May 26, 2008

“Honey, there’s a spider in your bathroom the size of a Buick.”

I can understand that after so many years in New York there suddenly comes a point where you no longer want to wake up to the sound of traffic outside your window anymore, when you prefer birds chirping to car horns. I can understand, that after so many years of living beyond your means, always being pushed up against strangers in subways and elevators, always rushing to the next big thing - that there comes a time when there’s nothing left to do, but leave.

I’m not there yet. Most of the time I don’t think I ever will be, because at this point there’s no other place I’d rather go (despite frequent outbursts to friends that I’m going to move to Tulsa where I’m convinced everything is somehow much easier). There’s no other city in the world where you can experience the amount of culture that’s available to you on a daily basis, which is reason enough to stay. However I understand (the longer I’m here), how important it is to find meaning despite the number of museums and galleries and theatres and French-Brazilian fusion restaurants that are available to you. In the end what’s important to you is what’s important, and if you can’t find it here, you have to find it somewhere else.

That’s why I went to Brooklyn for a going-away party of sorts (downtown 6 to 14th street, 14th street to the L, the L to Lorimer, Lorimer to the G - am I there yet?!) for a friend who is skipping town next week in search of something more. By the time I got to Clinton/Washington Ave I was about ready to leave New York myself (surely it shouldn’t be this difficult just to get somewhere on a Sunday night?), and as I sat there in the small plastic chairs in the pebble-strewn backyard of this bar that touts its own grill (you bring the meat) drinking more than I anticipated (can you ever really anticipate?), I started to think about this city and what makes us stay.

We’re all drawn here for our own reasons, we make the conscious decision that this is the place that’s going to shape the rest of our lives. It will give us the opportunities we need, help us meet the people we want, enable us to become something we hope and dream to be. But thing I was realizing sitting there with the large colored lights strung upon the fence to illuminate my thoughts - was what do you do when you come to the point when this city is no longer enough? And (much more to the point), is that even be possible?

Well of course it is. Like anything else in life things change, and the idea of what you want and who you are and what’s important to you can shift, seemingly behind your back. It’s easier than you think to find yourself in the middle of a foreign street in Brooklyn far from home wondering how you got there. So at the end of the night when people were all heading home, (I was the only soul to venture back to Manhattan) this time (walking four extra blocks to the A, the A to Fulton, Fulton to the uptown 6...) I had a lot of time to assess that tricky and ever-changing question: what do I want?

In the time it took me to get home I'd found my answer, and the answers is really quite simple. It’s like in Annie Hall when she calls Alvy over to her apartment in a panic just to kill the huge spider in her tub. I hate spiders (always have) and have a terrible time working up the courage to dispose of them, but after a few years here I know that I have people I could call in the very instance that there was a spider the size of a Buick in my bathroom.

So yes, life and what we want changes all the time and it’s a good idea to keep asking yourself that question in the middle of such a busy and fast-paced place where it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important. But for me, what I want is just to be here (no matter how long it takes from Brooklyn) with people I can count on. So unless and until I no longer have someone in New York who I can call in the middle of the night to kill a spider in my tub - I figure I’ll stick around.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since my mother lives in Tulsa, I can't agree with you on that one thing. But I agree with you on the rest. See you next week! xoxo Katie

Anonymous said...

What curious question

Anonymous said...

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