Hello Old Friend

New York. What is it about you?!  I'm having the most glorious day off today. I worked my hind end off at work all weekend, so I didn't feel too guilty about sleeping for ten (or twelve) hours last night. Then I woke up, brewed myself some english breakfast tea in my Keurig (best Christmas gift ever) Added some fresh organic locally grown lemon to my authentic Top Pot (from Seattle) mug, and sat down to watch part of the SNL 40 special from last night while I finished waking up. And then I cried. Because there was a montage about the greatness of New York City set to the tune of Alicia Keys. And it floored me. Because I miss it so much. And I kind of don't understand. I mean, I get it because it really is the greatest city in the world. I just wonder when the pull will loose it's strength. When the compulsion to go will weaken. It's still as strong as it was the very first time I set foot in the city --a bright-eyed and oh so naive early twenty-something year old. Or rather, the first time I got home from the week I spent there. It was literally like part of my soul was missing. I clung with tears to every clip shown of the city on every minuscule commercial, the yearning was almost overwhelming. I had to go back. And go back I did. And I lived there. And I vacationed there. And I lived there. And it was HARD. And I hated it. And I've never loved anything more. And it was over for a while. Or so I thought. I thought I was done with this obsession. Not that I didn't love it, I just thought I had played it out, ya know? But it's not so. There is something that just calls to me. Still. It's deep  and it's real. Maybe it's time to go back? I don't know.  But I do know that I will never be done with New York. I can't imagine ever visiting and saying, "Ok. I've done this, I don't need to come back." I can't imagine ever bidding farewell and saying thanks for the good times, never to return. I. Just. Can't. Say. Goodbye. I don't want to. I've been a lot of places and seen a lot of amazing things. And for the most part I dislike going on vacation to somewhere I've already been. Each place I go, I like to do it so well that I'm done. I can cross it off my list. On to the next new adventure. Greece was that way. It was the trip of a lifetime, but now it's done. I've been there. I don't need to go back. New York is the singular exception to this rule. I. Will. Never. Be. Done. With. You. Any of it. I will never be done with the smell and the garbage and the rats and the dirty underbelly. I will never be done with the way the sunlight filters down through the skyscrapers of possibility, and the endless hope and possibility that glitters through the ambition and drive and pulse of the buildings and the powerhouses within them. I will never be done with the rush of the subway and the strength of the people passing by. I will never be done with balconies overlooking the Hudson at sunset and the horizon across the rooftop at dawn. I will never be done with the raw realism, the superfluous shredding of all things facade, and the hard as stone truth that lies beneath. I will never be done with you New York. And I don't know why. No thing worth having comes easy. No transformation for the better is not in-part painful. And I wouldn't trade it for anything. I don't even try to shake the continual drive to go back. For a week at a time, or for a year at a time. Who knows. You crawled inside me so long ago and I can no longer tell which parts of me aren't you. So even as I leave these ramblings of my mind to go for my sunset jog on the warm sun-drenched beaches of LA, you are with me. I love my life here too, don't mistake my love for New York as a dislike of the beauty that is my west coast life too... A friend once told me, "For the love of God! Just pick a coast!" Haha! But... just... what is it about you?!