NYC

Maybe the fascinating thing about New York is that it is a little cruel. But all who suffer it have dreamt of living there and have accepted the risk of being alone as an unavoidable toll.

Not everyone is in a hurry in New York. Who said that? Maybe it was someone who was walking with such zeal that they ran into almost everyone who was moving in the other direction. Not everyone is in a hurry, but even those who are still tend to have a minute to point out the best subway route on a map, or have a smile for children, if not a nice word.

There are many who have qualified the city as cruel, many have touted it as heartless, and there are many it fills with fear; many movies have been made about them. It is very cinematic, this New York that, in effect, may be a little cruel and a little heartless, but is fascinating nonetheless.

Its buildings are immense, as are the data managed within the offices that populate them. It’s immense, the quantity of snow that falls in the winter, and immense, the hopes that everyone harbors that spring will officially come to stay, as has just begun to happen. Central Park is gigantic, and so are the rivers of people that run back and forth in it on Sunday morning. Also great is the benefit to be found from sitting in the shade of one of its lush trees, contemplating the lake and spying on the squirrels. It’s one of the therapies that New Yorkers turn to, those who fear going to a psychiatrist or do not have the money to pay for one.

The city is also immense in its variety. One can walk through worlds and ages simply by crossing a street or turning a corner; passing, for example, through the severity of the financial district to the informality of Chinatown — and from the gray of the former to the outlandishness of the latter — simply by crossing Columbus Park.

And descending into hell of one’s own volition — into one of the many New York hells — or understanding that paradise is not this boring and silent place where the angels take a nap, and that also there, in New York, it can be found if one avoids running into those who are walking in the other direction.