Through Traveler's Eyes
Upon arrival, the traveler shall be captivated by New York’s unique allure. His neck will grow sore from watching buildings stretch up into the sky and vanish; the traveler’s faith in his sense of direction will waver as concrete jungle fades to greenery, culture fades to culture, rich fades to poor. When his curiosity begins to burn under him like a fire, brighter than ever, it’ll be the city stoking the flames. Yet, New York is something of a temptress. Once the traveler has explored all of her winding streets and avenues, grown accustomed to the grid-like structure that marks her outstretched hands like palm lines, and fallen totally, head-over-heels in love, only then will the city reveal her intentions. In exchange for unending novelty, she asks that the traveler be extraordinary. For New York swallows up the lazy, the close-minded, the uninspired; she chews them up, grinds their bones to dust and spits them out like gum on the same street where they succumbed to her magnificence. New York rejects those that don’t excite her like one would an organ in a transplant gone awry. She has no place, amidst the movement and the innovation, for anything vestigial, anything that might redirect her energy and cause stagnation.
The city is quick to probe the traveler. She’ll pull at his innermost filaments and coax out any and all closeted desires, buried fears, shrouded fancies; she’s appraising, a modern Anubis, the traveler’s character, whether or not it warrants their entanglement. The city forages for answers to questions that it once knew some decades later. Had the traveler stumbled upon her by chance, or had fate, hand outstretched, yearning smile, led him to her castle gates? Had the moat that wraps around her like a scarf deterred him, or had he waited patiently as the drawbridge groaned while it lowered, offering him passage?
There was a time when I filled the traveler’s shoes, walked and danced and skipped in them every day until I couldn’t. It was the strangest phenomenon- I woke up one morning to find they were ridden with holes and snug at the heel. The next day, I saw them on the feet of a man I engaged in a street dance. He made it ten steps past me, referenced his map, then double-backed and I saw them again, marching gallantly in the right direction of the wrong destination. I saw them on a woman taking the downtown two train, saw them crease at the front as she stood on her tippy-toes and traced the subway routes plastered on the wall with a single, earnest finger, muttering stop names like incantations. I saw them on the feet of a crossing guard, an exotic dancer, a playwright, a stockbroker, a history teacher, a street vendor, a divorce attorney, and a composer. I saw them then, and I’ll see them again, gracing the feet of very different people walking to very different places with the same well-meaning chagrin of a traveler uninitiated to the city he calls home.
Sometimes, I’ll slip on my high-tops or my espadrilles, take a step and feel the sidewalk arch and quiver right under the soles like a tabby that’s been provoked. I’ll be reminded of the pair I owned several short lifetimes ago, when the streets were still something I needed to tame; I’ll walk another step and experience my surroundings anew. The buildings, the street lamps, the statues, the people; my usual pizza spot, my old high school, my favorite clothing store; the place where we first met, the place where we almost did but my train was delayed and yours skipped a stop; it’s all awash in a queer new lighting that’s accentuating details which had never caught my eye. Suddenly, I am a traveler reborn. But alas, it’s simply the city and her fondness of the occult; of taking the old, the worn, the unappreciated, and resuscitating it, if only for a second, if only for enough time to give it a pulse and to give you perspective. For sometimes, you can walk miles and still be closer to home than when you started. Other times, you can walk a block and it’ll hit you like a foul ball, a grand epiphany, that you’re not the same person that you were when you embarked on that stroll, not intrinsically. And you’ll wonder, like I did, like any traveler before me has and every future traveler will, whether the city changed you, or simply liberated something buried deep within you that would’ve been hidden, restless, burgeoning and pleading to get out had you settled elsewhere. Had she, in a lover’s fashion, exposed your true character, or shaped it to her liking? You wonder, briefly, potently, but, like most things here, your questions sustain their urgency for one short, saturated moment before giving in to the pull of a Western wind and disappearing over the Hudson. Once again, you fall under a lover’s spell, entranced by her antics, blinded by her beauty, mollified by her whispered promises of grandeur and opportunity. You like how the city looks on your arm, so you prove your devotion by signing a lease agreement and selling the family car. You’re bound to her now. Living some days as a traveler, and others as yourself, the city owns you, stays with you even when you leave and always, always reels you right back in. She’s addicting, even if you can’t admit it; all you know is that ferocious pull that grips you every time you’ve strayed too far; that even if you wanted to, you’d never leave her, because everywhere else doesn’t call out your name in quite the same way.
You belong to the city now—don’t deny it. You belong to her and she to you.
