If given a choice, my Rocinante would be some late 70s sail boat with four wheels and air ride. Coasting the American dream. Unfortunately, I flew. Bags packed with enthusiasm and clothes alike. Couple of bloodies and before you know it, I’m making final descent into that Titan of Industry known as New York. Millions of people create the pulse of innovative and optimistic blood. The walls of buildings almost expand and contract, taking deep breaths from the constant progressive beat of work. The place is moving. Under your feet. You don’t walk. New York moves underneath you. It is never idle. Being in such an environment for a while is taxing on your spirit when you have nothing to do really. Nothing but observe the directions in which people move and take the world with them. 

There is limited real estate for ego and none for materialism. You make a living by what you know and impress others with the meaningful abilities you bring to the whole. A life’s work takes place every day. But there is more than that. More than the existence of offices and industries. Store fronts and advertisements. In the small rooms called apartments and the personal spaces people hold dear as they walk down the streets and ride the trains, there is a common respect and admiration for each other. They seem to be each other’s heroes. They’re a deeply complex society that has an environmental awareness that is second to none. 

No one takes where they are or the company they keep, for granted. You realize the potential of the people next to you and are eager to be a part of that. To know what they know. To know who they are and what brought the two of you together. Proximity begets  kindness and care and uninterrupted interest in the Persons around you. Not people. The individual person. 

My flight back was not met with the same enthusiasm. I started to think, I’m headed back to the frontier. The place our ancestors sought property, and monetary gain from shiny metal in the earth. Land upon which to OWN things paid for with that shiny metal. All these years later, and people still seek gold out here. It calls them. Maybe gold in the west was the best thing that could have existed for New York. People go there to not only do something great, but have something greater become a part of them. People come here to show how they are different from all of that. Thumbing their nose at commonality. I don’t even feel like I live here now. I don’t even know what it is I’m doing here. I left my individual out there and became a part of a group again. Largely cut and divided into what the “community” deems appropriate separations. The fault lines split more than earth here.