Coming home

Coming home, after many weeks away, I recognize so much that is familiar. “Ah yes,” I tell myself, “this is my coffee, this is my New York Times in the morning.” There are so many familiar touchstones, from the walk along Washington Square North to the studied indifference of fellow New Yorkers, which was long ago raised to a high art.

And yet.

And yet, I find myself both here and not here, torn between the New Yorker I was six weeks ago, and the person I have become since then. My mind is filled with new people, new faces, new ideas and possibilities.

I will carry all this new experience within me, in my daily life here. But perhaps this time, after having gone away and come back, finding that my soul has been touched in transformational ways, I can no longer simply say “I am a New Yorker”.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say “There is much that is New York within me. But there is more besides.”