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brigdhToday is a very lovely day.
I'm back in New York now (I think I've said that already, but maybe not), which I am finally done traveling, at least for a few months. In the last four months, I have been on planes from: New York to Ohio, Ohio to New York, New York to England, England to Athens, Athens to Cyprus, Cyprus to London, London to New York and Ohio to New York. And in all that, not once was my luggage lost, a plane missed, or a flight delayed for more than a few minutes. I even only got called over for extra searching by security once. Clearly I have the best airport luck of anyone ever. Although, come to think of it, I've never had my luggage lost, but perhaps that just proves my point.
I like being back in New York. It's not quite like any other city; London has the skyscrapers and the history, Columbus has my family and a skyline and districts I know by heart, like a mirror image, and Nicosia has character and individuality, a pretty little halved city with ancient Venetian walls and UN guards diving into the capitals of two different countries. But New York has that and still feels like a place where people live, a home and playground and market and setting. Even the parts of the city that are most gentrified, most designed to appeal to a tourist, still feel like that to me. Even Time Square, for all its ads and chain stores and crowds so huge they spill out into the streets, crowds so dense they feel like a mob that hasn't decided which way it wants to go, even Time Square has its people who are there to live in it: the guys selling ten-dollar watches and fake purses shouting and joking with their friends or customers, and the women in heels trying to shove across a sidewalk to make it to a show on time at one of the theaters all around there.
I missed New York while I was away. I 've never been homesick before (if you can call it homesickness when you've only lived someplace for a year); I've missed people, or a certain restaurant or store, but not whole places, just for their feel. I do love something indescribable, intangible about the city, the angle of its roofs against the sky, or the pattern of all those rectangular buildings- some taller, some shorter, white marble or grey stone or red brick- that shouldn't be different than any other city's but somehow is. I love the dusty purple of the night sky and the long, narrow horizons down the avenues and how the subway trains sway and roar and their brakes squeal in the stations, and how people move quick and sure to an exit or a transfer.
Today I went to the Union Square farmers' market, which is bigger this time of year, wrapping around three sides of the park, the south side with people selling paintings and photographs and t-shirts and candle-holders giving way to the west and north sides with vegetables and fruits and honey and flowers and houseplants, everything smelling like green growing things. I bought bread, a fresh loaf with white chewy insides and a crunchy crust. I missed bread in Cyprus; we ate homemade bread, but the only kind available was thick and tasteless, some trick of local wheat or cooking style making everyone's resemble rubber; and cheese, sharp cheddar, smelling strong even wrapped in paper; baby carrots, pale but thick and round, like little fingers; tiny strawberries the size of my littlest fingernail but so sweet, stronger-tasting than a huge berry; and my favorites, the heirloom tomatoes. They have so many of them right now, and in every variety: yellow and orange and red and green and purple, little tart green zebras striped in shades of grass and lemon, and big old germans, mustard colored with ketchup streaks coming up from the bottom, but sweet as sugar and big enough that one tomato easily weighs over a pound.
Then I sat in the sun for a while in the grassy part of the park, to watch the people. A man in his mid-twenties climbed a tree until he got as high as the branches could hold him, perched there for a few minutes, and then came back down; he was wearing a bright yellow t-shirt that was just the color of the underside of the leaves when the sun shone through them. Across the street, a man stood on the roof of a building, far enough away that he was half the size of a dime. He had dark hair and stood with his back to me, wearing only a pair of pale grey sweatpants, so the line of his spine was visible when he leaned back against the railing at the edge of the roof. He stood there for a long time, half an hour or so, taking in the sun and doing nothing, until a man wearing only black shorts came and said something to him, and they went away together.
As I said, a lovely day. Though it would be even nicer if, you know, Racheline was not currently on the other side of the continent.
I'm back in New York now (I think I've said that already, but maybe not), which I am finally done traveling, at least for a few months. In the last four months, I have been on planes from: New York to Ohio, Ohio to New York, New York to England, England to Athens, Athens to Cyprus, Cyprus to London, London to New York and Ohio to New York. And in all that, not once was my luggage lost, a plane missed, or a flight delayed for more than a few minutes. I even only got called over for extra searching by security once. Clearly I have the best airport luck of anyone ever. Although, come to think of it, I've never had my luggage lost, but perhaps that just proves my point.
I like being back in New York. It's not quite like any other city; London has the skyscrapers and the history, Columbus has my family and a skyline and districts I know by heart, like a mirror image, and Nicosia has character and individuality, a pretty little halved city with ancient Venetian walls and UN guards diving into the capitals of two different countries. But New York has that and still feels like a place where people live, a home and playground and market and setting. Even the parts of the city that are most gentrified, most designed to appeal to a tourist, still feel like that to me. Even Time Square, for all its ads and chain stores and crowds so huge they spill out into the streets, crowds so dense they feel like a mob that hasn't decided which way it wants to go, even Time Square has its people who are there to live in it: the guys selling ten-dollar watches and fake purses shouting and joking with their friends or customers, and the women in heels trying to shove across a sidewalk to make it to a show on time at one of the theaters all around there.
I missed New York while I was away. I 've never been homesick before (if you can call it homesickness when you've only lived someplace for a year); I've missed people, or a certain restaurant or store, but not whole places, just for their feel. I do love something indescribable, intangible about the city, the angle of its roofs against the sky, or the pattern of all those rectangular buildings- some taller, some shorter, white marble or grey stone or red brick- that shouldn't be different than any other city's but somehow is. I love the dusty purple of the night sky and the long, narrow horizons down the avenues and how the subway trains sway and roar and their brakes squeal in the stations, and how people move quick and sure to an exit or a transfer.
Today I went to the Union Square farmers' market, which is bigger this time of year, wrapping around three sides of the park, the south side with people selling paintings and photographs and t-shirts and candle-holders giving way to the west and north sides with vegetables and fruits and honey and flowers and houseplants, everything smelling like green growing things. I bought bread, a fresh loaf with white chewy insides and a crunchy crust. I missed bread in Cyprus; we ate homemade bread, but the only kind available was thick and tasteless, some trick of local wheat or cooking style making everyone's resemble rubber; and cheese, sharp cheddar, smelling strong even wrapped in paper; baby carrots, pale but thick and round, like little fingers; tiny strawberries the size of my littlest fingernail but so sweet, stronger-tasting than a huge berry; and my favorites, the heirloom tomatoes. They have so many of them right now, and in every variety: yellow and orange and red and green and purple, little tart green zebras striped in shades of grass and lemon, and big old germans, mustard colored with ketchup streaks coming up from the bottom, but sweet as sugar and big enough that one tomato easily weighs over a pound.
Then I sat in the sun for a while in the grassy part of the park, to watch the people. A man in his mid-twenties climbed a tree until he got as high as the branches could hold him, perched there for a few minutes, and then came back down; he was wearing a bright yellow t-shirt that was just the color of the underside of the leaves when the sun shone through them. Across the street, a man stood on the roof of a building, far enough away that he was half the size of a dime. He had dark hair and stood with his back to me, wearing only a pair of pale grey sweatpants, so the line of his spine was visible when he leaned back against the railing at the edge of the roof. He stood there for a long time, half an hour or so, taking in the sun and doing nothing, until a man wearing only black shorts came and said something to him, and they went away together.
As I said, a lovely day. Though it would be even nicer if, you know, Racheline was not currently on the other side of the continent.
