Stop the world just to stop the feeling

NEW YORK CITY — It’s been nearly a hundred days since I moved to this city for further studies. In the three months I’ve been here, I’ve experienced sweltering 90°F summer days, witnessed trees shedding leaves in 40°F autumn mornings, chased the aurora borealis, and grappled with earlier sunsets and longer nights.

I wasn’t running away from a life I disliked. On the contrary, I loved my life in Manila. I was comfortable, and I was starting to build my nest. I was also not eager to implant myself in a foreign land. Desperation was never a consideration in my decision. So, up to the last few days before my flight, I kept wondering if this was the right choice — forget right, was this good for me? A recovering workaholic moving to the “city that never sleeps” is like pulling a drug addict out of a rehabilitation center to an open-air drug market.

The city and the move are objectively overwhelming. Since I got here, I’ve done only three touristy things: a Hudson River ferry ride in August, courtesy of my college schoolmate and now roommate Lucs, where I saw the Statue of Liberty; a Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) visit with fellow Filipino journalist and international student Gaea, with tickets courtesy of the Newmark J-school; and a solo Met Cloisters tour, thanks to New York’s libraries and Culture Pass. Nearly every weekday ends hours past midnight. Some nights, I don’t sleep at all. There’d been so many times I wished I could just pause time.

But depite everything, I am enjoying this new life. That surprised me.

During my first time in New York in 2022, my Airbnb host and Lucs told me I would love it here that I’d be back. Well, I am back. But it’s not because I loved it here. At the time, I could never get the city’s appeal. Trash bags and litter were left scattered in sidewalks; rats and slush spruced pavements.

I went to NYC solely to watch Lisette Oropesa in Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera, my first live opera show.

I never got to explore the New York Public Library then, so the other saving grace I knew of NYC was Central Park. Seated in a park bench with cold fingers, I wrote the following:

Welcome to New York
20 December 2022; 11:07 a.m.

NEW YORK CITY — Today is my last day in New York. I spent my last morning in the United States walking around Central Park, thinking about how I would enjoy being in nature and some forest-bathing, as they call it, would reinvigorate me before I return to my reality in the Philippines. I enjoy being in the presence of trees dancing with the winter wind, ducks and geese swimming in a lake, birds singing and frolicking above me, and squirrels puffing their tails as they move about patches of leaves and bare trees.

I was relishing the solitude, just enjoying the silence of being on my own in the middle of this bustling global city, when I decided I should have a picture of myself to remind me of this place. That was when, as I was extending my arm before me to take a selfie, a bird that looks like the Philippine maya landed on my hand. For a moment, I felt like Snow White.

Shortly after that, I saw a cardinal, with red feathers so bright you can’t miss it, that was just staring at me. It sat on a tree, like a watchful guide throughout this solo mini-adventure in my nearly four-week stay in the U.S.

I strolled a bit more until I realized I preferred the woods more than the meadows and the lawn. It was almost time for me to go back to the metro and meet my friend Lucs, so I headed back to the Loch. And, there again, I saw the cardinal. It stayed longer this time, still singing its beautiful birdsong, still staring at me as if it wanted me to stay. Tears started to roll down my face. I thought it might have been a sign that my sister was with me. I wanted to take a photo of that moment, but I was afraid by the time I bring out my camera from my bag, the bird would have flown away. It did not. I snapped a few quick photos. This was the first time in three weeks that I picked up my camera again, then the bird flew away.

In more ways than one, NYC tethers me to Manila: I live in a Filipino household, I find marigolds and robins in unexpected moments, reminding me of my sister, I wrote about the kundiman for my audio feature assignment, and the recent U.S. presidential race just has so many parallels with the 2022 polls in the Philippines.

Donald Trump won both the electoral college and popular vote, besting an incumbent female vice president. It feels like deja vu.

Perhaps because I’m in NYC, a solid blue state — though some may think that may soon change with more Trump voters across boroughs this year — I am witnessing the same grief and hopelessness from folks here, both among my colleagues and virtual strangers, as I did post-elections in the Philippines.

As someone who’s had to go through this two years ahead of my peers, I tell them that the worst times are also the best times to be a journalist.

I talk about how, in the Philippines, we had similar talks about our failings when covering Duterte. We were constantly putting out fires that we unintentionally could not give as much attention to local, gut issues that matter most to citizens. We thought our existence and our hard work were enough to draw people in, when, clearly, media consumption behavior has changed. Instead, we have to be where the audience is. And we took for granted our own individual spheres of influence to bridge the silos of information that social media algorithms created.

Who knows what happens next? What I know is that there are many who still believe in empowering a public to make informed decisions.

I am proud to be in a place that reminds me what we do as journalists matter. Somewhere along the way, I might have forgotten that. •