Seeds and Ramen

There are countless reasons New York is worth the price, but if you’re not taking advantage of those reasons you might as well move to a city with a few reasons for being cheap.  

When I used to visit New York—as a kid with my nostalgic parents and then as a college student enviously visiting friends—I packed every minute full.  The city shone with culture and people, fashion and food. I wanted to see and shop and eat and sniff until I was soggy with the weight of a place that lacks for nothing but quiet.   So saturated I needed to wring myself out before coming back for more.   I should have known better than to think life as full-time resident would be so action-packed, but still I hoped.    

Now that my full-time bed is in New York, it’s harder to make the time.  I suppose this is both obvious and counter intuitive.  As a person with a packed schedule and groceries to buy, it’s harder to take advantage of the dynamism surrounding me.  Being here should make me do more, but somehow I find myself doing less.  The temptation to order Thai food and eat it on the floor can be difficult to overcome on many Friday nights, but wasn’t I doing the same thing in Suburban California?  I’ve fallen into routines.  I go to the same restaurants, visit museums infrequently and go to shows even less.  I submit to Starbucks because it’s on the corner.  In a way, the routines reflect the comfort of reality over the illusion of vacation, but sink too far into routine and the reasons for living here are diminished.  Someone once told me: do things.   

Last weekend, I was proud of two things I did that were distinctly New York.  On a bizarrely warm Saturday morning, my girlfriends and I trekked from Huevos Rancheros in the East Village to a gallery in Chelsea where we took in one million hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds spread out across the floor of a sky blue room.  They were pushed into a perfect rectangle.  If you squinted, the individual seeds became a flat gray island. I knelt down and resisted the temptation to push a stray seed back into formation.  I didn’t know if I could touch, but maybe also the stray was art. The next day, a boy and I resisted the temptation of the familiar and went to Chinatown for ramen.  The tiny restaurant was lit with neon and featured a few dingy tables, economy-sized bottles of Sriracha and a menu with the English in parenthesis.  We walked up to the kitchen and ordered two bowls of ramen and pork dumplings.   Standing in the doorway of the open kitchen, we watched a young man thwack a giant piece of dough onto the counter until it became skinny shoe lace noodles threaded expertly between his floury fingers .  I sacrificed vegetarianism for experience and had a bite of the best dumpling ever.  

A sustainable life in New York relies on balance. I love that life here seems normal every day. I change my sheets and clean my bathroom; I rely on the same delivery and spend weekends never leaving my neighborhood.  The banality of life can make it seem more livable, but this year I want to complement that with a little more New York.