Hi from New York!

This is about beginning to understand what a beautifully strange love this city is. From the pages of my journal to you, here’s what I’ve been thinking about in nyc.

MONDAY MORNING

There’s an obvious energy to New York on the weekends, but there is also a unique vibe that floods a Monday morning. And I almost prefer it. On the weekends, everyone is out with friends or doing something fun. It’s easy to be drawn in. But on the weekdays, you get to see life as it really is. You get to see people going to work and making business calls and stopping at the market. If you want to see what it’s actually like to live in New York, hop on the train at about five p.m. The cars are jam packed, full of people carrying groceries and briefcases and small children. Everyone looks exhausted and eager to get home and even though you’re packed in like sardines, there’s a sense that every one is inside of their own unique world. It feels a bit like the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, where each person is an entire galaxy, existing among a sea of others. Separate, but together, you form a whole. You’re a part of something.

This morning that meant waking up to hear two Brooklyn accents cussing each other out in the street below. I smiled over the profanity. Good morning New York. I walked to get coffee and write and overheard a cute couple telling their friend that they just got engaged. Adorable. I also heard a guy chatting with the barista about how he has to go into Chelsea for work today and about how beautiful it smells over there this time of year. But he said it with a cheeky smile. He said it like he was talking about a family member, the one that he can’t help but love. And isn’t that what New York is? A strange love? One that drives you mad, but also the one that you can never seem to want to be apart from?

Because it’s hard, living here. You barely have to look up to see that. Little things require more effort. For example, I saw a mom stop in front of the subway station today, unbuckle her toddler from the stroller, fold the stroller, and descend the stairs to the steamy underground station with the kid under one arm and the wheels under the other. When she got to the bottom, she popped the stroller back open and strapped him back in. The whole thing looked very city-savvy to me. She was a total pro. Or, there’s the whole adventure that is grocery shopping. At home, I get in my car and drive to the store. I carry my groceries from the store to the parking lot, maybe fifty feet. Here? You can always pop into the cute bodegas that give Brooklyn it’s neighborhood energy, but to go a big grocery store? You walk to the subway station. You wait for the train. You walk from the train to the store. Then, you do the entire thing in reverse, but with grocery bags. Many, many blocks. Many, many stairs. But worth it to look out your window and see a pre-war building, worth it to have a hundred different worlds at your fingertips, worth it to be a part of the beastly organism that is New York. You’re tired and broke and cramped, but you’re here. Strange love.

WHAT I DO ALONE IN NEW YORK

My plan for each day is always up in the air. I find that if I sit down and try to decide where to go or what to see, that I end up researching forever and can’t decide anyway. So I just get on a train and see where it takes me. Today that was Greenpoint. I wandered around, ate an apple, and watched people. I popped into some cute boutiques and thought of my mom, who, wherever she goes, is most interested in the shopping. From there, I impulsively hopped on a train to Manhattan, still dying to see the library in Bryant Park, which, let me just say, is not what you think of when you picture a public library. I must have looked a little too amazed at the marble staircases and hanging chandeliers amidst the mahogany bookshelves because the guy checking my bag laughed and asked where I was from. It’s not my fault, in San Diego the public libraries are full of homeless people sleeping or shooting heroine into their eyeballs. One does not actually go inside of one just to hang out. But here? This library is a cross between The Met and Hogwarts. I melted. I sat in one of the stately reading rooms, clad with artwork and chandeliers, and pictured myself studying there in a black turtleneck on a cold rainy day. I put in my earbuds and played classical piano as I wandered the marble floors, staring at the art. Transcendent.

And then you step back outside. You’re in the middle of the Fifth Avenue and there’s a guy in a suit on a business call and a group of lost tourists about to run you over. Back to the modern world. I strolled Bryant Park, watching locals taking their lunch breaks and parents feeding their toddlers before ducking back onto the train and coming home.

THE REALITY OF BEING HERE

So it’s lovely. To be alone. I can do whatever I want, at any given moment. But it’s also a lot. I don’t think I would be human if I said it wasn’t. Everywhere I look there are stylish couples and friends gallivanting around the city together, getting coffee and drinks together. I want that. I want to know these cool people who read books on the train and wear funky outfits. I walk around Park Slope and look into the windows of the Brownstones and feel this intense longing to be on the inside of one, to have a whole life here. I want to bring coffee and pastries to my friend’s apartment on Saturday mornings and a bottle of wine for Sunday dinners. I want to be connected. I want a job and an apartment and a mental map of how the trains run. Visiting is lovely, but it’s like floating. I’m floating through the city, untethered, pretending.

I read this quote the other day by Delia Ephron that read New Yorkers are born all over the country, and then they come to the city and it strikes them, Oh, this is who I am. That’s how it feels to be here. Which is not a small thing when you have spent your whole life living in a place that has made you feel like an alien. It’s a bit like what I imagine it must feel like to meet your soulmate and just know that it’s going to be them. I see how hard it is to live here. I can feel how lonely it will be at first. It’s not all poetry and roses. There are lows. But I still choose it. And thank god because that’s how I know that it’s real. If I didn’t feel the lows, if I didn’t get lonely, loving New York would not feel so special. It would feel like a fantasy. But because I feel these things and still love it, I know that I can actually do this. It’s kind of like how it’s easy to have a crush on someone that you don’t actually know because they can be whoever you want them to be. And then you meet them, and most of the time, they aren’t what you thought. They aren’t what you dreamed them to be. Loving New York from California felt like having that crush. It was a cliché, a fever dream. I worried that it would disintegrate in my hands as soon as it became real. But now I’m here. I’m spending my days and nights seeing the best and worst of this city and I choose all of it. That makes this all feel more real.

Sending love, m.

JOIN THE FUN

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