The Corner of 42nd and 6th

This Thursday, I went to New York for a business trip.  Walking from the train station to my hotel, I walked north along 6th Ave by Bryant Park.  As I crossed 42nd St, I had this weird flood of nostalgia.  For three summers and every Wednesday for a school year, I would walk along 42nd St from one side of Manhattan to the other, going between the bus station and a series of internships that I held.  It was like I was crossing paths with my former self.  I was thinking, if my former self walking east encountered my current self walking north, what would he think?  What would please him?  What would surprise him?

• He would have been happy that I was on a business trip and someone thought my insight was valuable enough to bring me to another city.  As an intern, it was so hard to show I had value.  That would have felt good

• He may have been surprised that I didn't live in or near New York.  Younger me thought my future was almost certainly there.

• He would have been disappointed that I wasn't involved in anything having to do with the UN or international politics.  He would probably find my job interesting, but it wasn't what he was working for.

• He would be happy that I retained a lot of the same friends, but disappointed that I'm no longer as close with the ones I thought I would rely on as family.

• He would like my husband.  He would find him really fun and interesting.

• He would be surprised that I took up rock climbing.  Younger me was always really bad at it.  I think he would be really glad to hear it, though

• He would be very surprised that I primarily had gay friends.  Younger me thought the idea of a separate gay community was stupid.  We would probably have an argument about it, since older me believes very strongly in it.  I think he would like most of my friends, though.  I think he would also be surprised by how many friends I had.  Younger me preferred to rely on a small, close group.  Older me prefers to be a social butterfly.

• He would be really angry that I started enjoying pop music and went out to clubs a lot.  Younger me hated pop music with a burning passion.  Hopefully younger me would accept that pop had gotten much better and dancing can be fun with the right people.  Hard to say, though.

Autumn Approaching

Changes in perspective can occur so slowly that you don't notice them...

If anyone read this blog a few years ago, I wrote a post about how Autumn always seemed very unsettling.  It was connected with going home, it was tied to a shift from a carefree time, it was a time for introspection, etc.  I mapped out how the past five Autumns or so had been very unsettling.  And then I deleted it because it had a ton of personal information.

Yesterday, I was walking with my mother in law near their house.  Ever the pleasant person, she was talking about how excited she was for Autumn, given all the harvest food and holidays where everyone got together.

And I agreed.  And then I stopped a little surprised.

Last Autumn was fantastic.  I went climbing outside a lot.  I think I was doing some fun projects (minus one horrible one around Thanksgiving).  I saw my parents and my in-laws and my cousins.  Our patio got finished and we had a big party to celebrate.  I dressed up as a lobster for Halloween.  And I ate a lot of root vegetables.  I like root vegetables.

The last days of August are oppressive where I live.  The heat sits over the city like a thick, humid soup.  The cicadas blare all day and night.  People escape the city when they can, and all the bars and restaurants take on a bit of an empty feeling.  Work is like a ghost ship, where we just try to stay above water while everyone is on vacation, wearing our t-shirts and jeans.

Then, like a fever breaking, the temperature drops a bit.  Usually around mid-September.  It still feels like summer, but like the good parts.  And then, there are the Jewish high holidays, usually still bright and warm.  Then the air gets crisp and pumpkin flavoring finds its way everywhere.  And then suddenly it's Thanksgiving and everyone is ushered into a season of endless holiday parties and celebrations.

How could I not enjoy this?  I'm stable.  I'm in love.  I have some wonderful sweaters.

The only thing remaining is to hope that we go from strength to strength...

So Far Away from the Past

The format of this blog was supposed to be pretty simple:  I'd reflect on a memory and give a modern reflection.  Theoretically, this format made sense.  I'm a pretty nostalgic guy.  That nostalgia influenced my current state.

But lately I haven't felt that nostalgia.  After 4 1/2 years in the same place, I feel pretty grounded.  My current home is my home.

This week, my city had a huge snowstorm.  Growing up, we would sort of lock ourselves at home.  Even my senior year of college, the "year zero" on which I have indexed my life for a while, we didn't really leave the house.  Who would we see?

The second night of the snowstorm, we had one one friend invite us over for dinner.  Another friend had a party later that night.  That party ended and we walked to an after party in another apartment.  The next day, when I was trying to work from home, a friend texted me and asked us to come play in the park in the snow.  We walked over and ran into at least 10 people we know.  We even invited a neighbor we had just met to join.  Everyone in the neighborhood was having a snowball fight, snowboarding, sledding down the stairs on pieces of cardboard, building forts...  It was like the idyllic childhood I never had.  I just kept smiling.

For the past two days, I've been in Boston.  I have a lot of old college friends here.  I love seeing them, but realistically, it's visiting.  I don't feel like I'm back in college -  my home is in DC now.  It's more of a home than I ever had.

Please drop me a line if you read this blog.  I assume no one does, so I'm always curious.

Evan

Posts from the February

I wrote this a while back, but I figure it doesn't really matter since I don't exactly have a regular audience.  If I did, they would be deeply disappointed by the pace at which I write new posts.  Also by the fact that this is actually pretty repetitive.  I really don't know how I manage to have touched on the same topic twice and not have noticed it...

I remember that last winter in Providence.

When the heat broke before Christmas and we spent a day or two half-frozen, writing papers and studying for finals.  One of those days, we went to some sort of Christmas market.  I got impatient when you spent too long looking at home goods that your mother would like.  It made me a bit fearful of moving in together - that you would take on her sense of style - a sort of French country that always seems just slightly dated.

