Here Is New York

"No one should come to New York to live unless he is prepared to be lucky."

I find my thoughts returning this line from E.B. White's famous essay quite often, for there are a number of ways to look at it. Luck seems to rule one's life in large and small ways to a greater extent than elsewhere, although I am not entirely sure why this is so -- perhaps it is simply the greater density of everything, including possibility. Missing your train by seconds. Finding a $20 bill on the street. Being struck and killed by a falling piece of building. Finding a terrific novel you've never heard of in a pile of books on the street. Getting on the subway car with the crazy person with the knife. Being caught in a torrential downpour on the way to an important interview. Having the job of your dreams. Eating a marvelous falafel sandwich. Getting sick and dying. Becoming a famous performance artist. Being hit by a bus. Getting a cheap ticket to the opera. Such things could happen almost everywhere (some of them, anyway) yet they seem more likely to happen here. The hand of fate lies heavier; the line between happiness and utter disaster seems narrow and easily crossed; the normal existential worries of life seem magnified in a truly alarming way. This has seemed so to me ever since moving here but seems even more so now, for we have just upped the ante of pushing our luck: we are in the process of buying an apartment.

And it is a process. I feel like someone who has been hit in the head, perhaps by a small piece of falling building, confronted with a series of tasks of increasing improbability. I make lists and stare at them dolefully.

Do we really have to move? Again?

Is the crazy bank really going to lend us that?

Can this really be happening? Or is it just a dream?