I spent this evening with an old friend who used to be a New Yorker, but abandoned us quite a few years ago to pursue a career in California. Tonight the two of us went out to dinner, talked about old times, and wandered through the streets of Greenwich Village.
With every block, memories came flooding back to my friend. She remembered this store, that restaurant, random memories piling one upon another, of the life where her youth was spent.
I, who never left NYC, was taken by her sense of spiritual connection with our wondrous city. “Everyone here,” I think she said at one point, “is inventing themselves.”
I don’t know that anyone has ever said it better.
You grew up in NYC?
In Silicon valley, it’s far more exotic to meet somebody who spent their childhood here, than somebody who grew up halfway across the planet.
I was, indeed, born in NYC. It took me a while to realize that many in NYC consider this to be exotic. 🙂