Oh My, I'm In The Big City!

Yes, I've now been here nearly a month. And every day I find myself marveling at this new reality. Yesterday, I had a big 'aha' moment walking down 14th Street in Union Square. As I did that fast city pace, I glanced at the line of stores selling shoes, clothes, and every conceivable food item. I walked past Whole Foods, that natural food store behemoth, heading toward my destination when I saw the banner for the New School blowing in the wind. It was at this moment, my eyes filled with tears. It was unexpected, yes, but I was choked up with the fact that I was really here, not just visiting, but living here. I never wanted to go to the New School, but it is an institution so intertwined with New York's cultural, left-leaning, intellectual art scene. No, I didn't have that moment when I walked past a store in the East Village that sold CBGB t-shirts, another institution so closely linked to the 80's and the music scene here. But there I was on 14th, my eyes boring into the sidewalk, hoping no one noticed I was openly weeping with happiness and sheer disbelief. It took me more than a moment to get myself together since the emotional build up of what it took us to get here finally exploded in this tear-filled walk down 14th Street.

It had been more than a few years since I'd lived in a city where you walk as much as you do here. My grad school years in Boston was really the last time I'd lived like this, which was over five years ago. I had slipped into that odd way of life in LA where such practical things like shoes and bags become mere aesthetic accessories instead of accessories with a real purpose. Therefore, you spend an inordinate amount of time amassing shoes that are gorgeous, but not good on the feet if you are walking more than the mere few steps from car to destination. Once you become a pedestrian again, you start to reevaluate such necessities, taking stock whether those gorgeous five inch heels will be suitable unless you plan on only hailing cabs. And believe me, I love fashion enough to never forgo such shoes, but in your every day, taking the child to school life, you need shoes that are practical, but no less aesthetically pleasing.

So, I've again become the IPOD (although back in grad school it was just a portable CD player) listening walker, the private soundtrack streaming in my ears as I walk briskly down endless streets, get on and off buses. It is, in my opinion, the way life is supposed to be lived: your own feet directing how and where you are to go. Now, I may not be loving the walking life nearly as much in the bleak days of January when a blizzard is falling. But then, I may still revel in the fact that the world gets so still and quiet as the ground gets blanketed by so much white. Or I may just be pissed off that I'm standing shivering outside a bus stop, hoping to get inside a vehicle, any vehicle, out of the weather.