The Upper East Side
The Upper East Side is basically everything that I thought New York was when I was first considering moving here. I got off the subway at 86th and Lexington and was fully prepared to not enjoy myself. I did my best to not pay attention to what was going on around me until I got to 79th and 3rd. I finally got there around 2pm and needed to eat something fierce. I don’t remember where I went. Somewhere called Lenny’s maybe. It was terrible. Don’t go.
Side Note: I will never understand what Russian Dressing is and why people on the East Coast insist on putting it on their Reuben’s instead of Thousand Island Dressing. I do appreciate that they put both the pastrami and corned beef on the Reuben, but use the right sauce. Come on dudes.
Anyways, the UES was basically what I expected it to be. It was a whole lot of people who just exuded money. If you were female you were undoubtedly going to be wearing the standard UES uniform of Lululemon/spandex with an iced coffee. Every other person was carrying around a yoga mat. There were more pseudo healthy places to eat and juice than I could count. It all felt very New York. It really did feel like all of the movies that I have ever watched about New York. Beautiful people, doing beautiful things without a care in the world. I felt completely out of place and I kind of hated it.
Side Note 2: While I was wandering around, I saw a place called The Stumble Inn.
This place was only really notable to me because when I was in high school designing Dungeons and Dragons worlds, I made a town with two inns – Welcome Inn and Stumble Inn. Welcome Inn was in the good part of town where you picked up quest information, and Stumble Inn was in the bad part of town where I tried to kill off as many of the PC’s as possible. It was kind of an amazing nostalgic moment for me, and it amused me greatly that the first roll of my dice would take me to a place that reminded me so strongly of my dice gaming days.
Anyways, since I kind of hated where I was, I thought it would be a good opportunity to go to the East River since I have never been there. That turned into its own kind of little adventure. My friend lives on East End Avenue and you can basically just want straight up to the water. Turns out, where I was, you have to find a way to cross the FDR in order to actually get to the water. No Bueno. Eventually, Banana and I made it to the East River.
Again, it was a totally underwhelming experience. We walked from 79th St. to 60th St, and sat down a couple times to try and relax by the water. Turns out that having a nice, long, pedestrian walkway sandwiched between the East River and the FDR really just means that you are constantly inhaling exhaust fumes. There were homeless people and angry joggers everywhere. Again, I was still having a hard time trying to find redeeming elements of the UES.
Don’t get me wrong, I typically love the ocean and pretty much any large body of water. I was really excited to be by the water again, but being by the water is supposed to be calming. It is supposed to be peaceful. This was not it.
Anyways, the goal of this project is to try to find places and thing about New York that I can fall in love with. Clearly I wasn’t there yet. However, when I got to 60th St., there was a tiny little sitting area at the top of a ramp. It was covered by what could arguably be called abstract sculpture and immediately underneath the Roosevelt Island Tram.
It was kind of amazing. Not because it was beautifully done, or because it was an amazing piece of art. It was amazing only because it existed in a place where it was unexpected. I sat there with Banana, and we watched the tram, we took our pictures, and we looked at the water and the skyline; it was peaceful, it was relaxing. It was exactly what I wanted. Here is where the beginnings of my first New York epiphany took place.
We got up and wandered around some more and somehow ended up at the Roosevelt Island Tram entrance. I was in the process of talking myself out of it, when I decided “fuck it, let’s just go” and jumped on. There was something special about finding the little park and I was hopeful that I would be able to find something else new on the other side of the Tram.
Roosevelt Island was awesome. If you are in New York, and you have never been, it is 100% worth the effort it takes to get there. I would never live there only because of all of the stupid tourists on the tram, but it is a perfect escape from the city. There were all of these little things to see when you are there, and you gain such a different perspective on the city from the middle of the East River. I won’t go into it much, but the park is nice and the little abandoned Small Pox hospital is very interesting. There is an amazing contrast to what is happening on Roosevelt Island to what is happening in the rest of the city. There are structural straps all over the small pox hospital, but there is also what appears to be absolutely no interest to turn it into anything else. On one side of the hospital is a huge redevelopment site, and on the other is Roosevelt Park. This struck me as really what New York was all about. It is a place where you really can see every aspect of life and discover the beauty in random things.
Anyways, it was on the island, laying down on a slab of concrete that my first epiphany fully formed itself.
New York Epiphany #1
People who focus on surface Beauty and people who claim that Beauty is what is on the inside are both wrong. Beauty lies in the unveiling of the unexpected and the surprise of discovery.
For me, this was actually quite a revelation. I have gone through my last 32 years as an arguably very superficial and self-conscious person. No matter how hard I try not to be, I am vain and overly concerned with how my actions will make me look to someone else. Will it make me uglier in their eyes if I do this poorly, or say that incorrectly, or say anything at all? Will it make me a less attractive person if I change my career path, or have a less robust social life? These are the thoughts that plague me regularly throughout my day.
