The New York Lie

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• April 19, 2026

Where’s the soul I wanna know?
New York City’s evil
The surface is everything but I could never do that
Someone would see through that

— Motorcycle Drive By, Third Eye Blind

The flowers are begging you to come outside. All colorful and shit. Bopping in the wind as if they are dancing, celebrating pure existence after a harsh winter. Look at me! Smell me! Okay, now go away, so a bee can pollinate me. All hail Persephone, and may we appreciate her beauty before she withers. She is the deity of life and death.

New Yorkers pride themselves on being brutally honest, but they’re also bullshitters. Is someone lying if they believe the lie themselves? New Yorkers will tell you Spring no longer exists. That the seasons jump from winter to summer. As a life long New Yorker, I am here to tell you this is not true.

The thing about New York is, it’s a perpetual grind. Cost of living is high. Times are always tough. People here complain about capitalism and yet New York City could only exist because of capitalism. New York City is the example of the both the greatness and corruption that such a system brings. People only hate being on the poor side of capitalism. If people truly thought capitalism was evil, they’d be migrating to the hundreds of tribes on the Amazon forest. But you seldom hear of stories of people abandoning their comfortable beds and televisions for mosquito infested huts.

The fast paced life is tiring. Years ago, I sublet one of my cousins apartments on the Upper East Side. Jamie is one of the smartest people I know. She had a cool job and good taste in culture in cuisine. We were both younger at the time, but she is older than me and she was looking to leave New York City. At the time, I could hardly imagine it. Leave New York City? But it’s everything. The best arts, restaurants, plus being from Long Island we had access to great beaches in the summer. She lamented then an exhaustion I feel now, that the grind was too much, all the time. New York is so fast paced, it becomes difficult to enjoy all it has to offer.

Stop and smell the flowers is a cliche I have to remind myself. Spring, though fleeting, does exist. It is easy to miss when you are caught up in the hustle. And then you are one of these people perpetuating the lie that New York jumps from Winter to Summer. It does not. If you think this, then you have a problem. You got too wrapped up in work, heartbreak, doom-scrolling, politics, real or invented drama. The flowers are blooming. The trees grew leaves, not overnight, but slowly if you count the hours, quickly if you count the days. You must get back to nature. I must get back to nature. It’s making us all mad.

The birds are singing. Their songs are beautiful. Listen to them, I beg you. The birds are not tainted by the cynicism of screens. They are singing out for lovers, for life. Birds bring flowers to court a mate. And humans are void of meaning, sending nudes.