"People want to know who we are, and some think they know who we are. Some think we’re a bunch of snot-nosed brats. It’s difficult to say really who we are. We don’t have snot on our noses. What we do have is hopes and fears, or ups and downs, as they are called.
A lot of the time we are very unhappy, and we try to cheer ourselves up by thinking. We think how lucky we are to be able to go to school, to have nice clothes and fine things and eat well and have money and be healthy. How lucky we are really. But we remain unhappy. Then we attack ourselves for self-pity, and become more unhappy, and still more unhappy over being sad. We’re unhappy because of the war, and because of poverty and the hopelessness of politics, but also because we sometimes get put down by girls or boys, as the case may be, or feel lonely and alone and lost. And who we are is people in New York City.
New York is the most exciting city in the world, and also the cruddiest place to be that I can conceive of. The city, where when you see someone on the subway you know you’ll never see him again. The city, where the streets are dead with the movement of people brushing by, like silt in a now-dry riverbed, stirred by the rush of a dirty wind. The city, where you walk along on the hard floor of a giant maze with walls much taller than people and full of them. The city is an island and feels that way; not enough room, very separate. You have to walk on right-angle routes, can’t see where you’re going to, only where you are, can only see a narrow part of the sky, and never any stars. It’s a giant maze you have to fight through, like a rat, but unlike the rat you have no reward awaiting you at the end. There is no end, and you don’t know what you’re supposed to be looking for. And unlike the rat, you are not alone. You are instead lonely. There is loneliness as can exist only in the midst of numbers and numbers who people who don’t know you, who don’t care about you, who won’t let you care about them."

- Excerpt from James Simon Kunens’ “The Strawberry Statement”

(Source: gaws)