“Smotri v obe storony.” Look both ways, he’d say as we approached the six lane road that separated the corner of where we stood and my elementary school. I, in second-hand brown colored sandals, mindlessly aware of the cars rushing past and he, with eyes weary and hurried, his feet constantly moving, hoping everything here was worth leaving home for. Many years later, if you’d ask me, I would still be able to trace the paved path with my feet, apartment building to school: elevator, down four stories, sidewalk and three blocks north, cross the six-lane road, two blocks west. The same is true, however longer and more complex, for my father, who would walk the two hours to work to save the $1.25 of the then NYC bus fare needed in order to conserve any increment of income he could. Two people, two lines extended in a multitude of directions, up sidewalks, down blocks headed north, south, east, and west. Just two people in a city of 8 million, a world of 7 billion, imagine the possibilities. …show more content…
As a first generation American, a child of refugees and immigrants, the relationship between “us” and the city revolved around ways of constrained access and the idea that there was a plethora of possibilities. I always believed that “the city” morphed any which way you needed it to, the ground work already set into the pavement and streetlights and then exposed, allowing anyone to use it as they see fit. No matter how many rails you put on a bench in Washington Square Park, the homeless man will find a way to sleep on it. That relationship, the push and pull of the setting in and then letting go, revolving around theories that took root in each individual space, deconstructed by individuals, allowed me to better understand that people are what make the city, just as much as the city is what makes the