dude.

Manhattan is an exciting place to live. It is. Everything is here – every country, every industry, the most exciting industries, famous people just doing their thing and we let them be, energy, disaster, everything. I don’t ever want to live anywhere else (though I would definitely consider living in Paris, Hanoi, Cusco, or Amsterdam). New York is amazing.

And there are days where it just wins. Somehow New York beats you, now and then. For me, the win usually comes at Duane Reade. If you’re from here, I don’t need to say more. If you’re not – Duane Reade is the everywhere drugstore, and the employees will just defeat you.

You know how the very thing that’s so great can also be the worst? It’s that whole “everything contains its shadow” deal. Well, one of the often-amazing aspects of living here is that all these people – all these different, wildly different people – we’re all living on top of each other. You have to adjust, you have to not take things personally because we’re all just trying to make it happen. That’s cool. I almost never get tired of seeing all of us. I feel so tender toward humanity…all you have to do is look, and there it is, pulsing and moving and trying so hard.

But sometimes, sometimes it’s just eNOUGH, man. Sometimes I am just not. in. the. mood for the guy who gets into the subway right next to me and decides to start singing – loudly – for the pleasure of doing it, as far as I can tell. In another language. Or the woman who wheels an amp and a big speaker into the subway, turns it on, picks up her mike, and starts singing Donna Summer On The Radio (and I love that song, by the way…). Or the woman who steps into the car and starts shouting her preaching, and it’s never good, it’s never all about how loved we are by God, it’s always about how bad we are, how far away, how sinful, how death and destruction are coming. You kind of have to have a bit of energy to spare to hold yourself in the face of that loud. It’s a public shared space – the unwritten rule is that you don’t take smelly food into the subway and eat it while you’re riding. You don’t do that! It’s rare that someone does, actually. But if I wanted to hear a concert, I’d seek it out. I don’t necessarily feel like it when I’m exhausted after a hard week, when the walk to the subway has taken me through crowds of tourists teeming in and out of Macy’s, when the trains are fucked up and late and so crowded you can’t imagine squeezing in but you have to try, when it’s just been a sucking week at work. And you do all that, and you just want to get home, and you’re standing there so tired it’s hard to stand, and the guy next to you opens his mouth and starts singing some very loud, shouting song in spanish, maybe, you can’t tell, and you can’t even get away.

Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, he eats you.