One of the interesting things about submerging your head under water is the moment between your neck wetting and when you feel the liquid coursing into your ear canal. (I always imagine it like a flash flood — the desert after a rain. A clear blue day and suddenly, with a trickle and then a roar, all the cacti are washed away and the tumbleweeds go all soggy.)

My life is like water in my ears right now. For some reasons which don’t bear going into and some which do, it feels like, as my mother would say, “someone has upsot the apple cart.”  (The apple cart being me.) It’s restlessness and discomfort and exhaustion and exertion.

Nothing’s going my way. Everything’s harder than it should be, takes longer than it ought to. Just this afternoon I went for a walk in the park to cheer myself. I saw a huge leaf pile, and instead of walking around it, I thought it might do me good to skip through it. I hit a rock and twisted my ankle. You see what I mean.

It’s a tough time. But what makes it interesting is that I know I’m in it. I know the water’s about to trickle into my ear. Somehow I got lucky enough to be aware of how much fun I’m not having. And I can’t decide if that makes it more bearable or less.

I know it doesn’t make it any better. Yesterday, I was slouching down 42nd (not to Bethlehem, but Times Square, where there’s no room on the inn), scowling and feeling pretty tough.  That area of New York is always crowded and seems particularly prone to wanderers or little lost citizens who get in the way. I was not in the mood for packs of tourists. I was about a block away from my subway — I could see the glittering yellow circles, smell the grease on the turnstiles — when I slammed into a girl about my age, walking the opposite way. I was knocked a  little off balance and turned to scoff when I saw the crash had made her drop her purse and most of its contents had spilled on the sidewalk. She was frantically trying to scoop them up amid the tangle of feet, more treacherous than jungle vines, and people were starting to complain. Even from my haze of misery, I knew I should help.

I didn’t want to. I wanted to give myself a break. “I’m in my blue period!” I said to myself. “I don’t have the strength to do anything I don’t want to, and I shouldn’t have to pick up some chick’s lipstick that’s in a shade too kitsch to bear anyway.”

And as I walked away, I realized that acknowledgment doesn’t make things better or worse. But it does change who takes credit for things. And I wondered — what if every time you feel the ground shifting beneath, maybe, like in the old disaster movies, it’s just you moving your feet.

During one of the first dizzying months I lived in New York, I sliced my finger opening a bag of frozen peas. The fingertip wasn’t severed, but it was cut to the bone and I haven’t felt anything in it since.

Having been a resident almost a year now, I worry the numbness has spread.

It takes an enormous amount of effort to exist in this city. Just to be. You’re constantly jostled — the subways, the sidewalks, the office corridors. Always making space for someone else and fighting to keep enough room for yourself. I feel I’m always swiveling my hips to let someone pass. I haven’t approached a building square on in weeks.

It’s noise too. Sitting in my apartment, the one place I have the pleasure of no one else’s company, I look out the window and see my neighbors. I hear cars. Voices. Music. I’ve learned that everyone in New York is lonely, no matter how many friends you have. I’m lucky enough to have a huge and loving support system in the city (and I’m not counting the compression stockings my parents insist I wear on airplanes), but sometimes the pace — and the place — is overwhelming.

A good friend (a man who listens about my encounters with other guys,  that kind of good friend) told me that the key to living in New York is to find your church. Not a religious experience, but a ritual for you and you alone. To be done every week. He used to ride the G through Brooklyn to volunteer at a museum. He said this would counter my feelings of isolation.

So many people have tried to explain the loneliness in New York.  I don’t want to go much into the philosophy of this effect in America’s most-populated city. I’ll just tell you how it is for me.

I alternately crave putting my head in or taking my head out of an invisible vice. I waver between the two but neither mental containment nor expansion ever seems like the right thing.  I always feel like I’m posing for a picture.  My heart breaks when I make eye contact with someone I don’t know.

The thing about church is that, ultimately, it’s creating a connection between you and God. It’s a personal, private, solitary thing that can’t be shared with other humans. The definition of lonely. But how can my church — reading a book by the Hudson’s tidal waters in Astoria Park — satisfy me if there’s no deity on the other end of the line?

I guess in that case, it’s just me and the city.

I am the extremely proud owner (renter) of a fire escape.

It is my first.

Having lived in both Chicago and Washington D.C., I consider myself well-versed in roofs and stoops – not to mention porches — but I am only just being introduced to the joys of a chipped black F.E.

I met mine when I moved to Queens as a 23-year-old reporter trying to avoid moving to New York to be a 23-year-old writer.  (The distinction may be wasted on you. Don’t bother trying to puzzle it out.)

