After twenty whole years, I’m back in “the city that blends and mends and tests”—and I still have a screenshot of that split second when my name pops up in the Beastie Boys video as my email avatar.
I came here back then as a kind of escape; to be totally anonymous even for a little while; to turn 20 away from everyone, almost to prove a point: that I could make something out of this “great, unstable mass of blood and foam.”
And this city did not let me down. It consoled me when I was at my lowest and energized me when I was at my most weary; it gave me courage I never thought I had. And now I’m back to turn 40 with another FIFA World Cup humming in the background and another Israeli assault on my country buzzing in the air, so I wondered if it would feel the same—had I changed too much to appreciate this place? Had it changed too much since I was last here? x
I don’t know what it is about this critical mass of mixity and migration—this space of flows and flow of spaces—that makes New York actually electric—like one of those occult energy grids you see on Ancient Aliens or that 🔋 emoji that an artist I follow here often uses—and even though I know that I am older now, “I feel it still.”
It’s like there’s a threshold of anonymity that tips the culture over to a dimension of warmth and civility that a smaller city just can’t muster. Like you’re so faceless and nameless here that you’re actually seen; like the cast is so large that eventually everyone’s a main character and everyone’s loving that for you.
I know I romanticize this place. I know that it’s only been a couple days. And the last time I was here, it was only a couple months. Living in New York long term probably isn’t easy. And yet, there’s a deep sort of contentment that I feel here that can’t be replicated easily. I’d love to bottle it up and carry it around with me. I’ll make do with more visits more often, inshallah. x
So, this is 40, I guess. It kinda feels like how, as a kid, I agonized about what it might be like to get too old for watching cartoons, which was the least imaginable thing for me. I wondered when I’d watch one for the last time. What I hadn’t quite grasped yet was that aging is a process and not an event. And that cartoons would also grow up along with me.
Now the whole world is a zany what-a-cartoon reality, and I’m still learning to trust the process one day at a time. Like how I had my first manicure ever done yesterday; I told the ladies there to be patient with me and we laughed at how this moment probably marked my biggest growth in the last twenty years; my first girlfriend had suggested that I get a mani-pedi once and I was royally offended at the mere suggestion. I was very good at expressing my insecurities in dickish behavior at the time. I can still have a good go at it today, in fact.
So, this is 40. Fuck Trump. Free Palestine. Man up and get a mani. x