shellytown

I’ve gone away before, and missed this place, but it was scattershot, a little rain on the window. It wasn’t a full-on lonesome gaze at the skyline, the search for something, anything to remind me…

And I’ve missed a place – not this place but another – so much I grew angry at where I was, resentful. It is a hole in your life to miss anything, and it hurts in a way nothing else does. The way those three maples on Tate St. changed color in the fall, one after the other, so that they made a rainbow. The way Barton Creek gave perfect rise to limestone-lined water all around it in swimming holes that were like cold joy to be in. The way the bats swarmed, and… Missing a place, a town, a way of life, can be just as painful as missing a person you love, or used to.

So, on the way home from Thanksgiving in Greensboro, I was not surprised to be happy to be coming home. I was surprised, a little, to think of New York as home. New York is not a “homey” place. It does not inspire one to settle down and feel safe. I was also surprised to have missed it. What did I miss here?

The sounds, especially at night, when you can’t see the sources but you know what they are anyway. There is a comfort in that, a familiarity that light kills. Strange, I guess, but very real. New York draws out senses that other places don’t. Is this a good car to be in (on any given train at night)? You notice things about people you never would have without the day-to-day experience of watching freaks in action on the F train.

I missed walking. Seeing things when walking. Walking or hiking in the country, or just outside a city, or even on the sidewalk of a smaller town, is relaxing. You can let your mind wander, and I remember many walks in the woods of Greensboro doing just that. But here, the walking is more like stimulation, not reflection. It is where I create ideas, whereas it used to be where I mulled them over.

New York makes me think in ways, and write in ways, that no where else ever has or will. For that, I love it. I appreciate it, and I missed it.

Coming over the BQE’s overpass at Smith St., this was the view: My city, my home, in the early evening, as the sun was just considering going down. I was happy to go down south, back where so much of my current life began – writing seriously, playing music, finding my husband, adopting my dogs – but even happier to bring it all north, where my life is growing in ways I could never have imagined anywhere else.