1…in search of a home

LGA, March 31. – Today is the last one of the glorious 4,230 days that I’ve been a New Yorker. I had landed in New York with two suitcases and a laptop. Eleven-plus years and two computers later, I spent an entire week purging and packing the things I’ve accumulated. But even after an endless amount of trash I discarded, the movers took away 10 pieces of furniture and 28 boxes of stuff, of which three ashtrays are the only surviving items that I had brought from the old country. A few of my belongings are staying behind, scattered all over with neighbors, friends, friends of friends, and complete strangers. I hope I’ve left my mark on the city.

I had arrived on a beautiful late-summer day and am leaving on an equally beautiful day in early spring. In between, I’ve lived in two apartments in the same neighborhood, but visited (meaning I at least had a meal) the other four boroughs, as well as twenty-one of the United States plus the District of Columbia. But my favorite sight was from the front steps of my school on Fifth Avenue: I loved to watch the evening set on the city – over the Empire State Building (lit in different colors almost every night), to my right, and the Twin Towers with the lights left on in their many windows, to my left. Those twilight moments, the shimmering lights, people and traffic rushing past me, the straight arrow of the avenue in front of me, the dark skyscrapers made look taller and slimmer by the dusky but still light sky in the background suggested endless possibilities awaiting me in this city. Strangely, the haste, the noise, the seeming ephemera of the place made me feel rooted, belong, at home and at peace.

And now I am on the road again. When I was running around collecting empty boxes from my neighborhood liquor and book stores, I saw many others moving in and out. It had always struck me as characteristically American to uproot oneself with such ease, to leave things, people, and places behind, to pursue the new and the unknown with such optimism. Supposedly, I am now doing just that, although the ease and hope are yet to be found somewhere along the road. On the other hand, I love a road trip, so maybe I should be thinking about my departure from New York as a long, uncharted excursion to America that will one day bring me back to my point of origin. But I will always remember what CAG and I read in some New York-dedicated book we stumbled upon at an airport giftshop when he was leaving the city a few years back: “Those who live outside New York must be kidding.” I hope the joke ultimately is not on us.

To mark my departure from my adopted hometown, I am renaming this blog. On the origins and meaning of its new name – in the next post.