The Nature of City Life

New York is not exactly a nature preserve. You've got Central Park, and plenty of carefully trimmed dog runs and kiddie parks to get your green on if need be. There are tree-lined avenues, sure, and cultivated gardens on rooftops and in museums. But it's not a city you'd come to when you want to commune with your roots, or dig your feet into some mud and breathe in fresh air and look up to see stars overhead.

Don't get me wrong, I love living around here. I love the hustle and bustle, always having places to go, things to do, people to see. New York (and its surrounding neighborhoods*) is a city of instant gratification. You want frozen yogurt delivered to your doorstep at midnight on a chilly fall Saturday? No problem.

It's a city of routine -- of bus, train, subway, taxi, car schedules timed to perfection. It's a city of machinery -- ticket machines, time stamps, clocks and engines and free WiFi in every corner deli. It's the city of the future, a city for people who know what they want, when they want it, and how to get it. It's not the city for everyone, no, but I love it.

But sometimes New York makes you forget.

You forget that you don't live in a perfectly planned, scheduled, rehearsed world. You forget that sometimes, no matter how many underground websites and secret specialty stores you know about, sometimes there is no way to get what you want.

You forget that you are not in control.

My heart goes out to everyone seriously effected by this storm. I was lucky. My friends are all alright; I still have power and no serious damage. Others weren't so fortunate, especially in the town that until a week ago I called home.

Moments like this make you stop and prioritize. They make you realize that behind your day-to-day routine of commutes and Starbucks and office work and delivery dinners, lies something more basic and more real. New York can make you forget the line between want and need.

You might want that promotion or that overpriced extremely sexy sweater. But you still need food, water, shelter, love.**

You might live in a tower of iron and glass, working all day in a virtual space created entirely from manmade technology. But underneath that tower, behind the power cables, don't forget that New York City is still set on solid earth. Every city in the world, no matter how big or how advanced, holds nature at its core, and we are subject to her whims.

Should that make you feel insignificant? Well, to be honest, in the great grand scheme of things, in the span of the planet over all eternity... Yes. But sometimes a small dose of humility is good for all of us.

* because let's face it , Hoboken and Jersey City and towns like that are as New York as any neighborhood in Brooklyn or Queens I've visited. Same restaurants, same yogurt obsession, same midnight pie delivery or whatnot. And a helluva lot more organic supermarkets, come to think of it. Get on that, Queens!

** okay, not a basic need persay, but I'd argue it's just as important when shit gets rough