Week Twenty Nine

Bending Toward the Horizon

My neck was stretched, head resting on the cushion of the backseat of my parent's station wagon. From there, I could see the glow of thousands of rectangles - each one encompassing a life. Driving up 3rd Avenue and over to the FDR, we'd make our way toward Connecticut as the dark of night fell over the city.

Each time we left, all I'd want to do is return. There was so much excitement, so much passion, so much more in New York City. And it was in those early 80's trips into the city that my life gained a singular purpose: I would one day live in this great town.

While my classmates drew pictures of dragons and army men, my pages were filled with pencil drawings of buildings; their maze of grey structures bending toward the horizon.

By the time I made it to New York after college, they were still hauling truckloads of lower Manhattan to Fresh Kills. It was a city looking to regain its footing. It needed direction. It needed to breathe. And because of that, we made an excellent pair.

It took me about a year before I considered it "home," and returning from trips in the country, I'd always be able to exhale once I rounded a corner and saw the skyscrapers of midtown rising in the distance. I've never felt so connected to anywhere I've lived. The pace, the movement, the rumble of New York just seemed to line up perfectly with what I needed out of a town.

It was the guy pushing an AM New York in my face as I walk to the subway. It was knowing my laundry man - whose name I'd never bothered to learn, having already pulled my name up on the computer and hauled my bag of neatly folded clothes onto the counter by the time I made it down the steps. It was Central Park, and Riverside. It was the sunset over the Hudson on Pier I. It was the futile attempts to catch a cab on 8th Avenue after a night at the bars. It was early morning bike rides down the Hudson, or brushing past picture snapping tourists in Columbus Circle. It was the museums and the galleries, the stores in the West Village and the odor of Chinatown. It was sitting in the center of the universe and being able to reach out and touch it.

I fell in love in this city - a town perfectly designed to generate love. And to think of the countless friends this city has given me requires a herculean effort. But really, it's that New York has given me so much, that in a small way I feel as if I'll always be a part of it and it of me.

I've never been able to accurately explain why I love New York to those who've never lived there. Most look at it like an act of self-flagellation. And really, while you can visit or work in New York, to truly understand New York, you must live here. You must breath in the air for years. You must become the city.

A decade after I first moved into Manhattan, a box truck filled with every piece of IKEA furniture I'd accumulated over the decade came to move me out. It was time to take the next step in my life and while my years in New York were legendary, I needed to, forgive the trite expression, find literal greener pastures.

With a silent nod to the city as the truck made its way over Triboro Bridge and toward New England, I told myself that this wasn't goodbye, this was just an expansion of who I needed to be.

And even now, out here among everything else, you can still find me bending toward the horizon.