How to Live in New York

In August, I will have lived in this thrilling city for six full years. That's four longer than I ever imagined, and days like today make me feel that I could live here until I am 100 (as long as I can spend the winters on Jax Beach!). The weather today was warm and sunny, with a hint of a breeze, the perfect weather for strolling around and meandering wherever the wind blows. So at 4:00PM I left my office, and never returned... and simply went wherever the streets took me. (Which is mostly true, minus the fact that I had a dress appointment at 4:30.)

After my appointment, I restarted my affair with the city. I wandered the streets, stopping for an ice tea here, and to window shop there. Not caring about the time, or whose call I had missed. I went to stores that I had read about and left in a few minutes finding nothing there. I returned to favorite stores and spent many minutes looking at the same things I always do. I wandered home and felt very complete for a day well spent and an afternoon playing hookie.

Tonight, I grabbed a sandwich from my favorite sandwich place and headed to the park to savor the night time air and hear some tunes from the local musicians who hang out in WSP every night. I ate in quiet solitude, lost in my thoughts and the musical notes adding a nice soundtrack to my mental rhythms. Finishing my dinner, I sighed, as I watched homeless men jamming to the steel drums, a woman beside me on her laptop busy with work, and a family of four all worked up over a spilled ice cream cone... and I smiled to myself and shook my head... only in New York.

For it really is only in these huge metropolis cities where people of all walks of life come together, if only in passing, to share a bit of each others lives. Its only in cities like this that sitting on a park bench can be your nightly entertainment. And its only in cities like that you find that limitless ability to recreate yourself in almost every breath taken.

Someone once told me that you should never love something, that doesn't love you back. And in night's like tonight as I give myself to my city, I am the most loved person in the world.