“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
― Italo Calvino
Buildings fly past me as I slouch against a dirty window with names and numbers scratched into the foggy glass. My mind races down the rickety tracks at the same speed as the train, maybe faster; I’m reflecting, daydreaming, over-thinking and people-watching all at once. There’s a man standing beside me with a pencil and a sketchpad in hand; he’s drawing the woman sitting across from him, making sure he captures the shadows falling on her scrubs and her expression as she yawns into a scarf. There’s a boy swinging his legs and a mother telling him to stop. On any other day, he would’ve, but something about the view from outside his window (we’re crossing the Brooklyn Bridge now) excites him, and his limbs are catching on.
For the duration of this ride, we’ll see the same things, breath the same air, inhale deeply in unison and fill our lungs with a strain of oxygen only found on public transportation. It’s thicker than the usual kind, and crammed with a sort of urgency that only arises when you’re trying to get from Point A to Point B, weighed down by an anticipation that can only be birthed by an uncertainty of what’s to follow. I am slower to the exhale than the other passengers, finding it difficult to keep with the natural rhythm of my breathing as a wave of exhaustion overtakes me. Yet even with my eyes half-closed, and only truly perceiving a blurry silhouette of scenery shifting in the periphery, I can’t mistake the switch from high-rise, awe-inducing sky-scrapers to row houses, and eventually, shoddy, brick apartments.
The train comes to a reluctant stop, lurching back violently only to eject half its occupants onto an adjacent station and snap me back awake. Cold air seeps through the open doors, extends a frosty arm, and corrals me in with the rush hour crowd. We move down the platform stairs as a single unit, one by one, crammed together and concealed like molecules of ice, until we reach the landing, where we melt and scatter, dispersing onto the street. I glance upwards at the train to find my cart, and with it, my welcoming seat, traipsing deeper into Brooklyn. Its wheels scrape heavily along the rusting tracks, releasing a metallic roar that follows me even after I’m a block away from the platform exit.
Sometimes, I’ll hear a song and forget the melody, but I’ll remember that I liked it because of the way it made me feel. Or sometimes, I’ll smell a perfume that I just can’t place, not the name nor the ingredients, but it’ll take me back to somewhere so distinct, so clear-cut and tangible, that I can’t deny the scent’s potency. And though I can scour every record shop and beauty parlor, the chances of me finding that same smell or that same song are so slim, I rarely bother. Even if I did, by some miracle, happen upon them, it’d be in a circumstance that deviated too drastically from the first; they simply wouldn’t have the same effect. Imagine listening to Hotel California while your dad makes a rough turn onto the highway and Don Felder’s wailing on the guitar as you drift off, the taut seatbelt serving as a pillow, the rock anthem as a lullaby. And you’re probably six years old, give or take, and you don’t really understand the concept of a record label, much less the concept of a band, so you don’t ask for the name of what’s playing. It’s only way into the future—you’re now a toothy, pimply seventh-grader—that you hear the song playing in a Turkish barbershop while your brother gets a haircut and you’re killing time by flipping through fashion magazines scattered around the waiting area. There Felder goes again (this time you do ask for the name, and the receptionist obliges), and those soulful twangs of his guitar take you back to a car-ride to nowhere, because you don’t remember where you were going, or what you were thinking, just that this song was background to it—and probably to a lot of other things too—and for the longest time, you just couldn’t place the melody.
The city, on most days, carries its own tune. I’ll return from a long day downtown, drained and unappreciative, and realize there’s a song stuck in my head, a catchy ditty that’s playing over and over. The rumble of the train as it pulls in and out of the station is its chorus, the skyline materializing in the distance is the hook. There’ll be notes that correspond to memories; a peppy B sharp for when the coffee cart doesn’t have a line, a caesura when it does. The crossing guard cries out in a D minor; my homeroom teacher reprimands me for my lateness in a C flat. I see the boy I like in the hallway; our eyes lock for an electric half note that sounds in my head all of next class. Soft vanilla cadences glaze my inner ear as children are dismissed from the school adjacent to mine, their shouting and laughter sounding in the distance. I wonder what it’s like to study fractions while the World Trade Center towers overhead. How different I would’ve turned out if the view outside my elementary school window was taxi cabs and high rises rather than two parking lots and a Stop and Shop. I’m here now, I remind myself, and that’s all that matters. I’m where I always should’ve been, where I’ve always belonged.
I go to sleep that day with the melody still ringing my ears. I hum it as I brush my teeth, and sing it in the shower, quietly so that my family can’t hear. But I’m messing up the pitch, or maybe forgetting a part, because it doesn’t sound quite right, doesn’t put me in the same trance it did when I had heard it earlier. I need to listen to it again, and I remind myself that I’ll be back in the city tomorrow morning as if I’d never left, and it’ll be playing everywhere.
By Mia Gindis
Photographs done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College, CUNY. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Kezia Velista for creating artwork for this piece.