New York is a place specially designed for the short
term. After all, some of the things we
associate most closely with this city are fashion, commerce, art, enterprise –
all lauded and wonderful in part because
they constantly change and evolve. The
Meatpacking District evolved from the shady haunts of transgendered prostitute
walks to trendy, upscale designer stores and restaurants. Every time I see a child or, especially, an
elderly person, it produces a jarring sensation. They seem out of place – isn’t New York a
place for the 20- or 30-something? The
place for people who desire transience, who haven’t yet “settled”?
The ephemerality of New York is a large part of its intrigue
and draw; it’s why people associate New York with a place where things always happen and where anything can happen. And often does. This is why New York is
exciting.
This is also why New York proves to be a particularly
difficult place in which to make weighted, life-determining decisions that can
impact the long-term trajectories of career and, well, life.
Recently, I have been faced (confronted, plagued) with a
decision that could lead me down two very different paths – one where I could
be pretty sure of the journey and an idea of the outcome. Literally, each year is planned for the first
six years (during year one, you do this. Year two, you start compiling these
materials. Year three…). Staying in New York, I don’t know where I’ll
live and work next month.
I have always been a planner; I like having options and a
weighing them (but, honestly, only when one option is clearly better than the
others…). I like having a fall-back
plan, a worst-case-scenario understanding of the consequences of my
decision. And those worst-case scenarios
better be pretty mild and the decision pretty air-tight of problems, or else I
will not do it.
At least before I moved to New York. In fact, trying to change that aspect of
myself, the always-have-to-know-the-future characteristic, is one of the reasons I moved. Really, that attitude is based in being a
*control freak* who is too terrified to admit that the future holds untold
possibility and pain that we can never know on this earth…and sometimes that
can be exciting.
Long story short, and many
details omitted (though I have provided many in emails to close friends and
family), I have decided to embrace the excitement I’ve felt about unknown
possibility, the excitement of living in New York and just experiencing all the
life that flows through here – and my own life.
I have decided to try to impact that life and others’ lives from this
vantage point, and I have decided to go through the difficult process of being
ok with not knowing exactly how I’m going to do that yet.
When I started this blog only a few short months ago, the
intent was to inform friends and family of my experiences. It’s still that; only a handful of those read
it anyway. But the underlying implication was that these experiences needed to
be documented and embraced because they would be short-lived. They would be made memorable because they
were ephemeral, just like New York. Leah’s
New York Adventures were adventures only because the idea existed that I would
return to “normalcy.”
But now I begin the process of making this transience "permanent." To make this New York Journal more of a “life” journal. After all, New York is obviously not without
long-standing history, not without places like
St. Paul’s Chapel, where
Washington worshipped on his Inauguration Day, which miraculously stood while
the world changed around it, falling in the debris of the collapsing Twin
Towers across the street. So in a cliché act of renaming this blog, I’m stealing from one
of the nation’s most famous poets and one of his most well-known poems, from
Walt Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass.*
One’s-self I sing—a simple,
separate Person;
Yet utter the word
Democratic, the word En-masse.
Of Physiology from
top to toe I sing;
Not physiognomy
alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse—
I say the Form
complete is worthier far;
The Female equally
with the Male I sing.
Of Life immense in
passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful—for freest
action form’d under the laws divine.
The Modern Man I
sing.
So let me be modern.
Let me be naïve and idealistic and hopeful. Let me be in New York.
And let me accept and embrace the unforeseen, the fact that
I may not be here in a year. But let life still be immense in passion, pulse,
and power.
*Well, I
do live
within walking distance of
Fort Greene Park, which Whitman basically helped
create.
