“New York remains what it has always been: a city of ebb and flow, a city of constant shifts of population and economics, a city of virtually no rest. It is harsh, dirty and dangerous, it is whimsical and fanciful, it is beautiful and soaring–it is not one or another of these things but all of them, all at once, and to fail to accept this paradox is to deny the reality of city existence. “
~Paul Goldberger

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Seriously, what did we do before ipods? We endured the sounds of the outdoors, we unwillingly listened to people’s conversations..

life was pure chaos!!

Ok, I’ll cease with the sarcasm. I’m just amazed at the number of people walking around the city with tiny white plugs in their ears. (And yes, I’ll tell you right now that I am one of them.) To see us lined up in a subway car is almost amusing; it’s like we’re robots with white wires coming out of heads with some ending in our hands, some disappearing into our pockets.

The ipod has provided a distraction from our surroundings. I’ll never forget the first time I rode the subway with my ipod. My old one had died after a couple years (don’t get me started on Apple’s bugs) and I received a new Nano for my birthday. This was at the end of my stint in Queens and I can say with quite assurance that there is no train more entertaining than the 7 train. (Although, it’s not always wanted entertainment.) Anyways, my first morning with the ipod, a woman pushed through the door between the moving cars. In my experience, you should be wary of people that travel through the cars. They’re usually selling something, asking for something, or about to break into song and dance. This woman was slightly different; she proceeded to take out her bible and read. And read and read and read. At the top of her lungs. With extreme gusto, may I add. From 90th street in Jackson Heights to Grand Central, she read the bible. I rolled my eyes (beneath my giant sunglasses, of course) and cranked the volume on my ipod to the highest level. I looked around with sympathy at my ipod-less commuters and smiled knowingly at my white-plug-wearing friends.

The ipod has become my shield from unwanted noise and my deflector from unwanted communication. I no longer have to listen to children crying or people talking in different languages at ridiculously high volumes. I ignore the people asking me for money ’cause, hey, I can’t hear them, right? My ipod has made me one of many people trying to disappear even more into a city of millions. My ipod is not just for entertainment purposes; it says, “don’t bother me.” I become almost indignant when someone talks to me while I’m wearing my ipod. And I say “wearing” because sometimes, when my battery dies, I still keep it in my ears. Like an accessory that is able to save me from the outside world.

Of course, I’m not a completely horrible person. Today, I even took one earpiece out (!) to give a man directions.

I still do a double take when I see people carrying around disc-men (is that what they’re even called? It’s been so long since I used one that I can’t remember) with giant headphones. It’s such a flashback when the old school electronics pop up every now and then. One day on the subway I watched over a man’s shoulder as he played tetris on his Gameboy. Yes, the original Gameboy. In black and white. I mean, God created that way back on like, the fifth day.

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