new york city is my spin cycle

new york city
digestions from my june visit

this is me, spinning inside that washing machine which I call new york city, my old home. sometimes this city makes you way more dirty, but if you, like me, were coming from an even dirtier (literally or metaphorically speaking) place, then it makes you feel clean. by clean I mostly mean in constant motion — in that the city as a giant machine whips you around, pushes you through its mechanisms, spins you at super speed, until all the excess water is squeezed out of your body, out through your ears. I didn’t realize how water-clogged I was feeling in Istanbul (that giant, oceanic traffic jam of an ancient metropolis) until I felt myself being rinsed at super speed.

I found that my body remembered the language of new york city: it knew how to exist there, in micro-grid blocks; it knew how to walk fast, how to catch trains, how to always be 10 minutes late. I spoke the language of this machine, and this machine, it spoke back at me.

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