The world had never stood so still as it did that quiet evening on the edge of Manhattan. I peered out at a sublime sky, washed with mottled hues, colliding gradients of tangerine, blush, and blue. The air stood warm and idle, cradling the cigarette smoke from my lips as if enamored by its plushness and empyreumatic smell. As the sun sank westward, the Jersey waterfront fell deep into evening shadows. Through the darkness cut countless city lights, dotting the promenade with their gentle glow. Perched highest on the skyline was a bright neon ‘W,’ casting an electric orange beam across the Hudson, projecting so far over the rolling current that it spilled onto the walkway and atop the tips of my shoes.
My body rattled with overwhelming calm. I felt as though I were performing some kind of dushufa—rays of light dissipated into colorful tiers across the sky, their rows aligning like crisp margins of an ancient script. My eyes went on searching, not for anything in particular, just to observe some beauty. There wasn’t a strand of anxiety in my bones. I had sunk into a blissfully benign, transfixingly simple state of utter peace.
I opened Spotify to queue 100 by Dean Blunt.
“But anyways,” my friend continued after he, too, had been distracted by the sky, “it’s hard to be mad about anything when you live in the best city in the world.”
I nodded, smiling.
Since moving to New York about a month ago, I have encountered peace more times than I ever had before. Though my impression is novel and my circle of people remains very small, I’ve observed something unique here. It seems counterintuitive, no? That a place so chaotic, restless, and grubby could instill such tranquility within me.
This city is mannerist. It’s dense and dynamic, with no focal point to anchor the eye. I’m constantly mesmerized by something new, and each day flees further from banality. It has a way of making me feel a part of a grander picture. I stare up at Billionaires’ Row, imagining what the view must look like from the highest penthouse. I sit at a café in the East Village, observing each character who walks by. I unmute my AirPods when I pass through Columbus Circle to hear the taxi horn, the siren, the francophone conversation, the pavement drill, and the rough cough.
As cliché as it sounds, New York’s chronic preoccupation prompts me to exist naturally as I am. Here, my spirit is unobtrusive. I’m lost in the minutes permeating each hour, which dwindle supernaturally to seconds. Life moves so deliberately that it remarks, “C’est la vie,” to turbulence—I can no longer dwell on what is inconvenient, embarrassing, or upsetting.
I’m tumbling, diving, somersaulting, leaping, and rollicking in this new liberty.
I’m transcending.
In the words of Maddy Perez from HBO Max’s television series Euphoria, “I’ve reached a state of pure harmony.”
Funnily enough, when a first-impression conversation arose in the dining hall, one of my college friends turned to me and said he thought I was well-regulated.
“You are very poised,” he concurred, “Yes, poised. That’s the word I was looking for.”
Somehow, within two weeks, I’d managed to become perceivably level. I wondered if my amygdala had gone on hiatus throughout my transition away from home, or if this reorientation was simply a pending actualization.
A few times, I’ve leaned back in a lawn chair on my campus plaza, daydreaming of when I sang at Senior Parent Mass, just days before graduation. I remember tracing the doric fluting from floor to clerestory with my eyes, captivated by how the marble emanated a luminance, filling the chapel with a soft haze. I remember waiting, gripping the cantoria balcony. The girls to my right began their round with quiet uncertainty. My lips pinched around the bilabial, and I sang,
Peace be still and know that I am God. Peace be still and know that I am. Peace be still and know. Peace be still.
Thinking back, I remember I was genuinely content to be there, despite feeling jaded with the present and doubtful of the future. When I thought my last days as a high schooler would be emotional—that I’d feel sentimental eating my last cafeteria chocolate chunk cookie, or depressed posing in my Fordham sweatshirt for a class photo; upset returning from my last off-campus lunch and irritated cleaning out my locker—I realized I was actually perfectly fine. Regardless of how overwhelming the change was, it all felt right.
The reason I find the Peace Round so beautiful is that the lyrics consist of a single, compressing sentence. The line shortens as the song progresses, such that the last words are “Peace be still.” It’s sung in groups that overlap one another, so the words echo and repeat.
In an allegorical way, peace itself constitutes something very similar. It has a way of simplifying what is complicated and centering what is entropic. It assures you that the universe is cyclical and that life will always improve, then descend, and improve again. It grounds you in the knowledge that everything is just as it should be.
Not too long ago, I was watching a man sitting on a stoop. He was tall and cartoonishly angular, with dark skin that contrasted his bleach-blond hair. A massive pendant gleamed against the deep black cloth of his shirt. On his fingers sat thick silver rings that made him look intergalactic, like he’d collected the alloys from some distant cosmic dimension. I saw him there and then again two days later at a fashion event on the opposite side of Manhattan. How forthright was that coincidence?
Another time, I was trying to unlock a subway turnstile that had scammed me twice. At the end of the gateline, an emergency door popped open as someone held it for a friend. I raced to catch it, bumping into the fare evaders and apologizing profusely: “I’m sorry! It took my money!” But seriously, how redeeming was that chance?
New York is a manifestation of the Peace Round. Despite how ambiguous or tangled it appears, the city has a fascinatingly straightforward way of communicating. When you embrace the calamity, you read into the energy, and somehow, everything resounds harmonically.
It’s true that it is hard to be mad when you live in New York City. It’s a place where peace comes easily because, amid all its chaos, you are constantly reminded that everything is in its right place, and you are free to meander through the paradigm of it all.