digame

On my first night in New York my roommate Andrew took me bar hopping.

On the way down I noticed talking on the subway is like watching silent movies: you can see their lips move, but you can't hear the syllables. It's an eerie disconnect. You have to shout, even face to face. If you don't, your words are garbled by the clunk and gimbling of the car. I dart my eyes between eyes and lips to try to read what I can't hear.

Sociology students should be required to take trips on subways. I rode the A train from JFK to my stop. At the last Brooklyn stop a young Chinese man hopped aboard. As he silently took a seat, I noticed he was the only non-black person on my car, besides me. However, the first stop in Manhattan, a few Slavic whites got on. By midtown the car was evenly mixed. By my stop, the car was predominantly Hispanic and Irish white. It wasn't the race that through me off, but the progression. Is the city ghettoed? Or was it the time of day? In a city so diverse, the delineations seemed too stark.

Not that race dehumanizes much in New York. Here, the divider between people (and there seems there's always a divider) is language. In my neighborhood you'll see very dark skinned people speaking Spanish to very light skinned people. The same will happen between those speaking English. There are white people dressed in the same attire as black people, and Hispanics dressed in the same attire as Irish or Jewish people. But it seems that two people speaking a Slavic language are set apart from the three speaking French and the two chatting away in Hindi or Swahili. Race doesn't make people inaccessible, but it seems language might.

Speaking of language, I went to the UN today. Not interesting at all. I imagine it would be fascinating if you could do more than stand in the lobby or examine the gift shop.

It's a lonely city, this city is. I walked for six hours today, yet I only spoke once briefly to passers-by and once to a girl on a subway to ask for directions. When she found out this was my second day in the city, she said, "Oh that's why you look wide eyed and innocent." We chatted for a bit and her advice to me was Don't tell people where you live. You don't know who you can trust, here in New York.