Lost in New York
The Most Wonderful Time of The…
[Most Horrible] Year
In all my glorious time on this earth, this year is the first Christmas that I’m spending alone. That sounds sad, and in some ways it is.
But really…it’s not the worst.
What I’ve learned about myself since emigrating 3,000 miles away from my home base is something that growing up in a close-knit community never gave me the opportunity to see. As far as it’s a blessing, being overwhelmed with community likewise doesn’t leave space for communion with one’s self very often.
Turns out, I had to come to the most crowded city in the country to find that what I value most is alone time. Spoiler alert: I’m actually an introvert!—just one that’s been raised as an extrovert and happens to be quite good at people. So good, in fact, that I had fooled even myself into believing it.
Don’t get me wrong! I adore my family—both blood and especially chosen—and revel in any time we get to spend together in celebration. Eating and drinking and being in the presence of those you love is the absolute warmest feeling a human can hope for on this godforsaken earth. It’s my favorite! I’m a gift giver by nature [and by nurture], but quality time rules all in my love game.
One of my favorite things about New York is that you can be simultaneously surrounded by thousands of people while still being completely alone.
[Again, sounds sad, but hold on!]
The best tonic for an aching heart is going into the city and wandering around.
First, this means I get uninterrupted time to read real books on the train. When that’s not enough to hold my interest, I love watching people go about their business and imagining what else they’ve got on for the day.
All over this city I rejoice in listening to languages I don’t speak and enjoying the musicality of the unfamiliar cadence, I cherish getting catcalled in varying degrees of decency, and adore getting lost only to happen upon somewhereI’ve read about in one magazine or another, from one era or another.
There’s a connectivity to it all—you! to the past-present-future!—and also a mutually assured independence amidst all the noise.
We’re all here doing our own thing, together.
“Giovanni’s Room” James Baldwin, 1956
“I like New York, too,” I said, uncomfortably aware that my voice had a defensive ring, “but New York is very beautiful in a very different way.”
He frowned. “In what way?”
“No one,” I said, “who has never seen it can possibly imagine it. It’s very high and new and electric—exciting.” I paused. “It’s hard to describe. It’s very—twentieth century.”
“You find Paris is not of this century?” He asked with a smile.
His smile made me feel a little foolish. “Well,” I said, “Paris is old, is many centuries. You feel, in Paris, all the time gone by. That isn’t what you feel in New York—” He was smiling. I stopped.
“What do you feel in New York?” he asked.
“Perhaps you feel,” I told him, “all the things to come. There’s such power there, everything is in such movement. You can’t help wondering—I can’t help wondering—what it will all be like—many years from now.”
“Many years from now? When we are all dead and New York is old?”
“Yes,” I said. “When everyone is tired, when the world—for Americans—is not so new.”
It feels this year has lasted 100 years.
I feel 100 years old. Like I’m there already, in the future, rewatching a beautiful time in my 30’s—a time when I feel I’ve finally come into my own, that I am pulling it all together and aiming my entire being in one direction, where I know who I am and what intend to do about it—rot on the vine.
In my soul, I am now at the end of it, recanting what I can [and would like to] remember and inevitably forgetting the good and the bad. Either way it’s gone. Passed. The Past.
Who’s to say what will become of us after this year? I’m a firm believer that there really is no going “back to normal” because we’ve all been irrevocably changed in some way. I’m also a realist and know that humans are resilient and above all, crave the familiar—holidays, routines, dining indoors at your local restaurant without worrying about the airflow.
