Quiver & Quill

I was in Queens, NYC this weekend, and the idea of convergence really hit home. On the one hand, I felt like I was in the heart of America: Unwashed cars, crowded streets, city noises, buildings with fire escapes, a New York skyline; slices of pizza, Italian grandmothers, and sea of people on their cell phones moving without thinking.

On the other hand, every block I walked felt like another country. It wasn’t just a language or culture thing, it was the actually pulse of the street that felt different. In Main Street Flushing, Asian tradition and New York culture merged. We wove through markets, dodged bright flyers and walked through an overwhelming display of flashing, shining, lively store fronts.

Twenty minutes later we were in Jackson Heights. A black civic with the car windows down set the scene. Inside, a young Latino teen man blasted Reggaeto. It filled the street quiet naturally, like the way my grandfather’s hat fit on his head; I couldn’t image the scene without it. Bodega’s, cell phone shops, women selling ice cream in the cold, Latina abuelos and the grandchildren who accompanied them added magical quality to the street.

The duality between cultures distinctly American and distinctly foreign I noticed in Queens is a false. These communities are not both “American” and “Foreign,” the simply are America. I recalled a conversation in which I tried to define online and offline as different spaces. I had the same challenge in separating the on and offline parts of people social life. As I walked passed the open car window, I heard the DJ on the radio switch easily from Spanish to English and combine them to form a casual new language, something greater than the sum of its parts. This is how people live connected lives: they are neither fully on or offline—technology and society have simply grown together. `

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