amsterdam (n) / fort george ave / fort george hill / nagle ave / academy st / seaman ave / 218th st / 10th ave / dyckman st / hillside ave / fairview ave / st. nicholas ave

14.56 miles

my feet are very tired today.

my longest walk yet, hence the longest list of sights, and other observations through the senses: a man carrying a bouquet of orange mums; approximately 21 hair salons, 7 basketball games, no masks, and 5 games of domino (is this a trend among middle-aged men in washington heights?); mothers and daughters wearing matching velvety red skirts with intricate bordering, existing la iglesia; trinity church graveyard; a couple sitting on two chairs on the sidewalk, holding hands and listening to music; batting practice with a lightsaber; boarded-up food trucks; a girl on a swingset; professor juan bosch way; a man’s yarmulke matched his beard; a woman from the league of woman voters asked if i was old enough to vote; a baby strapped to his father’s chest; corduroy pants (it is fall); a very poppin hookah bar, a more low-key hookah bar; a woman wearing a mask that perfectly matched her hijab; hills (!); the smell of fried fish; a girl practicing a rap; a woman who rather looked like a mummy, dressed in white flowy scraps from head to toe; a man with red yellow green hair; the sound of the ice cream truck; the roar of the subway, above ground up here; ethnically diverse couples and families on billboards; a father teaching his son to roller skate; lots of teenagers riding citi bikes; TRACY MORGAN in the flesh at a restaurant; a woman remarking, ‘i almost got married twice’, her friend, ‘darling you better stop it’, the woman, ‘i ain’t stopping nothing’; 8 flower shops.

flowers are on many street corners in the city, a cheap and thoughtful gift. yet a gift that dies so quickly. lovers give each other flowers; maybe friends give each other plants.

a kind-eyes older gentleman raised his eyebrows at me and another man said hola— i ignored them both because i did not want to be naïve.

i made it to the tip top of manhattan today! passing through washington heights and inwood twice, the streets are alive with spanish, dominicancubanpurtoricanchinese restaurants, street vendors, music and dancing. i felt out of place today, and most days documented here. there are not usually that many young asian women walking aimlessly around the more outer edges of the island. i saw one (young asian woman) in inwood and i was shook for a moment; i exaggerate but not really. i tried mofongo del chicharron for the first time at elsa la reina de chicharron. there was no menu and no english spoken, and my years of spanish did nothing to keep me from making a fool of myself.. but i got food! and it was very yummy.

side note: i have decided that as a korean who will never be able to speak fluent korean and as a person who lives in america, i will go back to trying to learn spanish again. to be less foolish.

as i apply to grad school and yet again attempt to distill my existence into a couple hundred words, while displaying my industriousness, intelligence, creativity, empathy, persistence, etc… i have been thinking about the idea (the myth) of meritocracy. the fact that more ivy league students come from the top-earning 1% of the us than from the bottom-earning 50%. the way that i have been told i am smart and hardworking and deserving of my place here at college, when perhaps 99.9% of my ‘success’ is predicated on the fact that i was born to a loving, reading-heavy, upper-class family (side note: i strongly dislike the term upper-middle-class because i find that for the most part, it is a construct used by the upper class to falsely downplay their privilege) in ‘silicon valley’ (air quotes because this region is quite broadly defined').

i do not mean to be falsely humble; in fact, i hope to be honestly humble, to remember that my worth is solely based in christ, and to combat the conservative evangelical conflation of american freedom and responsibility with religion that passes for ‘pro-life’ christianity in this country. from a sermon i listened to today: ‘the cross is the biggest cosmic welfare program there is’.

in this vein, i also ponder the nature of an essential worker. doctor, nurse, grocery worker, restaurant worker, mailman/woman, garbageman/woman, delivery person, teacher… oughtn’t each job in society be essential, sustaining and growing our world in some shape or form? i came across an ny philharmonic bandwagon concert in the park, free music for the public in the time of covid. i almost cried.

isn’t music essential, too?

there are a lot of very moving videos on youtube following the grueling lives of food truck workers in nyc, detailing how early they wake up, the food they must buy and prep, the truck they must go pick up, the permits that must be obtained, the hours they cook and serve food in a hot and stuffy kitchen, then cleanup and return the truck, close well past midnight, then up again before the sun is awake, and it begins again.

essential… and also extraordinarily industrious, intelligent, creative, empathetic, persistent…