It’s a strange place to come back to a place you think you know so well and be surprised by the subtle ways that it has changed. You know the subways, but momentarily forget that the R-train runs local, or that Spring St. is south of Prince, or are surprised that the coffee shop around the corner got a renovation and fired half of your favorite baristas. That seedy bar a few blocks away is now a bookstore with wifi, all of the buildings (ahem, luxury condos) on the LES and Williamsburg are a little bit shinier and a little bit taller, the market is full of it’s explosive summer bounty, the streets are a little stinkier and sweatier than you remembered them to be.

I am struck by a feeling similar to perpetual deja vu, but more like a movie watched for the sixth or seventh or eighth time — when the characters and the dynamic are similar to how you first knew them, but where little details seem to arise anew. Most of the differences are small yet somehow important — new restaurants with new names, fashions are a little different this summer vs. others, she had a baby, they got engaged, he got a new job. The events–the shows, the parties, the activity, the sidewalk talk — are both endless and endlessly new, just like they always were.

And so, though in ways the city feels the same, it is really just the same cadence (the energy!) that I for so long missed and am glad to have back in my life again. I am glad to have gone away for the journey in and of itself, to temporarily abate wanderlust, and because it is so easy, albeit ever-exhausting–to exercise in the perpetual motion of this town, time passing so fast you forget it’s passing at all until you realize you’ve been here one year, no two. Two years, no three. But, coming back and seeing those friends, going to the art shows, picnicking in the park, taking a walk through the village, are perfectly spectacular when they are both novel as they are now, but sentimentally part of a once-routine. For once, as a New Yorker coming home, I feel like I can observe old things with new and hopefully more inquisitive eyes, and new things with more eager and experienced eyes.

The moment I really felt at home in New York again was around 2 p.m. last Friday afternoon after taking a walk to the farmers’ market to scout out the heirloom tomato selection. I stopped at my favorite bread stand to pick up a whole wheat raisin walnut roll, which I’ve bought twice a week for two years from the same Tibetan man in an exchange that usually only includes pointing, smiling, and the passing on of money. This time, however, when I asked for a roll, just one, he acknowledged my absence and asked,

“Where you been?”
“Traveling,”
“Where?”
“South America, Across the country”
“How long?”
“Almost 6 months”
“Back?,”
“Yes,” I answered, “Just got back yesterday.”

“Well good,” he said before pausing, staring, and adding:

“WELL?, WHY DID YOU GO? YOU DIDN’T KNOW NEW YORK IS THE BEST PLACE ON EARTH?”

Well, sir, now I think I do.

Published Sunday, August 5th, 2007 at 10:08 pm. Filed under Daily Life, New York Moments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.