Attached to the fire escape is my one-bedroom apartment, all housed in a three-story brick building that smells like Clorox. The clean smell was the single greatest factor in my decision to move in. I later learned the scent was my neighbor’s cologne, but that’s another story.

I first really became acquainted with my fire escape when my patient father, helping me move into the apartment, insisted I install my air conditioning units.

“Open up the window,” he said. I did and even thought to push up the screen. “Now crawl out.”

I peered out the window to the ten-foot drop below.

“No.”

“Crawl out,” my father said, balancing the air conditioner on his thigh.

“Crawl out where?”

“Onto the fire escape.”

“What if it collapses?”

“Now.”

I put the tip of my index finger over the ledge of the window. I touched the rusting metal strips. I measured the two-inch wide gaps against my knuckles.

I leaned back into the room. My father raised his eyebrows.  Eventually he convinced me that a fire escape’s only purpose is to not collapse, so I clambered out and looked around.

My window looks out on a concrete courtyard where old Greek men clean their cars. I could throw a discus to the back windows of my neighbors Across the Way. But in between are several leafy trees. They aren’t the maples I grew up with, but they’re big and knobbly and strong. They are the kind of trees that would look good with a few names carved in them.

My landlord tells me Astoria was put together before the war – I have not asked which – and all its buildings are low-lying. Five-stories is the most you’ll see here, so I have a big view of open sky. After my initial hesitation, my fire escape started to live up to its name. It became my escape. I sit here at night when no one can see me and on Sunday mornings with Martha Stewart’s magazine and some coffee.

Today I am on the metal bars, listening to the downstairs girl practice her saxophone and admiring the way even the city smells good after it rains.  Between the slats, I can see a puddle on the ground below. Three tawny birds are splashing in the water.  Birds need very little water to get clean. Someone should make a commercial about how eco-friendly they are.

There is something relaxing, in a private way, about sitting on a fire escape. It differs from a stoop or a porch. It is the only place to be alone outside in New York.

And mine hasn’t collapsed yet.

Everyone from E.B. White to Carrie Bradshaw has had their crack at capturing the quintessential New York moment. If you stay longer than a few days, you’ll have one. People collect them. Like balls of lint.

I had one just yesterday.

After a brief but broiling summer, autumn has begun its chilly descent on the city  Inch by begrudging inch, young professionals are covering up. There are pomegranates in my grocery store. And even though there are still girls tanning in the parks, you can see they have goosebumps.

I took a walk in Astoria Park, which abuts the tidal waters of the Hudson. I strolled hither and thither and was enjoying some laps on the park’s rubber track when I heard it.  The unmistakable sounds of a small boombox filling a big space. Tinny. Brassy. Loud.

I paused from my grim circling of the track – always feeling like a vulture honing in on my healthier self – and saw three teenagers spreading a tarp. They were wearing identical blue cotton pants and matching shirts – none. One was bald, one had a ringlet rattail, and one had a mohawk. Larry, Curly and Mo writ modern.

They turned up the music and began breakdancing. (There are many distinctions between kinds of breakdancing – popping, locking, b-boys. Unfortunately, they’re all beyond me. Those of you over 25 wouldn’t care anyway.)

I sat on the grass, the first member of their audience. They swiveled on their shoulderblades, twirled on their heads (and toes), kicked their heels up. They practiced freezes (where a dancer suddenly stops moving and holds a difficult position for a few seconds before “spinning out” of it). Mostly they perfected their  tough-guy faces.

Before long, a kid came over.  He was 9, a small black boy named Macauley, and enthralled the way only children lying on their stomachs can be. Soon, there was a pause while the dncers caught their breath and one rubbed his knee after knocking it on the ground. (I said to Macauley, “Even breakdancers need a break.”)

While the older guys drank Gatorade, Macauley sidled up to the tarp. He looked at the teenage men, all of whom ignored him. Then he put his toe on the mat. He twirled around once. Twice. Then he began his own freestyle dance. He did flips, kip ups, freezes. He popped his lock and then broke back into the damn building. Before long, the older guys were propping him up and clapping for him and generally being perfect candidates for a commercial on mentoring.

I felt it was a beautiful New York moment. It was so urban. Three teenagers playing street music in a park. Suddenly, a little kid wants to participate. And instead of snubbing him or ignoring him, they include him. I felt I might be witnessing the beginning of Macauley’s future. The yellow fall light and breeze from the water made everything feel cinematic. I left the park smiling.

I recounted the tale to a friend later, explaining it in detail and how special it felt and trying to do justice to the humanity of it all.

“A New York moment, huh?” he said.  “And they didn’t ask you for money?”