Occupying oneself in New York must be difficult for someone with no money, for someone like me.
On the one hand, there are a lot of things to do for free: movies in the park, window-shopping and above all, people watching. For this, I am grateful; few other cities offer so much entertainment and ask for so little in return.
Yet New York above all is a city about money. One might argue that all cities- all of America- is about this, in fact, and in a way, it is true. In a way, too, New York is about SO much more. But at its core, all it asks you to do is to make money, then to spend it.
To start, there is Wall Street, and its midtown sisters. I believe enough is said here. But then, you are surrounding my shops and stores and people slurping down five-dollar smoothies and ten-dollar sandwiches and even when you want to do something for nothing you think “how can I walk these thirty blocks without a little fruity reward?”
Some people, the able, might think: how can I walk these three blocks, before getting into a cab for the other 27, without a little antique end-table reward? I can easily see it happening.
As I said, every city, every town even, in the US, and to some degree around the world, begs the same of us. But I think other cities have other focuses. Portland, for example: green green green, be green, and if you are going to buy, buy green, or better yet, make your own (green). Washington: politics. Boston: we are the intellectuals, at least, if we are affiliated with one of the hundred colleges in a five-mile radius; if not, we are the loud baseball fanatics.
I read a column to this effect, recently, and while it, and my own analysis, are certainly in many ways an oversimplifications, I think in many ways it speaks the truth.
I do things to try and calculate a saved bundle: I walk places; I watch pirated movies online; I spend time in parks instead of often-pricy museums; I buy iced coffee instead of frappaccinos. Pathetic efforts, with pathetic payoffs, and even then, many expenses fail to be avoided. I find myself intimated to leave the house, for fear my purse will fly open and I will end up with half of Manhattan in my pocket by the time I get home. I have even tried avoiding bringing money at all, but I always bring a credit card for emergencies, and then use it for things that are decidedly not.
I have begun to think that my conscious is not enough to battle the consumerism that consumes me. I shall need to recluse myself into the Zen woods with no grocery stores, only gardens for the planting and moments for the meditating. Yet this is artificial, in all of its “return” to pseudo-purity, and in any case, not sustainable.
Why am I, are we, so weak-willed to the deafening, dumbing cries of consumerism? Why can’t I just say no? Today I made a pledge to spend nothing but two dollars on a subway ticket; I came home having spent those two dollars, plus fifty on two new dresses from HM.
Tomorrow I will take an even more serious vow: no money spent, on anything at all. I will leave the house, I will make myself, but only to take a walk or to read in Riverside Park. No money spent, no money used, unless of course you count my rent and the groceries already purchased. I will not be Zen, but I will be frugal.
