Two Suitcases, A Lifetime

I showed up here roughly a year and a half ago with two heavy suitcases in tow and an array of other bags slung over my eager and determined shoulders.  Sidewalks were pounded, apartments were scoured, temporary homes were squatted in, subways were hesitantly navigated, and after two months or so of this frightening carousel, I settled in to a cool and spacious home in a little neighborhood called Williamsburg.  It was then, finally, that I began to think I could make a home of New York City.

And I did make it my home.  I discovered things with my own feet and eyes and ears and nose that had been discovered by so many before me but for the first time were being recorded in my own consciousness.  I wandered bookstores, traversed avenues, chose favorite benches in parks, and began to wear the paths of my own feet familiar.  I made new friends and then I made more new friends and each one had more and more in common with this new self I was creating.  I turned 30 years old, published a book, drank too much sometimes, missed my good friends far away, traveled out of the city to get perspective.  Perspective that looked like the Manhattan skyline disappearing and then reappearing days or weeks later looking exactly the same.  This is a city that changes by the minute and yet is completely timeless.

I rode a bike that didn’t go anywhere twenty-some times, sweat dripping even from my eyeballs, just to prove to myself that I could.  I jumped off a platform holding only onto a thin trapeze bar and let go at the precise moment a stranger in flame-printed tights caught me by the hands.  I fell in love with a man who lived far away from the city, in my past, and one day he showed up and said, “I live here now too.”  And the city was anew again with springtime and love and new tastes and sights and flutters of the heart.  And now I’m leaving, full and happy, like I’d just finished a luxurious meal course by course which has made me sleepy and euphoric.  I am satisfied.  This city has fed me bitter, savory, rich, and sweet but never bland.

What will I miss most?  It’s hard to say yet, for the imprints on my memory are still too close to see the whole picture.  Will I come back?  Absolutely, though I’ll be changed yet again and so will bewhat I discover when I come.  Can I be happy somewhere else?  Surely, for I am a nomad, an adventurer, and my home is within myself.

Tennessee was a wild horse that I tamed and made my own.  New York is a wild bull that bucked me off, but only after my eight seconds were up.  I’ve had my ride.  I have no regrets; nothing was missed; not a moment was wasted, even the rough ones.

I leave here today the same way I came – with two heavy suitcases in tow and an array of other bags slung over my triumphant shoulders – and yet I’m completely different.

NYC and Me, A Quarterly Review

It’s time for the dreaded quarterly review.  I’ve been in New York just over three months now, and some moments feel like it’s old hat, like I’ve been there forever and hardly know another way of life.  Other moments feel like I’ve just arrived and it’s all still so shiny and new and incredible.  So, New York, how have you fared this first quarter?

We got out to a rough start, you and I, with the dramatic apartment hunt (my saving grace was MDNY’s Danielle Hamburger), and the illness.  “Visit New York all you want!” the city tells you, but the second you try to live here it gives you a glass-shards-in-your-chest cough, fever, and no place to live.  Review: Poor, all around.

Once the illness began to subside and I narrowed down my home search to one specific neighborhood, learned many more train routes than I knew from my visits before, and began to make some new friends and prospective clients, New York started to seem like something I could handle.  And New York, I would guess, began to look at me as someone who could handle it.  I visited MOMA, saw Once on Broadway, got a library card, and began to make weekly trips to the farmer’s market and flea market.  Review: A solid “good.”

The quarter ended well.  I moved into my apartment, signed a couple of new clients, got to know my new friends a little better, hired a new employee, began running at the track down the street, and, generally, feel like I’m just living life in New York like anybody else.  Also, I saw two ballets, dressed up 20’s style for a picnic and jazz fest at governor’s island, which also involved my first ferry ride, and I think the people at my favorite coffee shop almost know my name.  Review: Great!

What’s next?  Two weeks of traveling; time away which will undoubtedly make me eager to return to the city with fresh eyes.  Seeing Heather Anderson in The Wild Party, hopefully throwing my first party in the city, and who knows what else!  It’s New York, folks. Unpredictability at it’s finest.

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