Each morning, I was sitting on the subway on my way from Queens to Manhattan, and there were so many colorful people there, and I was enchanted, I couldn't help but looking and exploring, but not even once did I cross eyes with someone.

They all seemed so disconnected from what is going on around them. All into their inner thoughts, into their morning paper or book or some article for the university. Or into their music, earphones stuck in their ears so they won't have to hear anything from the outside world. Not lifting their eyes even once, to look left or right, to become aware of what's around them. It felt so isolated and cold to me.

True, there was something comforting about that. Coming from a place where everyone knows everyone, notices everyone, talks about everyone - it seemed liberating in a sense to think that I could dress any which way I like, talk about anything I want, do whatever is on my mind at any given moment and act as I please - and no one will look at me funny. But then again - it must feel so lonely. Hundreds of thousands of people from all kinds - and you feel so alone. So which is the better option?

That's what I thought on my first night in New York, while the full moon was hanging big and bright in between the tips of the sky scrappers, emerging here and there from within the concrete mountains, spreading a silver-light all around, on the flashing dazzling lights of Times Square, where you can easily get a head-ache from all those changing lights and colored screens, everything is moving right in your face and all is humming in your ears - such a huge place with so many colors and it is all shinning and glowing, it's beautiful and grotesque both at the same time.

I was tired, and over-loaded with emotions and experiences from the week before, and this enormity just made me silent.

Nir was surprised, he didn't see or hear my usual child-like enthusiasm from my first exposure to the Big Apple. It was all inside. The amazement and the backlash and the excitement blended with the sense of repletion - I have met too many people, known too many intense moments, seen too many sights and events in the last week or so to be able to truly take in and respond to all I was seeing now, in my second part of the trip.

And the great tumult that is New York City only intensified this confusion. To be excited and numb both at the same

Part 5: All on my own

this travelogue is part of the subside travelzine
about bookshelf links contact submit