5 October ‘07

And so what is around me has changed. Gone are the uneven floors with their many burrowing-places for persistent cockroaches, indignant at the threat of my raised shoe. Gone too are the light fittings that never managed to truly light, only stave darkness away and remain that way, pressing constantly, the darkness always encroaching. That is, I have moved house. I have a new bed (a new bed - the first one I have ever had, I think). Its memory is young and its surface hard, but at least springs and cushion have replaced lumpy foam atop the steel bars of the fold-out couch that has been my resting place since I have been in New York. I have walls to fill with photos and soon will have shelves to fill with knick-knacks. I have new roommates, new spaces to acclimatise to, new areas to explore.

Moving was an ordeal. In little over seven weeks I have―by a crude calculation―gathered twice the volume of what I have arrived with. And since I am stubborn, and my new house is only six blocks from the old, I insisted (to myself, I suppose) on carrying everything. Six round-trips later I regretted the decision and spent the eight dollars I had saved on a cab on ice cream and a sandwich.

The new place is much smaller, but I have no problem with that, especially coming into winter. Less air to heat and fewer spaces for the warmed air to escape. My roommates are friendlier, though still reticent as those who meet by chance often are. One is an actor – see www.jackfitz.com – a lively fellow who signs off sentences like letters: ‘stay cool, man’ or ‘carpe diem, man’. The other, a share broker. Nice guys who subsist, it seems, on microwave dinners consumed in their rooms. There is an equipped kitchen also (my last place had four can-openers and no knife). This is important as I have grown fat and lethargic from eating out twice every day (though I have mastered the art – there are six places within a 2-kilometre radius that have meals for less than five dollars. Thus, all I need to do is rotate between these places and nuance my selection to avoid the vapidity that would result from a monotonous meal routine – beef and broccoli on Monday night, beef and string-bean on Thursday).

In Spanish Harlem, more so than in other neighbourhoods I have visited, streets are an important marker of identity. My old street, 141, for example, had its local domino-players, crack-sellers, housewives. The new street, 134, the same. And the street that connects 134 with 141 repeats the same stores over and over: deli (read dairy) is next to a hairdresser is next to a Chinese-food joint is next to a dollar-store is next to a deli and so on. And each of these stores, like the streets has its locals, the folk who carry deck chairs and spent balmy evenings on the pavement half-heartedly watching the baseball on the television through the window of the store. It took a long time, perhaps a month, for the locals of my street and my shops to advance through staring at me during the first week, ignoring me the second and third, and giving me a tacit nod as my place in the neighbourhood was tentatively confirmed in the fourth and following. Now I must repeat the induction, be initiated through simple acts like holding the door open for residents in my building or kicking a ball back to some kids.

Scientists once conducted an experiment based on one of Einstein’s lesser-known theories, from memory, whereby lasers were mounted in aircraft and receptors mounted on the ground. By some secret of science which is beyond me, these scientists proved as incontrovertibly as scientists can that time actually does slow down as you speed up. The effects are miniscule – a commercial pilot, for example, would be a second younger over a lifetime than a land-dweller – but the effect measurable nonetheless (Einstein hypothesised, if I remember correctly (there are so many of these ‘facts’ which I dream, steal or simply make up) that a merry-go-round travelling clockwise faster than the speed of light would advance through time, a merry-go-round travelling anti-clockwise would navigate the past).

The reason I mention all this―and perhaps it is a trite observation, I have not investigated whether anyone else has already said it, though the ‘New York minute’ cliché is well-known―is that I am quite sure that Einstein was wrong – the faster you move, the faster time speeds up. People who have lived on Manhattan for 10 years, as an example, age 15. I have been here for two months, it could easily have been three or six. A friend noted that many people in the city are transients – the population of eight-million swells to twelve-million during the working day. And that’s ignoring the Manhattan residents who are students, temporary workers, et cetera. The sheer volume of that movement, of that amount of transience, perhaps contributes to the speed of the place. Perhaps the kinetic energy of four-million people moving in and out of the city has the a pull on those who remain akin to that of the moon on the ocean. Twice a day, as people come and go, we are tugged in all directions, our blood collects closer to our skins, our lungs press against our ribcages like the tide, our organs rumble. You feel yourself getting old in the this city but rather than seeking rest, rather than allowing yourself to feel weary, you move faster, you push against the tide, you seek the thrill, you scorn lethargy, and forever you try and escape the scythe at your back.