I moved to the magical isle of Manhattan in August of 2000.
I still get chills when I see the skyline or walk in Times Square. Not
everybody loves New York City. Some people can’t stand it. But they love some
other place and that’s the point.
There’s a line in a Holly Near song that says (quoting from
memory and perhaps imperfectly), “Kids are gonna love whom they damn well
please.” The song is about extending understanding and acceptance to gay and
lesbian youth, but to me the line also says, “We’re all gonna love people (and
places and practices and principles) that we damn well please.” It’s the loving
itself that’s so good.
I want to share with you something I wrote describing what I
love about my adopted home. Let it spark your own thoughts about how you love
Rocky Mountains or the heart of Dixie or Highway One or something else. Leave
your comment about some place or person or practice or principle you love the
way I love the Big Apple. We can have a love fest. It’ll almost be like bringing
back the 60s.
Things I Love about NYC
The energy and uplift I feel when I
walk outside, or even just open the shades
The architecture and the bridges
The dogs and the pigeons
Fresh flowers at the delis
The writers’ group downtown
Tall buildings, crowds, and
escalators
Every now and then, getting to go
to something fancy and grand
Running into people I know on the
street
Being in the center of things
The subway
Restaurant delivery, drugstore
delivery, courier services
Being readily available for the
world of publishing, media, and the opportunities and possibilities that just
might come up
Times Square
Having a 212 area code
Being car-free and getting to walk
all over and never think about needing to “get more exercise” or “eat less”
Having a gym and a trainer
The Village. God, I love The
Village.
Broadway. Even though don’t see all
that many shows, it makes me happy just knowing it’s there
All the shops and salons and
services that can make a woman beautiful
Knowing that, God willing, I’ll get to
be an old lady here and walk these streets, maybe with a cane or a walker but
still free and independent
The intellectual ferment, the
discussions, the classes, so much to learn and take in
Having visitors from Kansas City
and everywhere else, and showing them the city
Taxi drivers – a high percentage of
whom talk to me about spiritual things. That always gives me a thrill. It makes
me believe in world peace, one cab at a time….
Having a coffee place every few blocks,
and any one of them willing to let me bring my computer and write a book
Inspiration from sights, sounds,
and people
Chinatown
The farmers’ markets, especially
Union Square. all those fruits and vegetables juxtaposed against concrete and
skyscrapers. I think it’s beautiful.
Going to my friends’ cabarets and
plays and book signings
The Dream — that as long as I’m
here, It (the Dream) could find me
Being close to LaGuardia
Having a doorman
Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s and
Bergdorf’s. This one goes way back: my mom managed the beauty salons in The
Jones Stores in Kansas City back when it was a little girl. I grew up in department
stores. They make me feel safe and happy.
Being a writer in the city where
half the great writers of the English language lived. (The other half lived in
London and I loved living there, too.)
Unity in Symphony Space and the
Unity classes downtown
All the things I have yet to do,
like renting a car on a Sunday morning and driving around The Village to
finally, thoroughly get the lay of the land; or leaving Manhattan long enough
to really discover Brooklyn
Talking to strangers
Tea & Sympathy, the English
tea shop on Greenwich Avenue
The Upper West Side
Neighborhood
pharmacies
Central Park and the squirrels
Washington Square Park and the
really tame squirrels
Places of inspiration: Auntie
Mame‘s townhouse (she was invented, but the address is real)…the Algonquin Round Table…the Chelsea Hotel
Fruit vendors
Subway
musicians
Buing a Christmas tree on the street and carrying it home
Buying other things on the street: a hat, gloves, a photograph, roasted chestnuts in the wintertime and Italian ice in the summer
The delicious anonymity of the
city. I can sit on the subway crying my eyes out and nobody bothers me, or I
can walk down the street singing out of tune and, as long as I’m not loud about
it, nobody minds
TwoBoots Pizza in Grand Central
Station where they have a vegan pizza option. (I remember the day I discovered
this: whole-wheat crust and no cheese—in a train station! It was as if NYC
was saying to me: “I’ve accommodated everybody’s religion and philosophy and
dreams for 200 years. I can handle the fact that you want cheeseless pizza.”)
Madison Avenue
The characters – the crazies, the
eccentrics, the exotics, all of them
The fact that everybody comes here.
The Dalai Lama. The President. People who want to be President. Barbra
Streisland and Liza Minnelli. Someone amazing is always here, in addition to
the amazing people who are here fulltime. I rarely go to hear their lecture or
their concert, but I could.
My professional organizations – the
Authors Guild, the American Society of Journalists & Authors, NY Women in
Communications
Ubiquitous, low-priced nail salons
and their impromptu back-rubs
Turning on the TV or going to a
movie and proudly thinking, “I live there.”
Trains, and being able to go
somewhere on one
Being happy when I hear the song
“New York, New York” and getting to think, “Yeah, I’m doing that.”
History: the cabarets, the
restaurants with white tablecloths, the fine hotels — vestiges of the world
that was already leaving when I was a child and is all but gone now. But here
there’s still some of it. It makes me feel warm and protected
Being here as a person of
conscience and consciousness, doing my tiny part on some spiritual level, I
think, to protect this precious island from terrorism and other bad things
NYU and Columbia, if I could ever
go back to school and get that graduate degree in theology I’ve thought about
for twenty-five years
Moby’s tea shop (Teany) and the
Tenement Museum and the whole Lower East Side
Harlem, and that we were able to
buy an apartment there
Feeling that I live in a place that genuinely suits me, where my energy matches
pretend to be someone else. May you feel so blessed wherever you are today.
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