Why is it the hardest to write when there is so much to say?

Bill Hayes asks in his love letter to New York, Insomniac City.

I read this line while flipping through the book over coffee this morning and thought—yes. Yes, for it is absolutely paralyzing to conceptualize a succinct way to tell you what my first week living in New York has been like.

It feels like staring at a Jackson Pollock painting and trying to follow one, single line all the way through. One line turns into two, turns into three, turns into an array that tumbles it’s way into infinity.

WHERE TO BEGIN

It’s funny. Insomniac City has always been one of my favorite books because the essays within it tell stories that you almost can’t believe. Random encounters with strangers on the train that change your life, deep conversations with your taxi driver, a bottle of wine on a rooftop in Manhattan. The metropolis that Hayes describes within those stories always sounded like another world.

I am in that world now, reading those essays again, understanding them like I never did before.

Understanding that those stories are not just real, but everywhere. You can barely go three blocks here without seeing something that you could write an entire essay about. I could tell you about the conversation I overheard two construction workers having in the middle of the street or the utter chaos of witnessing a teacher try to get an entire class of seventh graders on the right train, or the intricate dance of the neighborhood come evening when everyone is returning home.

It’s endless. You feel certain that there could never be enough time to experience it. Not even close. And how do you begin to tell the stories of that?

I suppose one by one.

LIVING IN BROOKLYN

My favorite thing about living here so far is the comfort of knowing that this is home.

When you visit, you only have so many days and there is a pressure to wring every ounce of life out of each of them. On those solo, summer trips, I would wake up at the crack of dawn and set out for the day, gallivanting around the entire city, taking all the wrong trains, suffocating in the inferno that is a subway station in July. When I returned in the evening I was absolutely covered in New York. I would pass out watching the trees dance through the window and do the whole thing again the next day. It was exhilarating. It was exhausting.

Living here is much more akin to peace. I wake up in a room that is mine and brew coffee instead of having to buy it. I sit and watch Brooklyn wake up through the windows. A couple running together stops to chat with a neighbor. People are walking their dogs, getting their mail, going to work. Kids are teetering down the sidewalks in puffer coats like waddling marshmallows.

THE ART OF GROCERY SHOPPING

I finish my coffee, go to my editorial meeting, and set out for the grocery store. By some beautiful coincidence, my walk to the train station passes by the the first place I ever stayed alone in Brooklyn those summers ago. When I was nineteen, alone, and meeting New York for what felt like the very first time. I remember descending the stairs to the station and hopping on the first train I saw without a clue where it was going.

I descend those same stairs now and stand on that same dimly-lit platform, knowing exactly which train to take and which stop to get off on. The metal tin of passengers comes barreling through, blowing metallic wind through my hair in a way that always feels and smells just the same.

I find the grocery store that, like anything cool in New York, is underground.

I push through massive revolving doors that always make me think I might get stuck for the brief second, stepping into a carnival of treasures. Exposed brick and hanging lanterns guide the way to the escalator that take you down into another world. Food courts, coffee shops, and right there in the middle, the grocery store. On a Friday afternoon, it was packed. Someone is standing on a stool, directing the not one, but three lines of shoppers into available checker stations, and I am doing the mental gymnastics of how much I need versus how much I can realistically haul back to my apartment.

I notice there is no wine and ask a young guy working there about it. He tells me that in New York, the law prohibits grocery stores to sell wine or liquor, leaving only beer. I laugh. I’m new here. He smiles. Welcome to New York.

With groceries resting on my hip like a baby, I ascend back into daylight, feeling like a true part of the rat race. You run around the city, crawling in and out of underground tunnels with the masses, feeling your body move with the current. You move to the rhythm of a dance, one you learn through trail and error.

I sit down on the train with groceries on my lap, one eye on the train stops and the watching the people of the train car. Bill Hayes says that he never sleeps or reads on the trains in New York, that there’s too much to miss out on if you look away. I agree.

NEIGHBORHOOD BUZZ

By the time I get off the train, go up the stairs, and start the walk back home, I am overheated, my hair is blowing in my eyes, my left arm has gone completely numb, and am feeling generally less than visually appealing, when a guy smiles as me. You are very beautiful he says. And not in the creepy kind of way, but in a sort of sweet kind of way that made me smile. Thank you, I say, wiping snot from my nose.

I come home and stock the fridge, a mundane task that feels like home. There is something fulfilling about buying apples and putting them in the fruit drawer in your own kitchen, feeling finally independent after a year of saving money at home with your parents.

Still in search of wine, I venture out and find a wine shop a few blocks away. I step inside and die a little bit at the quint charm of the whole thing. It looks like an old tavern. String lights hang overhead the aesthetic array of wine bottles and brick townhomes appear through the industrial windows. It looks like a little factory.

I wander around for a long time, realizing that this would be the first bottle of wine I have ever bought myself. Partially reading the descriptions and partially judging based on coolest label, I find it. A cabernet sauvignon with notes of cherry that happened to also have a beautiful label. I grab it and linger for a moment longer, amused at the conversation of some Brooklynites next to me.

This one pairs better with the fish, but Sarah loves the Merlot. I notice a baguette sticking out of one of their bags and smile at the whole thing.

I walk home with the bottle in hand, noticing others carrying their own random ingredients for Friday night festivities. Someone is carrying a loaf of fresh bread, another a bottle of wine, like me. I spot brown paper bags with cilantro exploding out of the top and little bags of hard candy. There is a gentle buzz to Brooklyn in this moment, a buzz suggestive of intimate dinner parties and gatherings of friends.

At the counter, the young girl working there asks me what I’m up to on this Friday evening. I tell her I just moved in and am setting up, which led to a whole slew of questions that she fired at me with rapid speed. From where? Why? Did you like college? What’s California like? Is everyone very outdoorsy? I hear they are very outdoorsy.

I laugh. I have never been the one from someplace else before.

I come home to a box of goods sent from my mom and laugh. Only my mother would send me fancy raw honey and cashew butter, goji berries and cacao nibs. Staples of California.

I take a shower and cook dinner to the sound of jazz, retreating into my bedroom to light a candle and read for the night.

I crack the window to hear the sounds of Brooklyn, falling asleep to the sirens of firetrucks and the sirens of the wind. A baby’s wail. A dog barking in the distance.

The symphonies of home.

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