Que Taylor Swift's "Welcome to New York." I've been trying to imagine that song is playing over loudspeakers as I navigate my first week back here. It adds an ironic cheer to my exhausting, abusively hot days of interviews and street meat and Starbucks bathrooms, blow-drying the sweat stains from my clothes. I imagined the bass kick in after a random man attacked me on 14th Street and 7th Avenue - he spit on me, screamed "Get the f*^$ out of my face, and then whipped me with a dirty tee shirt. And I walked away singing it, "Welcome to New York. It's been waiting for you."
I'm remembering what it's like to live here. I've been gone long enough that my shoulders relaxed, my neck unwound. Now my shoulders are rising to my ears again. My feet are starting to callous and blister. You must always be on guard here. I'm remembering. It's still summer and the heat has a tight grip on the city. The sun beats down through the buildings, reflects on the metal, warms the streets like an oven. It feels stale and also wonderful -- thinking of the bitter cold that's coming faster than we think. I crave the chill in the air and I also resent it. Every year I hold desperately onto the freedoms that come with Summer and early Fall - the feeling that anything is possible nothing out of reach.
Still, the air feels like a moist womb. I'm remembering not to walk too close to the buildings because the air conditioners drip down like rain clouds. I'm remembering to relish the breeze that comes from the train passing through the subway platform, sweet relief. The subway tunnels are sweaty and suffocating but also bright, loud with the colors of what everyone's wearing, Palpable energy. People are alive. Many of them are visiting, experiencing New York for the first time. A trip they planned for years, maybe. They help me remember not to take this for granted. What's a lifetime worth of planning for someone is a 20-minute train ride for me, for us, for the crazy people that live here. In many ways we do have it all. And that's what we pay for, isn't it?
Yesterday I put my roommate's electric kettle on the stove. Here's where I admit I've never used an electric kettle before. I didn't flinch when it was smoking and starting to smell like burning plastic. I just took a shower and then came back to the stove on fire.