I Heart NY

I'm back in the city of my dreams...New York.
Sure I'm moving to Boston, not NY, but that don't mean that NY ain't my true love.
Seriously, I love this place like a person; yes, I admit to my sickness - I just don't want to do anything about it.

Finished my last day of work yesterday (thought I owe 2 days of writing) and hopped on a plane that night. I love the red eye; someone always has to have a 9 month old with colic. Funny thing is, I finished work yesterday but somehow I got 3 calls from work today. And I had to call a client. I'd like to be egotistic and say I have the magic touch, but I think it's just the jitters over the transfer of duties.

So I'm in NY and staying with my sister at Barnard. Yes, I'm 29 and staying with my sister who's in college - but it's cheap and I'm on a budget so I figure it's not such a bad deal. The thing is that being up here is bringing back a total wave of memories from my years at Columbia.
And since my years at Columbia were almost solely tied up with one ex-boyfriend, these memories are bittersweet to say the least.

I walked down College Walk, with the trees all lit with little twinkly lights, and remembered walking the same path and having a great argument over a movie here, stealing a good night kiss over there; in this corner he peed - in fact, I could do a whole walking tour of campus where my ex relieved himself. I thought of the friends I made here and those that I lost contact with over the years. I wondered how my life would have been different had I not been an Orthodox Jew during my college years and what sort of person I might have been now. I remembered all the classes I took, the professors who were interesting, some who weren't, and a few who were just downright odd. I walked by the West End and recalled how after my last final in college, my Shakespeare professor took a few of us out for drinks; we all had beers and he downed 2 straight gins before any of us had finished our brewskis. He then went on to tell us the secrets of the English Department. And I thought about what I imagined my life would be like at this point and how I'm a million miles away from any vision of my future I held in college.

I was also walking all over my old neighborhood from where I lived after college. And of course nostalgia got me again.
All the friends I had in my 20's are married, with kids. Most of them no longer live in Manhattan, some even happily so. I wandered past the 96th 1/9 station where I had waited for so many subways; I walked around on Central Park West where I had to wait for everyone to get their ass in gear every time we'd go out; I went past the supermarkets I used to swear by and the Korean grocers who'd save my ass when I needed something at 11 pm on a Tuesday night. I passed three of my old apartments and knew that no one I'd known lived there anymore.

All in all it's been a day of memories and a wee bit hard to assimilate to be honest.
My ex is now married with 2 kids. I try to remember what he looks like, but all I have flashes of features and expressions.
The friends I had when I lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan have scattered all over the East Coast. I haven't met most of their children, though I have flipped thru the myriad of photos sent over the internet.

It's all different and of course I'm different. I'm more cynical and more jaded, but at the same time less certain of what is actually going on with this world. I'm better traveled and more anxious to see the rest of the planet. I have just as little direction as I did in 1996, for better and for worse. And as such I'm not closer to whatever I might believe is my purpose in life, but I'm trying harder to enjoy the ride.

Over the next few days, I'll be having reunion upon reunion with friends from my year in Israel and friends from college. Despite my status as the sole single person in these festivities, I'm going to try to keep a stiff upper lip, though I can't promise anything. I will get all tarted up for this fancy shmancy wedding on Sunday and try to keep up with the insane schedule I planned for myself.

But most of all I hope to try and enjoy this city that I have missed with heart and soul for the past three years. Every short trip is just a tease. And I hope, one day, to be lucky enough and worthy, to move back here and start a whole new life with new memories to be made - and I hope I'll be just that much stronger to be able move beyond the personal history I feel every time I walk these streets.

(Sorry for the maudlin aspect of this post...being back in NY after 7 months will do that to me)