You can read about a hundred different lives, or you can bike past all of them in one afternoon.

We rented bikes in the Flatiron District and rode north into Central Park. A Sunday, warm enough to forgive the whole city. We circled the park for hours, not headed anywhere, just moving through it.

New York City does something few other places manage. In the same six hundred acres you pass every color, every accent, every rhythm of walking a person can have. Someone studying under a tree. Someone hauling a cart of something. Someone moving fast with headphones in, going nowhere in particular, same as us. Different languages passing each other on the same path, and none of it clashing. People find the same bench, the same patch of grass, the same slow Sunday, and share it without agreeing on anything first.