"MAYBE WE BECOME NEW YORKERS..."

MY SUNSET

Maybe we really do become New Yorkers. In my FINAL post, I covered many of the poignant aspects of Colson Whitehead’s “The Colossus of New York,” at least moments that moved me. He writes so candidly and honestly, it is as if he’s following YOU around and reading YOUR thoughts. Then you realize it is because as New Yorkers we have the same thoughts, experiences, etc. Even though we will not make eye contact with anyone on the subway, everyone around us is thinking, “if (I) had acted differently everything would be better,” and the train would be here already, whereas “on the opposite track, you gotta beat off trains with a stick,” (49). Once on the train, we all move to the same beat together, never acknowledging our synchronicity (57). We are a disjointed community, but in the end, we are a cohesive group with our little big city. We have the same little joys as well as the same great sadness, such as: “Forming an attachment to an umbrella is the shortest route to heartbreak in this town… We learn loss from umbrellas” (62). Sure this line may sound silly to others from elsewhere who have not experienced a wet downpour/windstorm with 300% humidity and a chance of hail. Just another day in old New York.

As Whitehead begins the book, “I’m here because I was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else, but I don’t know about you.… Maybe you came here for school… The city has spent a considerable amount of time and money putting the brochure together, what with all the movies, TV shows and songs—the whole If You Can Make It There Business” (3). So yes, I came here for school. I am finishing school today, right now; these blogs are all I have left before graduations tonight and tomorrow. While I’ve been here I have studied the movies and literature of New York, among other things, and helped create my own mythic Manhattan, rooted in reality as well as artistic renderings. I have my own New York, but I am not ready to leave and perhaps New York is the one that has me. I keep quoting Whitehead’s line, “maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us” and maybe I am just trying to hammer into my own head that despite my best efforts to capture New York for myself, I am the one captivated and not wanting to say goodbye (10). No matter why you come, if you stay long enough, you become a part of it. You become just like the rest of the people you don’t say HI to on the train; like the broken, twisted rainbow of umbrellas littering the sidewalk on a damp and gray afternoon. New York is a mighty metropolis and I am hoping to take some of it with me, but even more so wishing that I could leave some of myself behind.