The writer paints a much more grim picture than I feel exists, but that may just be because I'm so used to it all now. A few of his rules should be bent like talking on your cell phone, listening to conversations. I personally think one of the rules should be don't listen to music. You need your ears as much as you need your eyes when walking in New York. And I feel like on a societal, human-to-human level, hearing the same things as everyone around you brings the community of walkers on a New York City sidewalk closer together.
4
The final rule about walking in 'New York', by which Mr. Duenes means New York CITY:
Don't follow any of these rules if you don't want to.
Just be willing to pay the price for not doing so.
If the price is steep, invoke the Andy Warhol single-phrase philosophy: ask whoever is listening to you: "So what?", which can be shortened for New Yorkers into "So?"
5
"Don't forget to breathe, very important."
5
Excellent review. I believe that Buenos Aires is similar in some tics... I add one topic for Buenos Aires: the aggressive of the people.
2
Check out "Slow Steppa'" by Peter Maness on YouTube....sez it all...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADv2VaN3UH8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADv2VaN3UH8
5
This is great. More poetry from Steve Duenes please.
4
Unpoetically speaking, just stay to the right and don't walk more than two abreast. Okay, three abreast if you're all svelte. Oh, and keep you're dogs on a very short leash. Everything else will follow.
5
Steve Duenes, NYTimes Magazine, April 26, 2015.
In other words, mine, if you don't mind, be like German
philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz'
monad, who is an "indivisible metaphysical entity, especially one
having an autonomous life." Wanna meet one mimicking a monad?
Read "Murphy" (1938), the first novel by Samuel Beckett. The only difference between poet Duenes' monad and Beckett's Murphy is that the former is in eternal motion, while the latter is addicted to stasis.