NYC
It's strange to feel such an intense love for the place my most miserable eight months took place in. It's also strange to be so magnetically drawn to a place that is the polar opposite of any place I might describe as my ideal locale. I love solitude and open spaces and nature - what place in the world lacks those things more severely than New York?
And yet New York is the sort of place where you can be totally alone and lost in your head while amidst a crowd of eight million people. I don't know anywhere in the world that is less judgmental. Even San Francisco, the pinnacle of acceptance, feels suffocatingly judgmental at times about judgment (or many other things that they like to think of as judgmental: small government, fiscal conservatism, any notion of personal accountability...) New Yorkers' best and most unique talent is to gaze steadily directly forward no matter what insanity the surrounding people are engaged in. "I don't find this scenario the least bit unusual, and I most certainly am not disturbed or distracted by it", their eyes say, as they scan intently over the Wall Street Journal. I actually feel more alone walking the streets of Manhattan than any small town I've lived in. There's - mathematically - about a one in a million chance I would run into someone I know on Park avenue, yet every time I go to Wal-mart in my hometown I glance furtively around for the inevitable acquaintances, trying to avoid awkward conversations or looking too thoroughly foreign.
New York is the kind of place that is unbelievably miserable if you are miserable, and unbelievably miraculous if you can allow yourself to notice it. In late February of 2008, I literally danced down Fulton avenue after work when I actually made it home in time to see the last hints of the sunset on the horizon, after months of darkness. My biggest regret is not calling in sick [I'm far too ethical in this respect] on the one day when the world was coated white with slushy sleddable snow. In hindsight I have no idea how I was able to so love my every minute in New York despite the job misery. I guess the human spirit, when determined to maintain sanity, re-weights its priorities so that a 60 hour week of counting down seconds until you can leave and inventing research project just to have something to distract yourself with is made up for by staying out until 4am on a Saturday night, jumping up and down in a goth club basement not caring in the least about how idiotic you look, and then eating a slice of unbelievably delicious NY-style pizza while traipsing all the way across Manhattan to the subway line that goes directly do your apartment so you won't have to wait 45 minutes at each transfer.
Or maybe it was the intense, fairy-tale love affair. New York is so unique and crazily fast-paced that it hardly seems real, and an intense misguided relationship plays off of the city energy in a positive-feedback loop of delusional romanticism. The frenetic, hedonistic, starry-eyed hopefulness of the city feeds on newborn passion to create an energetic and growing tornado of emotion and excitement, turning a workaday experimental diversion from life into a dreamlike novel of a memory. If I had not met this perfectly complementary personality to share and nurture the drama with, perhaps I would be happy to move on from the crown jewel of civilization.
Or maybe it's a more mundane draw; simply a compatible personality of hard work and hard play and minding your own business. An obsession with objectivity and efficiency. Persistent insistence that things have not plateaued, that there is always something new to throw your energy into. Results matter more than presentation; grittiness is an acceptable byproduct of progress; casualties are inevitable and not a source of guilt. You take care of yourself and your loved ones, and I will do likewise, and we'll all be fine. Keep your nose down, mind your own business.
Whatever it is, I left my heart in New York City, and I only hope that I'll one day recover from being torn away and be able to fully embrace a new home.
And yet New York is the sort of place where you can be totally alone and lost in your head while amidst a crowd of eight million people. I don't know anywhere in the world that is less judgmental. Even San Francisco, the pinnacle of acceptance, feels suffocatingly judgmental at times about judgment (or many other things that they like to think of as judgmental: small government, fiscal conservatism, any notion of personal accountability...) New Yorkers' best and most unique talent is to gaze steadily directly forward no matter what insanity the surrounding people are engaged in. "I don't find this scenario the least bit unusual, and I most certainly am not disturbed or distracted by it", their eyes say, as they scan intently over the Wall Street Journal. I actually feel more alone walking the streets of Manhattan than any small town I've lived in. There's - mathematically - about a one in a million chance I would run into someone I know on Park avenue, yet every time I go to Wal-mart in my hometown I glance furtively around for the inevitable acquaintances, trying to avoid awkward conversations or looking too thoroughly foreign.
New York is the kind of place that is unbelievably miserable if you are miserable, and unbelievably miraculous if you can allow yourself to notice it. In late February of 2008, I literally danced down Fulton avenue after work when I actually made it home in time to see the last hints of the sunset on the horizon, after months of darkness. My biggest regret is not calling in sick [I'm far too ethical in this respect] on the one day when the world was coated white with slushy sleddable snow. In hindsight I have no idea how I was able to so love my every minute in New York despite the job misery. I guess the human spirit, when determined to maintain sanity, re-weights its priorities so that a 60 hour week of counting down seconds until you can leave and inventing research project just to have something to distract yourself with is made up for by staying out until 4am on a Saturday night, jumping up and down in a goth club basement not caring in the least about how idiotic you look, and then eating a slice of unbelievably delicious NY-style pizza while traipsing all the way across Manhattan to the subway line that goes directly do your apartment so you won't have to wait 45 minutes at each transfer.
Or maybe it was the intense, fairy-tale love affair. New York is so unique and crazily fast-paced that it hardly seems real, and an intense misguided relationship plays off of the city energy in a positive-feedback loop of delusional romanticism. The frenetic, hedonistic, starry-eyed hopefulness of the city feeds on newborn passion to create an energetic and growing tornado of emotion and excitement, turning a workaday experimental diversion from life into a dreamlike novel of a memory. If I had not met this perfectly complementary personality to share and nurture the drama with, perhaps I would be happy to move on from the crown jewel of civilization.
Or maybe it's a more mundane draw; simply a compatible personality of hard work and hard play and minding your own business. An obsession with objectivity and efficiency. Persistent insistence that things have not plateaued, that there is always something new to throw your energy into. Results matter more than presentation; grittiness is an acceptable byproduct of progress; casualties are inevitable and not a source of guilt. You take care of yourself and your loved ones, and I will do likewise, and we'll all be fine. Keep your nose down, mind your own business.
Whatever it is, I left my heart in New York City, and I only hope that I'll one day recover from being torn away and be able to fully embrace a new home.