Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote...
The tail end of winter (which it still is here, I don't care what the calendar says) is the worst. It's like the last mile of a marathon, when people are worn out and ornery and don't even care what their ranking is, they just want it to be over. I say this from experience, having personally watched people on TV run marathons.
It's still cold. Why is it still so cold? This weekend was beautiful. Sunday was warm and dazzling - one of those beautiful, unexpected sneak-preview-of-spring days, the kind that are so perfect they make you acutely aware of & afraid of your own mortality. Walking through Central Park felt like something from a ridiculously upbeat musical, or a Seurat painting (or both). The kind of day when you expect the guy who's sweeping in the park to suddenly break out in a sychronized song & dance with the guy at the pretzel stand, and the jogging lady with the weiner dog, with the flowers singing an ironic back-up.
April really is the cruellest month. The bulb flowers in the tree pits along Park Avenue and Madison Avenue, and in the park, are suddenly all over the place. For weeks they've been doing their slow wake-up thing, bent over and waiting waiting waiting like the rest of us for the end of winter. And then one day, wham! Daffodils all over the place! Tulips! Like Demeter coming back from the underworld, only to be peed on by schnausers in Louis Vuitton raincoats. And coverd in smog from the DHL truck and taxis, and drowned in the remnants of sodas and pop rock.
It's amazing that living things manage to not just survive, but actually manage to be perfectly beautiful in such an inhospitable environment. What is it that makes plants grow in the cracks in the sidwalk? It must be the same impulse that allows humans to live in small, overpriced apartments with plumbing problems.
All of this brings us back to the age-old question of Why do we live in New York? I ask this now, because we're fast approaching the time of year when it won't occur to any of us to question why we live in New York. From May to June, there's that window of idyllic bliss (what I call the Amnesia Season) when all those plans to open up a surf shack in El Salvador suddenly seem really absurd.
The funny thing is, when people leave New York, we usually use terms like, "got out," or "escaped," or other words usually reserved for people who are incarcerated in prison or perhaps a mental institution. And you never hear about people who leave New York who aren't entirely, freakishly ecstatic about it. It's like once people leave New York, they become a Scientologist about wherever they move to, sending emails and creating web sites in hommage to their new hometowns, which are inevitably warmer and cleaner and cheaper and friendlier and less pretentious than New York.
Yes, Ashville sounds lovely. And Portland, and Seattle, and Santa Barbara. But can you get a falafel at 3 in the morning? Huh? Gotcha there!
For instance, our friends Morgan and Sheri finally "got out" of New York, and are now on probabtion in Seattle. By all accounts, it seems beautiful and welcoming and relatively affordable and all the things New York ain't. They seem much, much happier. Same goes for pretty much everyone else I know who's moved to other places.
So why is it that the idea of leaving New York is so disconcerting? It's like a smoker thinking of giving up smoking. They know it's a bad habit, but they love it anyway. Even with the worst of the weather and the pollution and the crowds and everything else, it's a way of life, and it's one that would probably be hard to give up. I guess in a world where most of your basic needs are met, the biggest fear becomes boredom. And it's hard to be bored in New York. On the other hand, it's awfully easy to be insane.
Sigh.
It's still cold. Why is it still so cold? This weekend was beautiful. Sunday was warm and dazzling - one of those beautiful, unexpected sneak-preview-of-spring days, the kind that are so perfect they make you acutely aware of & afraid of your own mortality. Walking through Central Park felt like something from a ridiculously upbeat musical, or a Seurat painting (or both). The kind of day when you expect the guy who's sweeping in the park to suddenly break out in a sychronized song & dance with the guy at the pretzel stand, and the jogging lady with the weiner dog, with the flowers singing an ironic back-up.
April really is the cruellest month. The bulb flowers in the tree pits along Park Avenue and Madison Avenue, and in the park, are suddenly all over the place. For weeks they've been doing their slow wake-up thing, bent over and waiting waiting waiting like the rest of us for the end of winter. And then one day, wham! Daffodils all over the place! Tulips! Like Demeter coming back from the underworld, only to be peed on by schnausers in Louis Vuitton raincoats. And coverd in smog from the DHL truck and taxis, and drowned in the remnants of sodas and pop rock.
It's amazing that living things manage to not just survive, but actually manage to be perfectly beautiful in such an inhospitable environment. What is it that makes plants grow in the cracks in the sidwalk? It must be the same impulse that allows humans to live in small, overpriced apartments with plumbing problems.
All of this brings us back to the age-old question of Why do we live in New York? I ask this now, because we're fast approaching the time of year when it won't occur to any of us to question why we live in New York. From May to June, there's that window of idyllic bliss (what I call the Amnesia Season) when all those plans to open up a surf shack in El Salvador suddenly seem really absurd.
The funny thing is, when people leave New York, we usually use terms like, "got out," or "escaped," or other words usually reserved for people who are incarcerated in prison or perhaps a mental institution. And you never hear about people who leave New York who aren't entirely, freakishly ecstatic about it. It's like once people leave New York, they become a Scientologist about wherever they move to, sending emails and creating web sites in hommage to their new hometowns, which are inevitably warmer and cleaner and cheaper and friendlier and less pretentious than New York.
Yes, Ashville sounds lovely. And Portland, and Seattle, and Santa Barbara. But can you get a falafel at 3 in the morning? Huh? Gotcha there!
For instance, our friends Morgan and Sheri finally "got out" of New York, and are now on probabtion in Seattle. By all accounts, it seems beautiful and welcoming and relatively affordable and all the things New York ain't. They seem much, much happier. Same goes for pretty much everyone else I know who's moved to other places.
So why is it that the idea of leaving New York is so disconcerting? It's like a smoker thinking of giving up smoking. They know it's a bad habit, but they love it anyway. Even with the worst of the weather and the pollution and the crowds and everything else, it's a way of life, and it's one that would probably be hard to give up. I guess in a world where most of your basic needs are met, the biggest fear becomes boredom. And it's hard to be bored in New York. On the other hand, it's awfully easy to be insane.
Sigh.
posted by Marguerite at 10:50 AM
5 Comments:
"Due to an overwhelming wave of crime that plagued the country, especially New York City, the government built a wall around Manhattan Island and turned it into a maximum security prison. Inside the city walls there is only the anarchy that the inmates have made and there is only one simple rule: "Once you go in, you don't come out". Any found escapees are ruthlessly shot on sight."
I could never leave something like that either!
Is that from Escape from New York? It's a brilliant premise for a movie, but I've never seen it; might hit too close to home. My favorite trying-to-escape-NY movie, in a somewhat different vein, is Quickchange, which is inevitably quoted by at least one passenger on every Supershuttle and/or bus ride to JFK.
I have to say, though I generally find New Yorkers very congenial I think you really have to be a bit deranged to live there, what with the dirt, cramped (not to mention very expensive) living conditions, atrocious climate and complete absence of opportunities for solitude. They've actually been having a very similar debate in the Letters section of the Financial Times, about clean, efficient but boring Zurich vs dirty, noisy but exciting London. Personally, I'm predisposed to quiet and boring. And for a midnight snack I'm very happy with toast and marmalade.
how funny, I was just thinking that I need to post something about springtime in Seattle (which is ethereal, by the way), and here you are! I do have to say that a) I really miss the 3 a.m. falafel, but the 3 a.m. Dick's Supreme is a very nice substitute. and b) ever since leaving NY, I no longer feel like it was the entrapment that it felt like when I was there. go figure.
when was the last time you went for falafel at 3am anyway?
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