Taking a Sizeable Bite Out of the Big Apple

I get the strange feeling that at least one of my friends in New York thinks I’ve become an uncultured vagabond. My lineup for 10 days in Gotham included: my first ballgame in three years; my first symphony (Mahler No. 1 in D Major); an uproarious British comedy visiting from London’s Old Vic; and a day of trail building in Bear Mountain.

These days, I hesitate to call New York ‘my’ city anymore. I still remember how to navigate the subways, walk and sip hot coffee without scalding myself, and can keep stride to hit every ‘walk’ sign on city blocks, expertly weaving through pedestrian foot traffic. When the #4 train inexplicably stopped at 149th Street, I joined scores of New Yorkers and walked the streets of the Bronx, following the Jeter, Teixeira and Rivera jerseys all the way to the new Yankee stadium.

But I no longer avert eye contact and even condescend to acknowledging another human being’s existence with a half-smile or a nod; and I haven’t felt the need to plug in my iPod, finding novelty in the city noise of construction, honking cabs, and snippets of random conversations.

This is a city where I am almost never asked where I am from. I’m brown and have black hair, after all. Now if you’re blond, blue-eyed and white…that’s unique! You can ride for 50 minutes on a subway from Brooklyn and not hear a word of English. My closest friends vary from locals to far-flung Thai and Turkish nationals. And you can walk out of Avery Fisher Hall after a performance by the NY Philharmonic, and know with certainty that there’s a percentage of people in that very same hall, who were also at the very same baseball stadium the night before. It’s that kind of city.

This is the city of my 20s and a place of many ‘firsts.’ This is where I found out what makes me tick and what turns me on. I attained some of my proudest professional achievements here, and too many gross personal failures. And yet each time I return, I feel more and more like a stranger; a visitor looking in. I’ve lost my edge, my angst.

Perhaps what feels strange and ever stranger is not ‘my’ city, but me; the person I was and the person I’ve become; the New Yorker vs. the former New Yorker. We go through many stages in our lives, and hopefully experience growth, transformation and evolution into better, updated versions of ‘I.’ Surrounded by these familiar settings – my home for 10+ years – I am reminded of my former self and struck by what I hope is forward progress of my current incarnation. I suppose NYC continues to teach me a thing or two about myself. It is one helluva city.