borderline personality disorder.

being alone in new york begs the question: are you ever alone in new york? in a city that constantly reminds you of it's crowds... the subway rumbling under your feet as you sit alone in the angelika, the people brushing up against your shoulders as you try to shuffle through soho, the sirens that wake you up while you spend another night sleeping alone... is it possible to be alone? the city itself is like a glowing sign constantly flickering "you are not alone". "you are not alone". but one of the letters missing. the neon is buzzing only to burn out. is it cliché to be lonely in a city of 6 million? is it cliché because everyone is actually alone in new york?

ever since i moved to the city, the city itself has been described to me on multiple occasions as being full of people without peripheral vision. everyone is looking straight ahead. all the time. never looking to the side. we are all on some sort of track- some sort of destination in mind. it's autopia at disneyland and when you are a kid it is the most exciting ride in the whole park. when you are a kid- you are driving... you actually believe you are in control of the car. when you are a kid you believe that you are aimless-- you can turn right or left as your heart desires. the reason the car is going straight is because you are choosing for it to go straight. only, one day you discover that you have lost the ability to turn the car. or maybe that it never existed in the first place. one day you realize that being alone in the car has lost it's appeal. when you are a kid you don't want the car to crash. if you are in new york city long enough, crashing seems like the only viable option.

that's why we make messes of our personal lives. why we sleep with people we don't care about. why we smoke more cigarettes than we know we should. it's the source of all our hangovers.

we need to feel like we still have the ability to crash the car at any second.

it would be much simpler, much less messy, much less dangerous for our lungs if instead we just looked around every once and a while.