the concept of magnitude

in other words: my existential displacement

Dear New York,

I never understood the concept of magnitude — I'm hoping you can help me here.

Let's begin with you. You, New York City, are made up of 5 boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island. As that local man on the uptown A train shouted to his friend visiting from Espania, "you pay 3 bucks for 26 miles!" (it’s actually 248 miles.) I am more in shock that it takes 45 minutes to get from one part of Brooklyn (ie. Williamsburg) to another (ie. Park Slope) without touching another borough. So when I say I live in New York City, what I really mean is if you looked hard enough, you might spot my little body squirming around the horizontal tunnels of subways and vertical tunnels of stairways trying to find my place, restless and indistinguishable.

Magnitude, what a bewildering thought. I cannot wrap my head around some of the most regular questions that involve scale that we are supposedly to accept. The population of you, New York City, across your five boroughs is 8,500,000 people. You, New York City, are "about 398 years" old. How many people have lived in your quarters? My math is too preliminary to begin this investigation but my intuition says "too many to remember." How can you imagine such a population in your head, never mind just a subway platform of 50 people? Can you picture a 100 faces of friends and family at a single moment? Imagine them strangers instead. Now imagine them multiplied by 10, and 10, and 100, and 1000, and you immediately lose your concept of magnitude (and perhaps individuality at this point, too). Even in a room of 1 (me), I am overwhelmed by the vacuum of my internal core.

I've always struggled with the idea of magnitude. The measurement of time falls along these lines, too. New York, I said I could live with you for 2, 3, who knows how many years. Here's the truth: I have survived 7 months with you and yet have no recollection of these months, nor the faintest idea of how I am to survive another 7 with you. I cannot even fathom the months that have passed, cannot hold them in my memory to derive any point of reference useful in my life. When I try, I think of the now-7 posters that replace one another, you know the ones by the mailboxes on the ground floor of our apartment building: signup sheets for the exterminators' monthly visit, included free-of-charge with the affordable rent! Time is passing, but I cannot tell you what I've done with that time.

Measuring magnitude is impossible without a scale. I can tell you that New York City is huge, with its buildings and its tunnels, but you won't understand and you’ll imagine your own city instead. New York, at your best you are 1776ft tall and 1114ft deep. If Rasha lives on the 6th floor and each floor is 14ft high, how deep is the despair in her internal world? Following this scale of thought, Rasha, like New York City, can be found forever lost in the magnitude of existence.

Magnitude, I don't understand you. I don't know if I even need to, but if I knew you, it surely would help. I would understand that I can still be Rasha whether I were 100ft in the air or buried 500ft down under. I still exist because I still breathe even if my breath sounds, looks, and feels just like everyone else's around. I would at least understand that because I already exist, I am allowed to continue to exist. I would stop running my ink dry with these inconspicuous allegories and breathe a little. Who knows, I might even be able to enjoy the sensation of being forgotten and lost somewhere, somehow, in you, New York. Lost in me lost in you, perhaps it could be fun. No longer thinking of who I am and what I am to do, just casually lost existing.

Just like you, New York, and the other 8,499,999 people scattered somewhere in you: simply existing. If only I could understand that concept, too.

Signed, R