The call of the Apple
If there is a palliative for living in New York City, it's an extended absence. I've just started my fourth week of exile, and I'm starting to get itchy all over. Just now I GoogleMapped my apartment building, just to look at my roof and see if I might be up there, sunning myself on Tar Beach. I feel like an especially creepy Internet stalker, with the added complication that I seem to be stalking myself.
Flitting among small farming towns was lovely and peaceful, but the peace soon became deafening. Those towns were quiet, as in sensory-deprivation quiet. The kind of towns where you place your toddler in the only diaper swing at the playground, and it squeaks so gratingly from disuse that locals at the Gas-and-Sip six blocks away prick up their ears and say, "Sounds like someone's swingin' on ol' Bessie!"
There were other cities, but they just weren't the same. Chicagoland is too sprawling, square-mileage-wise, and there are too many streets that are not named after numbers. Minneapolis is smaller and more manageable, but when you follow a certain cross street or other you can't be sure it will extend as far as you want because you will very likely run into a lake. That left the Happy Medium college towns, like South Bend (too manicured) and Madison (too cheese-centric).
I am comforted by the chill of San Francisco, while the rest of the country bakes. (The Junipers have been tremendous hosts, having picked me up at the airport and plied me with with a gorgeous stout microbrew sludgy enough to apply with a trowel.) But I still miss New York. I know I'll be back there in two weeks, coping with soot and strife and Schwetty balls. But I will be home, dammit.
I know what you mean, LOD. I also can't stand being away from NYC for too long. There's something about the cacophonous sounds of fire engines, garbage trucks, and crazy people that I find absolutely soothing.
Travel safely!
Posted by:MetroDad | July 28, 2006 at 09:34
I can't believe you found South Bend to be too manicured! I grew up there (well in Elkhart, right next door) and have sinced moved to Charlotte, NC. We moved back to the South Bend area and left to come back here again because it wasn't manicured enough! Funny the different viewpoints!
Posted by:Mary | July 28, 2006 at 10:40
Funny - I went to NYC last year, and couldn't wait to get out. :) I think it takes a few months for the crowds and the background noise to become a part of your personality again.
Posted by:The Zero Boss | July 28, 2006 at 12:37
Dad, it is hotter than Hades in the stewed Apple but we miss you. Thanks for cheese-centric. Made me smile, in a tired sweaty kind of way.
Posted by:Ned | July 28, 2006 at 13:20
LOD- Sponsored by Beans. Somehow it fits.
Posted by:kim | July 28, 2006 at 18:21
LOD- Sponsored by Beans. Somehow it fits.
Posted by:kim | July 28, 2006 at 18:21
You ain't kidding. Robert eats those things by the gallon.
Posted by:LOD | July 28, 2006 at 18:38
It's funny isn't it? No matter how good of a time you have when you are away, there is nothing like coming home. I came from the SF Bay Area, and now live in a town you describe, that is quiet. I literally had to force myself to slow down. Now when I go back to California for business or to visit, I find myself stressing out at the noise and bustle of it all.
Posted by:Moogie | July 29, 2006 at 09:05
NYC is a world all unto itself. Once you've lived there I don't think anything else will ever measure up to it, I know we miss it like crazy.
Posted by:chip | July 29, 2006 at 10:10
i've never even lived in nyc and i miss it. how's that go?
Posted by:El Charolastra | July 31, 2006 at 06:33