Maybe I just did it wrong. Maybe ambling off to see a maximum-strength gospel sermon where they charged me 10 dollars to bask in the glory of Gad, or accidentally being whisked into a pro-Israel hollering parade in Time Square weren't the sort of activities designed to make me die of adoration for this frankly bewildering city. If anything it only serves to solidify my over-generalising USA prejudices. I mean some things were ok. Catching a free ride on the Staten island ferry to observe the statue and skyline gave me a full Vito Corleone/incoming potato famine refugee experience. In Bryant's park, the brutality of an annual speed chess competition was also rather seductive and I got quite intellectually aroused. And West NY where I was lodged was basically gentrified South America and I was about to go to Peru anyway so that was in some ways preparatory, making me a less authentic Ugly Betty.
I love feeling like a negligible ant more than the average person does but New York just made me feel like that ant that wants to shoot all the other ants because they're all crowding round the Dali and ignoring the Miro. Probably also the same ant that takes on your half-eaten snickers bar and drowns in the caramel. Sigh.
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