In January, the first snow storm hit, and we camped out in your sunroom, watching the snow huddled under blankets with port in our hands.  In the morning, we cleared the driveway with your roommates and the nice, young couple from downstairs.  Spending time in that neighborhood always scared me of what my life would be after college - a return to a near-suburbia, so geographically close to campus, but so far from the hustle and bustle.  In place of the constant, anonymous contact, there was the accountability to neighbors, comparing their garden, asking for baby-sitting, looking after the dogs.

The new place is drafty too, and our bedroom sometimes reminds me of that old house when it’s cold outside.  “Reminds,” though, in the sense that I can see it, but the only visceral connection to that time is the cold wood under my feet.  It isn’t an emotional flashback.  Our lives have turned out so differently than I envisioned on the days I hung out at your place in Mt. Hope.  We seem to have found ourselves on a permanent campus, of sorts.  It’s an urban campus, but with the same anonymity mixed with serendipitous encounters with friends and loved ones.  It’s home, and yet somehow never too comfortable.

- - - - - 

I remember seeing you through the window as I approached your dorm, wearing a brown hoodie and slogging through homework.  The basement window put you out of one’s normal line of sight, but still easy to see if you were looking.  I always looked and watched you as you answered my call and ran out to get me.

Now, as I approach out home, I look through the giant subterranean window to see if you are in the living room.  I wonder if you hear the sound of me coming up the stairs and recognize the sound of my gait.  You will soon enough, I expect.

Watching the snow from a Providence window...

I remember winter in A's house in Providence.  It was right after he graduated, but I was still a college senior.  The apartment was not far from campus from the distances I am used to now - probably a 30 minute walk - but by how I felt at the time, it seemed absurdly far away.  Two things always struck me about visiting the house:  The first was how cold it was.  His roommates had decided that they should turn the thermostat down to 65 to save money on heat.  As a result, the living areas of the house were virtually unbearable, unless you were cooking in the kitchen or cuddling on the couch under a blanket.  The front area of the living room was a sunroom of sorts, and in the winter it felt almost unprotected from the cold.  One snowy evening, we sat there watching the snow, drinking port wine and hot chocolate and snuggling for warmth.  Still, A's room, which had a radiator, was one of the only warm places, and I would avoid leaving there, in part for the heat and in part because it was the only room in the house where I felt like I wasn't just a guest.

The second thing was how distant it felt.  This is the part that today I have a hard time understanding.  Being off campus (and noticeably so) made the house feel like a foray into the real world.  It was unsettling.   It felt like returning to the suburbs where I had grown up, even though I knew that life in Providence had little in common with my New Jersey upbringing.  Still, I feared that the sense of isolation I felt there, which I worried there was indicative of our future.  Most times I was there, I was waiting until I could go back to the areas surrounding campus.

Still, there are times I spent there that felt like home:  That time watching the snow; memories of cooking together in the too-small kitchen without a fan and looking out the window into the yard; talking to the young boy who just moved next door and didn't mind trying to make friends who were ten years older than him; the time A invited our friends over for a barbecue in April when it was still too cold to stay outside and grill.  Those memories are the first where I thought of us as a household.

I don't know why this memory is coming back to me all of a sudden.  Maybe it's because it finally snowed in DC and I can see the white glimmer of snow on our patio, reminding me of shoveling snow on A's old driveway and watching snow fall from his living room.  Maybe it comes from the process of buying a new place, which makes me think of all the earlier apartments where I've spent time and felt at home.  As a place where I first began to contemplate my adult life and what it might hold, it clearly left an impression on me.

Thoughts on Returning to New Jersey

If anyone had read this blog before I decided to reboot it, I'm trying a new format.  Here goes:

I remember this trip from so many times before: Struggling to carry all the bags into Port Authority, trying to find the right gate, negotiating with the bus driver over whether I could buy a ticket onboard.  The quiet evening ride through the Lincoln Tunnel and the breathtaking views of the city from the helix.  The familiar route down the highways.  When the driver gets close to your stop, you need to gather your things and walk up to the front of the bus so he remembers that he's making a stop.  He turns on the lights (the bus is otherwise dark), calls out the name of the stop, and lets you off at the side of the highway.  It's close to the exit to the residential neighborhood.  From there, it's a short walk down a few long, winding suburban blocks.  I've done this trip at least a hundred times before over the course of years - mostly commuting - but over the past five years, largely as part of the ritual of visit my childhood home.

This time, I mostly noticed the calm.  The highways that form the basis of transportation for the northern portion of this state (and which grind to a halt with holiday shopping traffic) are largely empty after midnight.  Even on the main roads, cars are rare.  Mostly, it's dark and quiet.  Growing up, my parents always acted as though the fact that you could hear the highway made the neighborhood undesirable.  In reality, you can only hear the highway because everything else is so silent - it's the same reason why I can hear the train whistle from three miles away as I type.

The walk is always interesting emotionally.  When I was in college, the contrast between school and home always felt antagonistic.  It was like I had to be careful - as though I didn't belong - but I was also at risk of getting sucked back.  Now, four years in DC, the relationship is different.  This was my home.  Was, not is.  Not in any way.  On the verge of potentially owning my own home hours away, this place has no draw left on me beyond memories.  This was the intersection where I would say goodbye to my friend after the walks we took to pass the time over breaks from college.  This was the house where one of my first crushes, a blond boy with a lighting bolt earring, lived when I was in kindergarten.  This is the hill where I would go sledding and the tennis court where I half-heartedly tried to learn the summer after senior year.  It's all very nice and peaceful.  And it isn't tied to me anymore.  I haven't been back here in nine months - next time could be a year from now.  Maybe growing up isn't about breaking ties with your past, but just losing any emotional ties to the point that the emotional register of this walk weighs less on my mind than the chill of winter on my neck and a pang of regret for losing my nice scarf over the course of the evening....