It is up to you

It’s up to you.Impossibly tall buildings gleam, reflecting the blazing summer sun, as below an incomprehensible amount of people wade through the hot damp air. Packed into under eight hundred square kilometres there live as many people as in the whole of my state: the frantic energy of eight hundred thousand kilometres contained in the space of a city. The blacktop shimmers and the hot tar, street meat and garbage bags left on the sidewalk in the sun combine to create a potent and obnoxious combination. Iconic canary yellow taxis—over thirteen thousand of them—honk, competing with the always present emergency sirens. Everywhere, billboards compete for the attention of the masses with advertisements for movies, jeans and soft drink. The city creates a sensation of overwhelming deja vu. Feeling nostalgic about a place you have never visited is disorienting. As I walk through this foreign city, everywhere feels just a block from somewhere I have been before, like I expect to encounter a loved one when I turn a corner, forever finding myself in a familiar location. I’m constantly recognising places I haven’t been, such as the gorgeous silver Chrysler Building, once the tallest building in the world for eleven months. With its art deco detailing, curves, and predatory gargoyles, it leaves me with the curious impression that my memory is desperately failing me, or that perhaps I was here in a previous life. New York, the city that never sleeps—a city of constant movement. There is no softness in this city, it is harsh angles and bright lights. Like a pebble dropped into a storm-tossed ocean, the ripples are impossible to see, a life is invisible as it takes place alongside so many others: people living simultaneously but apart. It reminded me of driving late at night along a highway, when all you see is the reflections of street lights and headlights. As a child in the back of my mother's car, I realised every one of those headlights was another life. A person whose world did not intersect with mine, that they were not aware of my existence at all. The realisation that we are not, in fact, the center of the universe is a fundamental one. It is an iconic city, perhaps the city that has been immortalised most often, in all forms. I have visited NYC thousands of times through the lens of someone's camera, or the words written by another on a page. Certainly, we can all name TV shows and movies set here, more than for any other city or place in the world. The first hour I stepped foot in the Big Apple I was easily able to recognise one of New York’s four hundred and twenty five subway stations by its green prison style railings and lamp posts that marked an entrance despite never having seen it with my own eyes. That familiarity also meant that while utterly alone, on the other side of the planet from almost everyone human being who knew or cared for me, it did not feel in the least uncomfortable. I can get swallowed by the crowds of people moving beneath the soaring buildings, air sticky on my skin and feel calm within the turmoil.

Central park is the calm within the storm that is Manhattan. Built because it wasn't useful as commercial real estate in the year 1853, it takes up 750 acres and has bats, turtles, fish and squirrels. The park is surrounded on all sides by the city, it’s impossible to escape either the view or noise of the city. A constant reminder that it is less than a mile away at all times no matter how beautiful the park is.

As dusk settles on the city it brings with it a cool change. Jackie Onassis Reservoir reflects the setting sun in fiery shades of red and orange, a billion gallons of water shimmers with the city as a back drop. In the grass, flickers of light barely visible in the growing dark begin to appear. These beautiful flickers are fireflies, using bioluminescent flash to signal their intention to mate. As the darkness deepness, city lights sparkle in the distance like jewels, the fireflies become easier to see, lighting up the quiet park with their beautiful frenetic dance.