Silence Waking me Up

My internal alarm has been waking me up at 4 a.m. the last couple of nights with a sense that something is wrong. There is an eerie, eerie sound that has spurred me into consciousness. Wide awake all of a sudden, it takes just a second to realize that the strange, out-of-place sound is silence.

Wow. Silence.
Finally.

Glorious, unbelievable, oddly frightening silence.

But only for about 30 minutes. At around 4:30, the noise trickles back.

I live in Astoria, Queens, one of New York City's safest and probably quietest neighborhoods. Although I have yet to hear gunshots or blood-curdling screams in the night, rarely does a second go by that there isn't an incessant buzz of traffic hurdling by, sirens, people talking and/or yelling and the loud clanking of someone rifling through the trash in the alley four stories below looking for glass bottles.

Here there are piles of garbage bags, cardboard and miscellaneous waste heaped up on the ground between the buildings like something you'd see in a Third World country.

Twice a week the bags are piled right onto the sidewalks for trash pickup - not just in our neighborhood but all around NYC - even in the middle of swanky Manhattan. I have yet to find an official explanation for this so I can only assume it happens this way because there is simply no room for dumpsters. And if there were, dumpsters could never contain the volume of shit that is thrown away in this city.

Yes, living in tight quarters with 10 million people doesn't come easily for me. It has been a bit of a rough transition so far. I have been here for just over a month, having moved just before Christmas because I had to be out of my apartment in Vail, Colorado for the winter. Besides, it felt like time to do something new. Also, flying out to NYC every other weekend to see my girlfriend was getting really expensive.

So, with most of my worldly possessions stacked in my brother's basement in Denver, and with a stream of freelance projects I'm hoping continues to pay my bills (GULP), I took a couple of suitcases and bought my first one-way ticket. I did this with the comfort in mind that I could still keep one foot in Colorado and go back every few weeks to work on mountain-related stories and to ski. And to fill my lungs with air that doesn't smell like rotting McDonald's. and to actually have four feet of personal space.

Personal space is my biggest issue here. People accustomed to this lifestyle have a much different sense of it than I do. For example, while clothes shopping in a reasonably spacious department store, if someone was in the middle of the aisle looking at something, I'd say excuse me and skirt gingerly around them but most people here just bump up against you until you nudge over.

The immediate impression is that it's rude. but that's not it. It's just habit.

It is a huge misconception, btw, that New Yorkers are rude. I actually find them to collectively be the most helpful and engaging population I've ever lived among.  This reality has been most evident on subways.

The first time I ever set foot in NYC - about 12 years ago - I was taking a subway into Manhattan and must have looked a bit nervous. My head was probably on a rapid swivel every time the train stopped, staring from the sign with the list of stops on it to the platform, making sure I was on the right track.

I didn't realize that a man standing across from me - in the throng of other passengers who generally make an impressive display of minding their own business - even to the point of snoring, scratching their balls or dancing - was watching me.

"Where you trying to go?" he asked. abrupt but still helpful. He made sure I was on the right track.

The other day on the subway we were on our way back from a Nets game when another black guy sitting across from us struck up a conversation, talking about how he was born and raised in Brooklyn and NYC was the best place in the world. At first we wondered if he was crazy and didn't directly engage. My girlfriend's friend who was with us and happens to be a cop chivalrously stepped into the role of being the one to respond to the guy's banter.

"Where y'all from?" he asked us. Long Island, my girlfriend and her friend said. Colorado, I said.

"Colorado," the guy repeated. "Home of the psychos."

This sadly seems to be the lasting impression among some people who have never been to Colorado, now that its notoriety is being drawn around highly publicized school shootings and movie theater massacres. There is no real response to this kind of observation. I believe there are quite a few people in Colorado who are not psychos. I just sort of nodded.

Then, the guy launched into a monologue about the importance of, when walking and moving through the city, knowing your way around. or rather, APPEARING like you knew your way around.

"You gotta stay on top of the flow," he said. "Just keep moving your feet. Don't stop to look at nothing. Don't pause. You do that, stay with the flow, you look like you belong."

This is a sound piece of advice.

In the lexicon of ski area locals, someone who pauses and looks around too much is called a gaper. You see them on the mountain all the time. Getting in your way. Oblivious to the flow of traffic. I'm no gaper. When jostling down the streets of Manhattan, I've prided myself on blending with the masses, but walking on Lexington Ave the other day, I slowed from my usual, jetspeed pace to look down a cross street. immediately five people with flyers closed in and shoved papers in my face.

With just a slight loss in my momentum I had blown my cover as a non-New Yorker.