New York

I visited New York for the first time almost exactly nine years ago, during the May of my junior year of college. I met him about a month later in Seattle where we're both from. In both cases I was pretty much hooked immediately and it's fair to say that neither one has made it all the way out of my system yet. The fact that I'm saying goodbye to him on the street corner on this sunny Tuesday is but one way that my past and present collide so hard in this place that it's almost unbearable. It leaves me with this reeling sensation that time is collapsing around me, that all the things I've done in the past nine years didn't really happen, or even if they did, they don't really matter.

I am back in New York for a few days for work and this visit feels much better than the last. Last time was only a few months after I'd moved away and it was too soon. It was also in July, which is generally a terrible time to visit New York. April is one of the few times of year (May, September and early October being the others) that you could really be convinced that New York is the most idyllic city you've ever seen, with all of the restaurants opening out onto the street and people eating and drinking and looking happy all over the sidewalks at all hours. There is nothing I miss more about New York than the restaurants.

Actually, I miss my friends even more. I had dinner my first night in town with three publishing girlfriends who I've known since we were all assistants. Back then we were excited to be working around books at all, now they're editors and the head of an agency respectively and we had lots to celebrate, including one freshly minted bestseller. In ten years, I tell them, we'll say we knew each other when.

Being back, I can't quite fathom how I ever lived in a place so cramped and so loud with so many people (does that make me sound old? I did just turn 30), how did I write here? How did I sleep? But I did live here, and I did love it.

I'm so glad I came to New York. Maybe just a little more glad that I left.

let's hear it for New York

I spoke to a former colleague yesterday and she asked me if I missed New York. I told her I didn't. I said I was very nostalgic about my time there but I was glad to be living here. Today I spoke to a friend who was thinking seriously about leaving New York and did I have any wisdom to share? I told her that making the decision was the hardest part; when you live in New York, it becomes a big part of your identity. I remember wondering who I would even be if I didn't live in the city I had built my entire post-college existence. Where would I work? Who would I spend my time with? What would I DO if I left? But I did leave and I gradually figured out the answers to all of those questions.

I was burnt out by the time I left. I remember being in the cab to the airport with my one-way ticket back to Seattle; just as we were hurtling out of the Holland Tunnel, I looked over my shoulder and saw the city behind me. I felt nothing, just relief to be moving on.

On a day like this, when it finally breaks 70 in Seattle and the water and mountains are so dazzling, it's hard to imagine wanting to live anywhere else. And yet...once in while I have a pang of longing for New York. I don't miss the place so much as I miss a certain feeling I had when I lived there: a feeling that something amazing could happen on any given day, that a night could lead just about anywhere. Everything was so exhaustingly extreme in New York; most of the time Seattle feels refreshingly normal, but every once in a while, the part of me that is still 23 finds it a little dull. The 29 year old part of me knows that I traded in the thrills for a more consistent sort of happiness and that adult life consists of many of the these bargains and the trick is knowing when to shift the balance.

But just because I don't want to get back together doesn't mean I don't still heart you NY, probably always will.