Soul City

The empty seat between two people riding on the New York City subway on the last train of the evening. The night sky dominates the view, it shows no stars except for the one that these city skyscrapers have born of themselves.

It’s funny, in a city of more than 8 million people I’ve never felt more alone. It’s times like these that I wonder whether or not I have done the right thing.

Running away from home, pursuing a dream with no way of knowing whether everything will pay off in the end or if I’ll end up as another one of these nameless faces haunting the city scene.

1,600 dollars and a beat-up ten-year old second hand Toyota Corolla are all I have to my name.

I keep my head down, dress in baggy clothes wandering this overgrown village searching, just searching.

Searching for anything; meaning, purpose, clarity. I look to the world to give me an answer but all it does is look back.

It mocks me.

I keep walking and move on, the garish lights of the 7-11 illuminates the street puddles that I carefully avoid.

Now that I’m thinking, looking back to what I have now versus what I could have had if I stayed, I don’t regret leaving one bit.

Sure all I have is the clothes on my back, a half-eaten bagel, and a three-month old toothbrush that I’m not even sure if it was originally mine to begin with but… there’s this feeling.

The feeling you get when you sit down in the great grass square of Bryant Park watching people go about their business for hours.

It’s the feeling you get when a street performer smiles right up at you after you drop a couple of quarters into his tin money can that used to hold dried coffee grounds.

It’s a feeling that can’t be fabricated, it has to be experienced with all your soul.

This feeling is a sense of freedom in a way. It lets me know that I am beholden to no one. My entire life is in my hands, the choices are mine to make, both good and bad.

I have the power to do absolutely anything. In the here and now, another singular being against the backdrop of this great metropolis. There is nothing stopping me.

There are no courses charted, no heading, and no destination. My life is a blank map waiting for me to create my own path.

Restrictions do not exist, rules do not exist. The only limitations are the ones that I create for myself. 

There’s something comforting in the fact that I can’t even consider myself to be lost simply because I have no idea where I am headed to in the first place. 

The musings within my mind during my walk have taken my feet somewhere on the Pedestrian side of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The orange-yellow glow of the street lights give off the same feeling. The whole city is encased in this feeling really. The place where there are just so many people that you can just disappear into the crowd at any given time. Where anonymity can swallow you up if you just let it, where you have to fight to become someone worthwhile.

The City that never sleeps. The Big Apple. The place where dreams are born, the place where dreams are crushed.

It’s frightening how it’s the simple things like the glow of a 7-11 store or streetlights that puts things into perspective for me.

I keep walking on.

I am an aimless hermit hoping to uncover life’s mysteries with the words of unknown prophets written on the subway walls. Perhaps those train track rats know something I don’t.

I am searching and I am searching, but for what I still do not know. My feet just go one foot in front of the other. Numerous are the faces that pass me by as I drift idly by. The black void of the sky above transitions to a deep indigo letting through glimpses of tangerine just over the horizon incandescently highlighting the Chrysler. 

I end up on the front steps of the New York Public Library.

It was only three short months ago that I was here last. Clad not in baggy sweatpants and a nondescript hoodie but in a  Dior pantsuit posing as arm candy for a businessman who was the son of one of my parents’ friends.

That designer dressed fashionista was from a different life. I’m glad I left her behind. She was unhappy. Craving to speak her own mind through the form of the written word only to be pushed back into a role created by those around her. She brought her shackles with her in the form of pearls and diamonds. My body now unadorned, leaves a feeling of weightlessness.

And there’s that damn feeling again. Seeing the library at this golden hour, this great building of stone all cold and imposing. I sit on the steps and let the slowly pull itself higher, allowing the afterglow of its rays to wash over me.

There’s a family of four that walks by. A mother, a father, a little boy toddler, and an older sister who looks to be about middle school aged. They look like they’re about to head to some nice outing together. It seems like the little boy gets tired of walking because his father lifts him up and carries him in his arms.

As the boy passes by, he looks at me and waves. I wave back.

It’s funny, I think how needy we humans are for other human contact. The love of a father, the kindness of strangers. It’s like we were made to connect with each other.

It’s the feeling I can’t shake off. The reason why that despite this being everything I ever wanted, to free myself from a constricting society so full of people, I can’t help but feel… lonely.

In a world devoid of meaning, it just means that we get to create our own. And isn’t it so much better that we get to choose what we want and who we want to be with as opposed to following a pre-destined plan? Whether it was plotted by our own parents or written by the fates to be read in the stars?

Doesn’t the act of choosing make life worth living?

I’ve been a constant figure on these wide city sidewalks since I got here, searching for some mystic answer and yet I never thought to myself that I can make my own answer.

This feeling that I have been carrying around has been what I thought I was lacking the entire time. It was always with me.

Rude taxi cab drivers, the smog of the city, the hotdog carts that line practically every avenue. It was here the entire time.

This life is mine and mine alone to live as I see fit.

Now I need a pen.