My archive tells me it’s been something like 4 months since I wrote some kind of text-only post that has any kind of tenuous relation to things I’m actually doing. Which is sad.
I’m sitting in a very college lobby. Cheap seats with plaid cushions. There’s a small TV on in the corner, and the faint but distinctive sound of a vacuum cleaner or maybe a washing machine. This is well and truly college, and how I feel about this is TBD.
This hesitance I have in enjoying my situation right now - studying cheaply at a good school in the US - is thanks in no small part to the best and most formative few months of my life that I have just spent in New York.
My first night in New York this year was hectic. I got off my plane and joined a 3-hour queue in order to answer 3 questions and have someone stamp something. I eventually jumped in a cab to Astoria, Queens where my first 2 weeks in the city were spent. I greeted my host and within an hour was on a train to Brooklyn for a warehouse screening of a student film. Because, you know, Brooklyn. I said more hellos and drank beer and got back on the train, back to Astoria, where a party at my new “place” was in full swing. I drank and talked more until the jetlag and alcohol took their full toll and went to bed at 3am. Which, in New York party terms, is way too early. I fell asleep that first night not happy or relaxed, but New York’d (that night, “New York’d” meant “next to a girl I didn’t know and directly underneath a guy I definitely didn’t know and who definitely wasn’t getting up any time soon”)
My first night at USA college was spent unpacking, eating a sandwich with several other people and going to sleep at 8pm.
This disparity frustrates and hurts. I have neither the means or legal standing to be able to live outright in New York just yet. As soon as I do, I will kick its ass more than anyone ever has before. I’ve never been happier than in my happiest moments in New York, and have never been sadder than in my saddest. I have reservations in declaring New York the best city in the world, but it’s without a doubt the most interesting. If you spend a day at work, then go home to a sandwich and some Netflix, you are doing it in New York. If you spend the day shirtless in bed and trying grapefruit for the first time, you are doing it in New York. If you get some bad news from home and have to carry on regardless, you are doing it in New York.
I got on my plane on Friday evening distraught at the prospect of leaving the city and some of the best people I have ever met in my life. We were held on the runway for a while and shown several episodes of Parks and Recreation, which did surprisingly little to elevate my mood. 2 hours of sitting still later, we were told that no flights were leaving the east coast anytime soon, and we were going back to the gate.
I don’t think anyone working at La Guardia airport has ever 1) witnessed someone running off the plane and to the customer service desk to rebook their ticket at the speed I did, and 2) witnessed someone doing this with a smile on their face as big as the one I had. We moved to go back to the gate at 6pm, and I was outside my friend’s Brooklyn apartment, carry-on in tow, at 6.50.
It bears repeating that this summer was the best and most important I’ve had. While I’m horribly sad to leave the city and the people, I take great comfort and pleasure in the knowledge I have built bridges that will last a long time, and that it will never again be too long before I am, in one way or another, back.
For now, I will miss it despairingly. But one day this October, I am going to be sitting on a plane descending into the lights once again, anticipating the incredible adventure I am about to have and wondering where on earth the time went.
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