The Wanderer Series

New York City

sounds of loud sirens in a city in the early morning“Well isn’t that a pleasant way to wake up,” I thought to myself as I rolled over to check the time… 5:47am, the clock read, not quite the middle of the night but also not close enough to my 7am alarm… With quite the conundrum on my hands, I decide to continue laying there like a log, hoping I would miraculously go from my feeling of a thirty percent restful night to one hundred in the next hour. Needless to say, that did not happen. 7am comes in the blink of an eye, and I hit the deck and am ready to seize the day.I throw the blinds open and take in the vastness of the city. After looking down onto Union Square for a minute or two, I notice a couple embracing one another. The man in a navy suit and woman in a light brown dress did not let go for a solid few minutes, kissing here or there but mostly just hugging. It would have been easy to not notice them or to have mentally written it off as a fluke, but it was refreshing to see in a city seemingly devoid of love entirely beyond the “I love NYC” souvenirs on every corner.As I briskly burst through a dense plume of smoke, I hear a tiny demon whisper, “Just one puff and I will make all of your responsibilities vanish and transport your mind to an oasis of tranquility.” This unwelcome voice is more welcome on some days than others, but I had a feeling that I would do something today that I would be proud of. I found it difficult to imagine that this “something” began with smoking.sounds of walking through a bustling city streetI didn’t know exactly where I was going, but I saw glimpses of large trees what looked like ten blocks or so away, so I set off in that direction. Walking in the densely packed sidewalks, I felt like I was the only human in the city amongst a sea of Sims characters. Each person had a unique determination in their step and a mindset of blocking out anything in their way. As I naively offer a smile or a gesture of good morning to a stranger, it seemed to go straight through them, or an overwhelming majority of them. There is the occasional stranger who reciprocates a smile who, I’m led to believe, is in fact not an NPC. I will almost certainly never see these friendly few again in my life, though I’m hopeful that I’ve made their lives more full, even if by a single grain of sand on a beach of positive moments.sounds of birds chirping peacefully in a parkThe final crosswalk turns and twenty leisurely steps later, I arrive at what I’m sure is Central Park. “I’ve arrived,” I thought, as I slowly look around, only to realize the sign on the fence that reads, “Bryant Park…” “Well, at least there are trees here,” I say aloud as I scope out which one I will choose to sit beneath. I’m drawn to one in the distance and proceed that way. As I began to get comfortable sitting beneath this special tree, I hear a voice from an angel calmly say, “Only once your thoughts flow like water on the page spread wide will your mind freely roam.” It was in that moment that the doors to my mind swung open allowing my thoughts to spill out onto my notebook.