Today we woke up around 4am to travel to the airport for our flight to New York. I got really ill on the plane, but the flight attendants were so lovely and moved me closer to the front so I could lay down and sleep, and I felt better after that.
We landed late-afternoon and took a shuttle through the suburbs to our accommodation. The houses were beautiful, with steep roofs and cute little details on the window frames. Once we drove into the city proper, though, it was all tall buildings and grime.
We’ve only been here for a few hours so I’m trying not to judge it too quickly, but already I’m feeling like New York is not the place for me. I’m hoping to go see Central Park either tomorrow or the day following to fill my veins with nature. I’m already missing California’s trees and grasses.
It’s a full-on week this week, with meetings at both NYU and Columbia. I doubt I’ll have time for many tourist-y activities, but I am very open to suggestions if anybody has them!
Josephine Newman 
Hey Jo!
You’re basically in a cyberpunk mega-city right now! Personally I’d love to visit New York just for the noise. I can’t say for sure (because I’ve never been) but I’ve always assumed there’d be something very SF about big cities. Is it possible to think of it as a colossal machine, possibly even alive, with all those moving parts contributing to a greater mechanism?
Also, I’ve heard that Times Square at night is something spectacular – and I’m not just saying that because I saw it playing Spider-Man.
Here’s a super cyberpunk William Gibson quote…
“A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.”
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Hi Mat,
Thanks for your comment! To be honest it doesn’t really feel like a great machine to me at all, more like a sort of populated wasteland, if that makes sense. Every now and then people interact but for the most part everyone’s just going where they’re going and not paying any mind to anybody else.
I went to Times Square today and even at dusk with light still in the sky it was quite overwhelming, though not as spectacular as I would have expected.
Thanks for the William Gibson quote! I felt a bit like the Matrix was glitching today, actually. There are these little playgrounds on the corners of some of the blocks which are almost identical except for minor differences in orientation or size, and the first time I came across them I thought I was going nuts or had somehow walked in a loop! I have pics on my film camera so I’ll show you back in Perth 🙂
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