Today was such a day.
I get out of class and find my way to the subway station.
Walking with so much humanity on 8th avenue takes a little getting used to, but I'm getting the hang of it now. Just as I am with the subway; the rhythmic swoosh of the swipe of your subway card and the clank of the bars letting you through and the fast paced click of steps as hundreds of people hurry along to the lives they have waiting.
I take the E train, heading towards Brooklyn. The seats are cold and an awful shade of yellow, used to be cheery in decades past, but now they look careworn and a little sad.
The car fills up with people. People listening to music, playing tetras on their iphones, ones who ignore the world and look out the window at the back underbelly of the city with closed eyes.
I switch trains, somewhere along the way and it is evident when I climb the steps to the street again and I am definitely in Brooklyn. The Streets are hard and hot, the sun beating down on the awnings of the deli on the corner and the hard tacky feel of the air.
I wonder down Manhattan Avenue. In what turns out to be the wrong direction, but I figure this out soon enough and start heading the other way. The streets are peopled, but not crowded like they are in the city. I pass a catholic church, it's steeple enormous against the sky.
Eventually I find it. Tucked away, it's shabby exterior littered with boxes of donations. A clothes rack hangs, garment bags and old cotton knit sweaters half off their hangers, swaying gently in the heat of the mid afternoon in Brooklyn.
I push against the door, and it gives. Inside I am met with the loud outdated sound of 70's and 80's Rock. Loud and tangy. The man behind the counter, who is wearing a scruffy black T shirt, cut at the waist and shoulders, and with age holes that expose his hairy beer gut, looks up as I enter. His thick, black mullet is impressive. He nods to me and then goes back to riffling through a box of slides, tapping his fingers on the side of the cardboard box along with the screaming steel guitar. I look around. The shop is long, rather than wide, it is a jumble of boxes and books and records, haphazardly strewn on shelves, both high and low. In the front there is a small kitchen section, I amble over and start there, picking up a wok, and peering beneath it, at a pair of crystal glasses, but beneath them, almost comically staring up at me, is an old outdated magazine of porn, it's cover so blatant to shock. I blink, replace the wok and start towards the back.
Perhaps I should explain why I am here in this dingy shop in Brooklyn.
I am in search of that gritty, hard to put a finger on, thing (thus the name) that fills all of our humanity. That thing that overflows in cities and out of books; it's that something that ties our incredibly fleeting lives together for an instant, and also for an eternity.
My friend Nate, who happens to be a phenomenal photographer in the pacific NorthWest sent me here. He has spent hours pouring over boxes of slides - you know, the kind that you project onto the wall- he's looked in many cities, for many hours and has found in his own words:
I believe that every photograph ever made, when taken instinctually, no matter how "amateur" or "professional", that image is laiden with meaning. It was based on an emotional reaction, a decision was made, a button or screen was pressed.
When raking my hands through a worn box of slide film, I feel as though I'm touching the literal objects of our collective preoccupations. Every image is the object of someone's emotion, or of someone's loss.
While housing a modest collection of slide film, The Thing is also home to many other objects that I would consider to be representations of the greater conversation of the human experience. I encourage you to go visit The Thing, see what jumps out at you instinctively. What objects connect you to your own personal narrative, your own conversation and internal dialogue?
I found many things that day, records that piled up towards the ceiling, stacks of life magazines, and boxes full of photographes.
I sat, on a stack of records and poured over the pictures.
Pictures of people I have never met.
Pictures of places I have never been.
But one thing became apparent.
We take pictures to remember. We take pictures to halt the sometimes overwhelmingly fleetingness of life. And we take pictures of things we love.
I sat there, until my legs were asleep and my fingers stained with dust and ink from other peoples memories.
It felt almost wrong, riffling through what someone once loved, a stranger, but I realized, that here in New York City, where there are so many freaking people, it's almost better to see their memories, than let them die in some dirty dumpster, stinking in the heat.
I found pictures that spoke to me.
Something in her face, that told me a bit of her story.
Or a glow that told of happiness in the fleeting hours of life.
Pictures from african safaris, pictures from birthday dinners, from drunk picnics and baby showers. Pictures of families, pictures of graves, pictures of weddings and cars and animals.
I know each image told a story, even if I had no idea, nor would I ever, know it.
I found a group of pictures taken in Haiti, I think, that shocked me. Pictures of dead bodies, homeless people half eaten by the birds and people walking by as if it didn't matter.
I found my heart leaping into my throat and that deep internal sick twist of wonder that we as humans are capable of that. Of death, and killing and genocide and not caring.
How we are, with partitioned hearts, I don't know.
I found other pictures too. One of a mom holding her toddling son in an outfit of blue wizard splendor. They both smiled up at the camera, but there was something in her face that made me keep it. It was one of the two, I bought and is now hanging on my wall.
Pictures of strangers to remember life is not so small.
I also found a postcard sent from Colorado, post marked Grand Junction. I felt that twinge of pull that we are not so separated after all.
We take pictures of the things we love. I know I do. Walking around the city, my camera under my arm, it's not the land marks I want to photograph. No. It's the people. It's the moments, it's the expressions and the things that tie us together so valiantly. That's what I chase with the click and whir of my moment catcher.
I spent 4 hours in the shop. sitting on that pile of records, bending my knees and leaning my body out of the tiny isle to let other treasure seekers pass by. But I began to get hungry and the music had been turned up and it was turning me down.
As I checked out I chatted for a while with the mulleted clerks (there was a younger version, looked exactly like the first, only 25 years younger) I bought my two pictures for a dollar. I slipped them into my bag, and headed back out onto the hot sidewalk. Sweat immediately forming on my skin.
The thing I learned from this adventure, as I rode home on the subway, crammed together with a hundred people I've never met is this:
Humanity. We are so incredibly linked with our humanity, it loops between us, it catches us when we begin to fall.
It doesn't matter if it's two in the morning or 5 in the afternoon. Here in the city that never sleeps, people are always awake. And even on nights when I am sick and tired of being tired and weary without my mountains, and my feet hurt and my heart yearns for a place to land. I have it. It is here.
It is unnamable, but so intact. I find it in the faces of strangers, in smiles that make us instant comrades, and laughter that is so human, so alive.
I am inexpressibly blessed to live in this world and to be here in this city. And to be a part of the ever connected, forever swinging onward collection of humanity.