Maybe because of this, I have a tendency to focus on a lot of the surface things in someone else’s life, passing immediate judgment, and moving on. Are you attractive? Are you successful? Are you intelligent and funny? And the worst one – Are you going to make me look better or worse by hanging out with you? I judge quickly, I judge harshly and I do not typically reconsider. This is one of the things about me that I hate the most. However! This has also led me to surround myself with an amazing group of people. I love all of them very dearly and would not give up a single one of them. It is a very small group of people, and many times I wish it was larger so I was not lonely, but every single one of them is amazing.
New York in many ways cultivates a focus on surface beauty within everyone that lives in it. It thrives on it and it indoctrinates everyone who is not strong enough with the ideals that you are just not good enough. You are not attractive enough, you are not successful enough, you are not rich enough, and your partner is not attractive enough or good enough. You are not enough. It goes from personal beliefs to material considerations. It never stops, it never ends, and it inherently makes everyone feel like they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing. There are so many successful people, so many beautiful people that all appear to be doing better than you are. This concept and belief of New York creates a magnet for everyone else in the US (and arguably the world) in which many, many people want to try their luck in NYC. What is the old adage? “If you can make it in NYC, you can make it anywhere.” People flock here and are engulfed in the surface Beauty of NYC and are either strong enough to make it, or are consumed by it and leave. You either love it here or you hate it. I am currently very solidly in the hate it column of that group.
However, my walk around the UES, East River and Roosevelt Island has started to shift that view point. The Beauty of NYC does not lie in the in-your-face-awesome that everyone associates with it. The true Beauty of NYC is that you are constantly surprised. You are constantly discovering new things no matter how long you have been here.
It really is all of the little things that constantly pop up that remind you why you should stay in NYC. From finding beautiful little houses buried amongst skyscrapers
…to discovering a new perspective on the skyline
…to patches of serenity buried among the crazy
…to beautiful parks
…and abandoned buildings buried among all of the hustle and bustle of New York,
…there is always something else to find. I was very pleasantly surprised by what I was able to stumble upon in just the 3 hours that I spent wandering around the city on my own. Hopefully, next time I end up in a neighborhood a little cooler than the UES so I have more to see and do…
Reflection and more Personal Junk
So the whole point of this blog was to use my wanderings in NYC to try and find solace with myself. I believe that this first New York Epiphany is something that I will focus on and try to understand more fully moving forward. So much of what has been bothering me in the recent past can be looked at from a completely different angle to help me find understanding. I have always, always focused my life and direction on what I believed other people expected of me. There are probably only a handful of major decisions in my entire life that I consider to be made solely for my own benefit. I have always been so concerned with what other people think about me on a surface level, that it is actively preventing me from doing the things that I secretly want to be able to do. This is something I have always struggled with, this is something that I am hopeful that New York will allow me to cure.
The other aspect of my life that this epiphany has made me reconsider is how I interact with other people. One of the things that She used to say to me was that She considered me to be “one of the most beautiful people [she] has ever met.” I never really thought about that, and that statement is one of the reasons that I have been so focused on the concept of Beauty recently. I had always imagined that she was just talking about my physical appearance, but I do not consider myself to be anything terribly special – not like my good ole Swiss buddy, who basically makes anyone who sees him swoon. When I think about him with my “new” definition of Beauty, I wish I was as Beautiful as him. He is tall and physically beautiful, but he is also just an amazing person. I am constantly amazed by his courtesy, his kindness, his willingness to forgive, and his ability to make anyone he talks to feel like they are doing something amazing. His depth of character is a source of constant refreshment and surprise. We joke about the crush he has on me, how we won “cutest couple” in grad school, and how he wants to turn me gay, but in all honesty, if I was gay, he would be perfect.
Back to Her statement. There are a few traits that I feel like I have in abundance. Beliefs and behaviors that I will not compromise. I am (overly) honest. I have a strong grasp on my own integrity and accountability. I am loyal to a fault. I don’t cheat. I love what I love and never feel the need to explain myself when I love something. I think that She was probably referring to these things about me, more than my appearance when she called me Beautiful. As much I would love to believe that I was the most physically beautiful person she has ever met, I know that is not true. I have never had anyone tell me (outside of my family, who is basically obligated to say so) that they thought that the type of person I am was Beautiful.
After She left, I spent a lot of time thinking about what went wrong. Where we went wrong and how I could avoid making that mistake in the future. People are always talking about falling out of love and growing apart, but I do not think that is it at all. I think that at the end of the day, the success of the relationship is based purely on the ability of the two partners to find the inherent Beauty in the other person, to be inspired to love.
It doesn’t really matter what you find Beautiful, as long as you find it. It really could be anything. The ability to continually find silver linings, kindness in the face of opposition, physical attraction, ability to cook. Really and truly anything. In the immortal words of my cousin, (paraphrased because I don’t remember exactly) “Who cares what other people think about [her and her husband]? I’m the one in it, we know what we have and we love each other. That’s what matters”. You just need to keep looking, keep finding it – because once you can’t find the Beauty, it’s over.
I no longer believe that love is an effortless thing that you can fall into and be sustained by. Love, like life, is hard. It hurts. It is so much work. It requires a level of acceptance, forgiveness and compromise that I do not think most people (myself included) fully understands. The trade-off being that for perfect moments in time, everything is right. Everything is exactly as it should be.
Everything is Beautiful.
Of Dice and Demons 