It’s always when I don’t plan it.

It’s always when I am on my way to another place, to another errand, to something that was not this. And then there it is—my new favorite café, neighborhood, bookstore.

This is a diary-esque post, divulging those city shenanigans, solely because my mom thinks they are interesting.

SATURDAY: WILLIAMSBURG

It was Saturday and the sun was out so my California self felt drawn to water.

I was walking through Williamsburg, on my way to read on the East River, when the lethal and relentless spring wind quite literally blew me into a boutique. It was part coffee shop, part home decor, part vintage art and clothing store, as one tends to find when wandering through Brooklyn. A candle burned on the counter and giant walls of iron and glass opened up onto a backyard patio. I ordered a coffee and sat outside under walls that crawled with ivy and medical students quizzing each other on cardiovascular functions. I loved it because it felt like someone’s house, as if I were at a neighbor’s having coffee on the weekend. I put 1920s jazz music on and read Toni Morrison, the afternoon sun falling like honey over my hands.

SUNDAY: FARMER’S MARKETS & CENTRAL PARK

Hidden like gems around the city on the weekends are various farmer’s markets. I’m trying to find them all. On Sundays on the Upper West Side, there was one with carts of apples and loaves of fresh, brown bread. Local honey and carrots with stems so fresh that they still held the memory of the earth. People walk around with fresh flowers and iced lemonades, empanadas from food trucks and the occasional clunky canvas from some vintage art stand. Everyone seems to have injected the first warm rays of light directly into their veins and you can feel it.

I end up in Central Park, remembering an an essay by Colson Whitehead about spring in Central Park that I read back in high school. I remember his descriptions of the fervency with which people flocked to any square inch of open grass, the chaos of the commotion, the shedding of clothes, the desperation for something that is not winter. He wasn’t exaggerating.

I stepped into the park, lulled by some jazz band playing in the distance, and found myself wading knee deep into a carnival of life. The personality of the city has warmed with the weather. Suddenly, you can see people’s faces and arms, winter layers having been eagerly stuffed to the backs of closets. They rode bicycles and jogged and danced with their kids to the music. Carousels spun and friends gathered on picnic blankets with sunglasses on their heads. Look to the water and spot couples in rowboats, seamlessly gliding over the glassy water like some old movie scene. Audrey Hepburn’s voice singing “Moon River” floated through my ears and the whole thing seemed hazy and dreamlike.

MONDAY: FINDING FORT GREENE

On Monday I had to make a mundane return that led me to accidentally discover a new favorite neighborhood. I had never heard anything about Fort Greene, had never seen it on any tourist guides, and had never been. It was supposed to be a random, inconvenient errand. But from the moment I crawled out of the subway, I fell for it.

Surrounded by some of the most architecturally detailed and historically charming buildings I have ever seen in New York, I was in awe. Manhattan is regally, unsurprisingly, stunning. Central Park is stupidly picturesque, and SoHo is just as extravagant as the movies let on. But there’s something about Brooklyn, something in the tree-lined streets and ice cream trucks and local bookstores that carries a warmth. You known that you are someplace that no where else could ever feel like.

I made my return and began to wander. I dipped down random streets, saying hello to elderly people who were grinning as they tended to their newly blooming sidewalk gardens. They watered the tulips shooting out of their window boxes like little cartoon people moving through a cartoon world. It was so idyllic I couldn’t stand it. I kept walking, feeling the first hints of warm humidity dripping into the air, reminding me of my summer trips and how fervently I longed for them to last. How decidedly I knew I could stay here forever.

Naturally, I wandered right into a local bookstore, feeling the wood floors creak as I stepped inside. I did what I always do, going from shelf to shelf, running my hands over titles I know and love, remembering where and when I read them, how and and why they mattered. I add new titles to my ever-growing “to be read” list, always measuring my interest based on the very first line of the book. That first line has a moral obligation to be completely gorgeous. It’s got to give me chills.

I ended up in the arts section as if lulled my magnets, drawn right into a section dedicated to Basquiat. I don’t know how long I stood there, only that time blurred a little as I skimmed essays written about some of my favorite pieces. I flipped through the prints, staring at pictures of him standing on street corners in Manhattan, creating art. I thought of the Chelsea Hotel and of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe and Joan Didion and Edward Hopper and all of the great art that this city has incubated and given life to. You get the feeling that the ghosts of greats are lurking around every corner, reminding you of what has been here before. Of who has been here and all that has happened right under your feet.

I flipped through book after book, falling into the glossy pages and growing increasingly energized by the art. It was the same feeling as wandering through a gallery, getting lost in a sensation you can’t ever quite name.

I stepped outside to meet the suddenly hot air, pushing me into that fatally unbreakable habit of needing to grab an iced coffee whenever out and about. I give in. Coffee in hand, I stroll up and down rows of Brownstones, watching families pile into cars and grandmother’s sip tea on their stoops. A park opened up before me and I joined the locals, all stretched out like lizards in the sun after a long winter. I take off my shoes and sit in the grass under a newly blossomed tree, thinking of that one quirky class I took in college. The one that met outside, under the trees. The one that taught me that our bodies release oxytocin when we smell the earth, bonding us to the very first mother we ever had. I felt peace. There’s never really peace when you visit a place. You’re hyped up on adrenaline and determined to make the most of the time you have in this other world. One foot is always back home. But when you move, both feet get to touch the ground. There is a sense of quiet belonging.

If you ask me what my favorite thing about moving here has been, I would say that. The peace that comes from knowing you belong here, that you can just sit in the park for a while and then go home and open the windows and cook dinner and know that you don’t have to leave.

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