Being There

New York City. I made it here. Well, almost. I made it to Queens.

On my fifth night I had a fever dream. I dreamt that I was at Lib­erty Island, at night, to see the Statue of Lib­erty. I climbed up on a chair to get a bet­ter pho­to­graph, the chair tipped, and I was plunged into the cold, dark water. I wasn’t scared. It more mat­ter of fact, “oh,” I though, “I am sink­ing.” Even­tu­ally, I kicked my feet free from where they were stuck in the chair and swam toward the sur­face. It seemed an eter­nity. When I finally breached the sur­face my father and two men in wet­suits were in the water, look­ing for me. I remem­ber think­ing “next time you fall into the water, make sure to put your cam­era bag down first.”

On Sat­ur­day I took some amaz­ing cold-and-flu med­ica­tion and went on a bike ride. First I went down from Queens to Williams­burg, crossed over the bridge and met my friends down­town (I have two, yay). Then we went up Park Avenue, which was closed from more-or-less the tip of Man­hat­tan to 72nd St. At 72nd we did a loop of Cen­tral park, and reversed the cir­cuit to go home. It was a great trip. Six lanes wide, silent of cars. It was one of the most joy­ous bike rides I’ve ever had.

On the radio they’ve been talk­ing about a pro­posed mosque near the site of the World Trade Cen­ter. It’s a big con­tro­versy, with play­ers from city, state, and fed­eral pol­i­tics pitch­ing their weight around. Objec­tions to this mosque, like objec­tions to other mosques, has been about park­ing, or traf­fic flow, or “sen­si­bil­i­ties” and other thinly veiled excuses for xenophobia.

On the topic, New York’s mayor, Micheal Bloomberg, gave a speech. It is a fan­tas­tic speech, one that makes me proud to be a tem­po­rary New Yorker. He said:

“Our doors are open to every­one. Every­one with a dream and a will­ing­ness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immi­grants, and it’s sus­tained by immi­grants — by peo­ple from more than 100 dif­fer­ent coun­tries speak­ing more than 200 dif­fer­ent lan­guages and pro­fess­ing every faith. And whether your par­ents were born here or you came here yes­ter­day, you are a New Yorker.”

It’s worth read­ing the full text of Bloomberg’s speech. The incred­i­ble diver­sity of voices, sto­ries, expe­ri­ences, and oppor­tu­ni­ties in New York is a big part of why I came here. It made me really happy to watch this, and on my first day too.

Wel­come to New York. Now, I need to find a swim­ming pool around here.