The City We Became

I don’t have to believe in something for it to fuck up my life.

‘White girl yoga’ Paulo says nodding. ‘Indian man yoga. Stockbroker racquetball and schoolboy handball, ballet and merengue, union halls and SoHo galleries. You will embody a city of millions. You need not be them, but know that they are part of you. ‘

What good does it do to be valuable if nobody values you?

The world can’t hurt you if you ignore everything that’s wrong with it; we’ll not until it kills you anyway.

The city continues to spite itself, despite itself.

He feels alone in the city. He is seen and cared for in the city.

But even in modified form, the word — this identity—feels more true than anything else he’s ever claimed in his life. It is what he has been, without realizing. It is who he is. It is everything he’s ever needed to be.

But his eyes stutter over a TGI Fridays and he twitches a little, lip curling in involuntary distaste. Something about its façade seems foreign, intrusive, jarring. A tiny, cluttered shoe-repair shop next to it does not elicit the same feeling, nor does a vape shop next-door. Just the chain stores that Manny sees— a Foot Locker, a Sbarro, all the sorts of stores one normally finds at a low-end suburban mall.

So that’s new, but he’ll process it later.

But here, the nation’s shrine to unrestricted predatory capitalism, money has nearly talismanic power. Which means he can use it as a talisman.