There’s something weird about walking around in New York, and it’s only really apparent when you leave. People never acknowledge each other.

See I just came back from a week in Colorado. The residents are constantly outdoors, especially in Boulder, taking in nature or hiking or whatever. When you’re out there, most nearly everyone will greet you with a hello, how are you doing? This sort of call-response acknowledges each other’s presence in the space. A level of societal comfort and support that reminds me at a bare minimum we share the same planet.

Not so much here. Too many people. The swarm of faces flood every second of stepping outside, and there’s no mask suited for that much exposure.

So we ignore each other, blending human beings into the background. We wipe away their humanity, ignoring our different perspectives, unaware we share the same scars.

It gives New Yorkers an underlying fear; a fear of connection.

This city is too harsh. Too aloof. Too much.

But we’re human here too. We yearn to be seen, to be loved. The overwhelming amount of options means love comes in flashes. In between every station on the F line. All the rotating doors, one line profiles, flashing lasers in 120beats.

Maybe it was me that day; maybe it was me that was afraid; I’m not sure.

But in a city of a trillion incidents, here was just another.

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If you need to know anything about New York: it’s crowded, people are stupid, taxies are blind, and everyone is in each other’s way. [Shout out to the truck drivers though, those guys are courteous professionals.]

If you need to know anything about biking in New York; it’s the same thing but you’re moving 20mph on a two wheel mechanical death machine, and if you hit anything, it is gunna be a bad time for everyone.

As no one gives a damn about your lanes. The safest strategy is to be as aggressive and direct as possible: shouting, bell ringing, and waving your hands to make yourself seen, heard, and safe. Ish.

As the wolves are annoyed by the bleating of sheep, so will the biker be derided and disrespected regardless of circumstance; plenty of fat pedestrians holding hands as the waddle through crossings, or the infuriating uber that pulls up right into the bike lane to pick up their next paycheck, or the thoughtless tourist that swings the door wide open without looking.

A variable maze of death as you whirl through lights, turning lanes, police, and construction. It turns the milliseconds of passing acknowledgement on a sidewalk into a snap life-and-death decision. Nowhere is this more prevalent than biking downtown Manhattan in to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Busy at the best of times, it becomes a certified farm at any daylight hour, particularly weekends. Bikers know this. We use the Manhattan Bridge bike lane whenever possible. But for some reason, I found myself crossing through the amber cables on the worn wooden path.

Even in the thick of it, I never get too rude, and today the path was generally clear. Suddenly, a young Asian lady, dressed and doled up, steps backwards into my lane to, of all things, take a picture. She’s focused on her phone, framing the photo. I give an audible ‘YO!’, and instead of moving, merely pivots to see who had called her attention, blissfully unaware that I was not intent on interaction, but intensely focused on not being injured.

We made eye contact. There was a connection, flashing before the recalibration of the immediate danger that stayed with me.

It was in that millisecond of a moment that every insecurity, every flaw she thought she had, was shining on her face, stunned into fear and hope and love and lust. A question, a yearning unspoken but universal. Acceptance. Uncertainty. Expectation. Desire. Love. For herself, from herself. For me, from me.

But vulnerability gives way to fear, and when she didn’t find what she was looking for in me, the screens of wind came back. Walls made from a mixture of hardness and spite, erected in instinct, spit insults at me.

Inspite of, or maybe because of the fierceness, she was beautiful and shining in that moment.

It struck me silent.

We passed each other, the space between us shrinking to a minimum and then widening. Another lightening negotiation, as she inched forward and I shifted around her. The gulf quickly becoming impassable through space and time and the abyss of human consciousness.