The things that make New York stifling are the same things that make it magical. The city is a core, giant and unavoidable. Even when it’s quiet the energy is overwhelming. I cross the Manhattan Bridge on foot, letting bikers fly downhill to my left, and I’m drowning right out in the open in the white of the sun.
Saturday, I took a daytrip into Manhattan. I crossed the bridge and stopped at its highest point where some boats were sailing off into the ocean in gunshot ribbons of motion. There were plaques telling me who had been to this place before I existed to see it. Strangers asked me to take their picture as a helicopter puttered beyond them and made its way into the moment. Its pilot may end up in a scrapbook that family keeps for years, and he’ll never know.
I find my brain is unavoidable, inescapable. Thoughts come at me and I have to acknowledge them. My group became impatient with me when I stopped walking and fumbled through my purse for a notepad and pen. This is the best way to get ideas, when they come at me like the cars speeding past in the street. It’s like I could see into those cars for a moment. I could see two hands about to touch, or a blur of someone’s bright hair, an instant of riotous laughter. These are my ideas. I see an awestruck girl staring up at a towering building caught in late afternoon sun, lovers trying to stay quiet in a dormatory bed.
I am always chasing thoughts, trying to make sense of these images, sitting down later in the solace of my desk and turning those glimmers, those hands, those images into a story that can be understood by those who have not been in my brain, who have not been dazzled and compelled to stop walking in a New York street to write down a sentence.
This is a long explanation to a question I am frequently asked: Where do you get your ideas?
And this is my honest answer: I don’t know. They pass by me and I grab them. They hit me and I stop to listen. They’re children running ahead of my reach, laughing and dodging down alleyways, luring me. I feel in no way that I’ve created them. Only that I contort them, make them readable. When these pages are read, I want there to be more than words. I want to write a book, and upon opening that book, I want it to swirl around you. I want you to feel that you’re drowning in a city street.