There is something about living in New York.
I sat on my fire escape. And I saw buildings around me, maybe of about 40 floors. While I was gasping for air and freedom, the hundreds of lamps in the windows around me lightened my perception.
She struggled one day, too; she was limited, restrained, confined, contained. It is, after all, at least Manhattan, an island. A very small Island. For a Big Apple, it is such a tiny territory.
But as small as she is, the city had all the potential to take up the space she demanded. No, Manhattan didn’t take up more space from Queens or Brooklyn to get to her full potential. She stayed within the limits she was given. Instead she went up; she took on new levels.
For the city, the sky wasn’t the limit, and the city was born. She rose. She went high. She took a different direction, and upward it was. She didn’t ask to have more space. She went her own way, a strange way, up taking it some new levels at a time.
She also dug down to get there. You can’t go so high up without solid foundations. So she went down. And when you know New York, you know that living in a basement with no windows is as common as taking the stairs downstairs for restrooms and kitchen in any restaurant in the city just as much as it’s normal to find a whole Target, or Forever 21 brightened up by a million lights to make you forget you’re two floors below sea level. She went very low, to the deepest and darkest spots. And then, she stood up and high, in her own way, in a skyline that made her legendary.
I was locked in isolation in my apartment, far from everything I love, I value, I care about, or that provides me the freedom and life I need. And when it was too much, I opened one of my three windows, like in those games where you have to pick a door and see what’s hiding behind. I got to my fire escape. There was no fire except the one within me starving for life sensations. And I saw the high buildings around me. And I noticed New York City, a small tiny sphere that appeared to be more expansive than expensive. A petite spot that had the potential to grow big and did by ascending, rising singularly, leveling up, breaking the boundaries, crushing the limits, and pushing the possible horizons.