The personal portcullis

February 19, 2014

The personal portcullis

New York surrounds you, it breaths you in, exhaling you as bits of exhaust and smoke. You are part of the beast and the beast is a part of you.

Today it feels like a beast. There is so much, too much. I waited in line at Trader Joe's to buy my weeks worth of groceries, jostled and claustrophobic in my winter coat and giant black backpack as the line edged forward, moving like molasses, people moving and shoving and breathing with so little thought to all the existing going on around them.

But then, I finally got up to the check out counter and the woman looked right at me and asked me how my day was going and what I was going to do with my saturday evening. I find it so curious that the tired, cold hungry, hard, woman who was just waiting in line a moment ago, is melted away instantly and replaced by someone I recognize as a woman who knows sunshine and the depth and worthwhileness of compassion and kindness simple when she trained her blue eyes on me and smiled.

I think it's just relief to be recognized as a human again.

That's the toughest part I've found about New York: we all exist so closely here; living stacked on top of one another, traveling pressed together on the subway like flowers left to dry in an old book.

It's been interesting to watch as I become a part of the great city, but I've found that in order to be a part of the flow I've had to give up something I didn't even know was a luxury. My space.

I live in a shared room in a large apartment with 5 to 7 - depending on the day - flatmates. Safe to say I don't really have space anymore. But it hit me, riding the subway, that space is a human need, not just something a girl who grew up with so much of it would miss.

In class last week we talked about breaking peoples bubbles, and how where you put a scene on the stage in relation to the audience directly correlates to how uncomfortable or willing to engage with you, your audience is.

But I find it strange, that when you're in a social situation being too close is bad behavior, but when you're a new yorker riding the subway, it's just a Monday.

But I think the hardest thing about all of this is that we don't admit it to ourselves. We as a city, as a whole, put up with it, silently, almost proudly - because it's part of our struggle, our striving for a life we feel we have to suffer for in order to deserve; and it's that life that we ultimately want. Why else would we be here? - But because we do it with so little thought, lately I find myself feeling amazingly numbed, desensitized. Because with so much over stimulation and with so little personal space, so little recognition of simple humanity we lose something: The ability to spontaneously love something or connect to something human, without a guard on our own personal portcullis.

But in all honesty it's our rough, wild, messy, humanness that makes us lovable, that makes us relatable, that makes us human. It's easy to forget that from that place comes connection through courage in our own vulnerability. Giving yourself the space to feel what you feel, - space to feel even if someone is breathing down your neck and squashing your eggs in your reusable shopping bag - giving myself space and validation to feel what I feel and love what I love, fearlessly. And give back to the hum of humanity around me, offering a smile or a look of recognition because that's what reminds us, that we are a part of something, and that something is a part of us. From what I can tell it seems to be the truest form of human patriotism.

But you know what? I'm sitting here on the train, and I'm writing this. My head is down, my pen deep in my paper, searching for the words. But, I'm not looking up.

I don't know the lines on the faces of the people who ride north with me. There could be smiles hiding in their wrinkles or in their eyes, but I'm not looking. Wait a second.

I put my pen down and closed my book, and let the train rock me in it's course uptown. I felt the fear within my self to simply raise my eyes and meet the strangers gray ones across the grungy isle, but I bit into that fear and looked anyway and this time instead of being met with cold disdain, I was met with a slow, quiet, smile.

An older gentleman smiled tentatively at me after I caught his eye and when I smiled back he leaned forward, slightly and remarked in a low voice that it felt like this winter would never end.

But for me in those few simple words he offered me, he gave me the first seeds of spring.