It is springtime in new york

It is springtime in New York, which means that when I walk down Canal Street, it’s heaving. People stand still, not sure where they’re going. People sell bags, t-shirts, keychains. The people who used to sell bootleg DVDs have shapeshifted into people who sell bootleg iPhones and AirPods. People are on their way to work with jumbo-sized iced coffees, headphones in, on a mission. Canal Street is consistently rammed year-round, but it’s the Easter holidays, and now there is an excess of French tourists who say, ‘On va où la?’ I want to reply, but don't because my French has lost its edge, and I’m on my own missions.

It is springtime in New York, which makes me feel like I should be doing something outside every day. Instead I stay inside, working on projects that are coming to fruition but not quite yet, sending emails that may or may not be replied to, trying to decide my fate, making choices for myself, inside of a choice, inside of a choice, inside of other choices that I've made for past 10 years. I'm coming up to a milestone anniversary. I can barely face it.

It is springtime in New York, and a guy holding a jar of spliffs says, ‘Hello, sweetheart, marijuana?’ I shake my head no, and wonder where he was when I was 13 and hunting, like a pig hunts for truffles, for weed to smoke. I’ve started tracking how many times a month I’m in a subway car and someone starts hotboxing it. I don’t know what this tally will do or where it will go, it is for me and no one else. I just want to know. I wish the people on the train smoked cigarettes instead of spliffs, because I almost always want to smell cigarette smoke. I went to a bar on Saturday night and wondered why I don’t go to bars every weekend, but then remembered I don’t drink, so it’s hard for me to stay at a bar for long. Still, three girls were smoking right in front of me, and I inhaled deeply. I asked if they could please keep smoking so I could live through them. It’s a bit I’ve been doing for 9 years and doesn’t look like I have any intention of retiring it. There are always new people to test it on.

I've been boxing all winter, and now it is springtime in New York. I joke to friends, strangers, and people who are required to speak to me because they work in the shop I frequent: it’s saving my little life. I don't have any photographic evidence of this, and as such, did it even happen? Will anyone believe me? I am stronger than I was in January, but I’m still very bad at it. I am uncoordinated and alive. My teacher says ‘Jab, cross, hook’ repeatedly, and I think I’ve learned something. Then the guy who’s been coming for longer shows up, and his bravado makes me feel small. He tells me how it should be done. I growl at him internally. I outwardly turn the corners of my mouth up, only ever so slightly, and nod. I already have a teacher. This is why I need to punch things. For the guy telling me what to do, and all the other guys inside the other guys who have told me what to do my entire life. My teacher says, ‘Sit, uppercut,’ and I obey. When he tells me what to do, it feels good. And I think how we’re all just animals anyway.

It’s springtime in New York, and I wonder if there’s a New York I’ve ever been a part of, and does everyone feel like this? Those people who wear the hats that say New York or Nowhere definitely don’t feel that way. They know for sure this is Their Place, and they claim it as theirs even if they come from somewhere else, even if they never had to live here in the 80s. Does that make me a real New Yorker? I don’t know. New York is especially for people who are from elsewhere. It is a city to be claimed as one’s own, to shape it into whatever you need it to be.

It is springtime in New York, and I take the C train to Columbus Circle. I walk the 12 minutes to Lincoln Center and think about how many different New Yorks I’ve lived in. Lincoln Center always makes me feel like something special happens here, a magic, a possibility that you don’t get anywhere else. I look across the plaza and think, if only I’d gone to Juilliard life would be perfect. This is one of my most beloved mental exercises to engage in, to hysterically pine over things that were never an option to begin with. I redirect, I think I like my life even though I didn’t go to Juilliard. I see a depressing Ibsen play about familial dysfunction and ‘vermoulu’, which is a brain infection that apparently results from syphilis. Uplifting stuff. I think how brave it is to make things. I think about all the many New Yorks there are, how it really is a place where you can endlessly choose your own adventure. And how strange it is that this place chose me.

It is springtime in New York, and it’s an opportunity for me to be someone new again, someone different. I’m in the same body with the same worries and the same boring old motor running, but maybe it could be different this year. Maybe spring will yield a new life, a shedding of my winter skin, a breakthrough. Can I change? Can I change my mind?

I go to boxing and my teacher wraps my hands for me, my long blue nails peeking out between the canvas wrap. It makes me feel cared for. It sucks me in. I run up and down the stairs 15 times and I think, I’m pretty sure people can change. I punch things, and it saves me. I punch a bag and grunt. I punch my teacher’s bare hands. I punch the other students’ boxing gloves. The noise it makes bounces back at me, and I know I’ve made contact. I surprise myself, I can get stronger. I am not as afraid as I was. I am just as angry. It will save me from myself.

It is springtime in New York, and it’s entirely too much. It’s over the top as New York always is. It’s exactly as it should be. I’ve left again, back to another home in another city to reacquaint myself with a few other selves I’ve been. To have an opportunity to notice how those other people I am are still here, still myself, and also someone new. The endless, relentless change life subjects me to. When I return, it will still be spring and I’ll be satiated, ready to return to the New York I’m a part of and the millions of New Yorks I’m not.

And so it is, same as it ever was,

Nora x