At sunset I sit on my fire escape, reading and drinking a glass of wine. I love to sit here and look up and down the street. To my right, I can see pretty far past Little Italy into Chinatown. Left, I can almost see the Chrysler building, if I lean over a little bit. The scent of pizza wafts up, four stories high, to where I’m sitting. The smell is a familiar tease now; I’m as accustomed to it as I am to the smell of dog piss (though one is no doubt more appealing than the other). People pass under me in small groups, an occasional singing bicyclist zips past, but it’s quiet, mostly. Fall isn’t here yet, no. The trees are just barely tipped yellow; the breeze is only mild. I still see flip-flopped pedestrians walking their dogs. Kids still run around in the park without their coats. And—perhaps my most compelling piece of evidence—there aren’t any couples out. I watch the sun fall over trees and behind me. It feels like a dream. It was, once.
Today, my yoga instructor put us into Tree Pose (I guess she was feeling ambitious). As we struggled to get onto one foot and raise our hands over our heads, she said, “Feel for soft ground. You can always find your balance not from strength, but from soft ground.” Easier said than done, I thought. What the hell is “soft ground,” anyway? All I know in this town is hard: how to walk hard, work hard, be hard. I love that about this place. And that, I guess, was her point. In this Manhattan bubble, where we’re on go until our heads hit the pillow (note: I started to sleep so much better when I moved here), it’s easy to stay stimulated, occupied, elastic, stretching and stretching. Being as excitable and impatient as I am, the energy is intoxicating.
As it gets darker, the bars start to light up. Laughter gets louder from the dives across the street. The sound of after-work drinkers, pre-dinner cocktailers, or extra-early nightcappers—who will no doubt wake me hours from now—mixes with sirens. But for now, they’re just part of the hum of this city, tuning.
These evenings on my fire escape make up my foundation. This is where I find balance and peace above the horns and cries and calls of the city. This is why I love this place: I’m four stories up, and I’m on soft ground.
