My lovely reader Katherine wrote this post, musing about the city she has known since birth. Please enjoy this post that offers a very different perspective from mine!
I am not a tourist. Really.
Although born in Connecticut, I grew up in Manhattan. Central Park was my playground; Riverside Park was school recess. I played Skee-Ball at Coney Island. I did my math homework on the D train coming home from Bronx Science. I never saw Woody Allen, but I knew exactly which subway car would put me in front of the stand that sold soft pretzels when I reached my stop.
As you can see from the list, these are all childhood activities. I never dated in New York. I never paid rent. I never had to put on panty hose and struggle through public transportation to reach a job interview. I never adulted.
When I was 14, I moved to suburban Maryland. Since then I have spun farther and farther out into the country. I have washed ashore in the rural heart of reddest America. Psychologically, I am as far from the Upper West Side as one can get and still be in the United States.
Part of me never left New York.
I go back, once a year, for a week.
When I go back, I wonder what it would be like if I had never left.
My trips are not about revisiting childhood. Sure, I’ve walked by 68th, 106th, and 114th streets to look at the buildings I lived in. I’ve experienced that shock of recognition when you see something that is immediately memorable but you haven’t thought about in decades. In my case, a particularly intricate stairway in front of a brownstone that I passed every day until I was six. But that’s not why I go.
I want New York of the now.
The toy horse in the photos, aka Spotted, is my mechanism for shoehorning unrelated topics into my horse blog.
I even buy souvenirs. (Hangs head in shame.) I even buy souvenirs from the temples of tacky around Times Square. (We all have our weaknesses.). I even buy the same souvenir two years in a row, by mistake (What can I say. I have a thing for plastic fowl. Happy Rubber Ducky Day.).
Is there a parallel universe where I never left New York? In that world, do I live in a elegant, bijoux apartment where the beautiful skyline view is a backdrop for an informal salon of clever, scintillating people who I met through my globe-trotting, creative, yet socially-conscious job? Or do I commute two-hours from my one-room bedshare in an outer borough to slave thanklessly in the depths of a cubical farm for 70 hours a week because I have no friends and no outside life? In New York, it could go either way.
Or perhaps my life path is pre-ordained and a different set of choices would have lead me to exactly where I am now. Despite the hype, not everything is possible in New York City. I have horses. I want to live in Manhattan. My 10-acre horse farm in Central Park will have to wait until the holodeck from Star Trek becomes commercially available.
I am not a tourist. Really?
Thank you so much Katherine for writing this post! Her blog will make all the pony fantasies and “horse phases” of your childhood come rushing back. Check it out at https://rodneyssaga.com/
That was good! A really interesting and entertaining perspective.
Thank you! Your post brings it all back!
Not sure of the protocol here. Comment? Say thank you to the host blogger? Write about it on my own blog? What not all three? Thank you New York Cliche!
In Which I Reblog Myself