Battling NYC

I still remember arriving here – bruising and blistering under the chill of an anticipating snow storm and January winter.  The cold seeps in and it is criminal to batter and beat against the unforgiving gust of winter wind. Motoring through the Manhattan crowd and throe, I miss the clamminess and stickiness of the equatorial heat.  Strange how everything feels so stretched and drawn in the liminal present, under the shivering cold, memories pulls out expansive and imagined.  Mired in errands and the convexity of her subways and people, days and weeks bullet through and New York City is a world of its own – microcosms of worlds within worlds. There is so much to do but so little time and day light.

So much has happened during my short stay and all I want to do is to capture the potpourri of emotions and experience that have transpired but days are spent battling the winter cold, exhausted from the heavy drag and sag of trotting the concrete city as a overstuffed turkey - albeit snug and protected against the winter chill - and exhausted from the toil of a day’s work. We travelled through boroughs – from the one-way streets of Elmhurst to the grid locked, cookie cutter traffic of Manhattan to the grimy industrial dirt of Brooklyn – and transversed Times Square in its gaudy colourful Broadway lights, swirling and swiveling under its Billboard manufactured promises of dreams and city.  In the concrete jungle, they say dreams happen if you believe in it. I want to believe in it as much as it may be a commercialized farce. Thankful for God’s graces faced through the people he places in my new life; thankful for everything that has transpired and for the warm sufficient nest that we are slowly building for ourselves. Thankful for the warm hot bowl of meatball pho, dumpling noodles and the people around.

P.S. Remember what you came to New York for. Remember what you want to make out of this city.