A New York minute
the summer i went back for 30 hours (and other things)
A few weeks ago, I went to New York for roughly 30 hours. It was everything I’d expect from the city that lit me on fire in my twenties and early thirties.
My first meal was a late-night hotel diner meatloaf with a side of laptop ‘til 1 a.m. I slept, woke up, caffeinated, worked, saw so many familiar faces that zapped me back to a specific place in time. I walked—oh, I missed walking in a city where you never feel alone and anything can happen! Even the catcalls somehow felt less offensive, because New York streets just pulsate with randomness, both welcome and not.
I was productive. I met up with friends for dinner, at a place we would frequent in our heyday of having constant access to one another. When we called it a night past 11 p.m., I took a cab back to my hotel and opened Instagram. Two good friends from some of my best NYC memories, who now live overseas, were in the city that night too—staying just streets away. We met up for a nightcap at a rooftop bar I hadn’t been to since my twenties. It was loud. It was bachata night. One of my friends had peeled herself out of bed AFTER WASHING HER FACE to meet up for this reunion, the kind that comes so rarely nowadays. We only ordered water but closed the bar at 2 a.m. I took a shower in my hotel room, packed, and was in an Uber by 4 a.m. for my flight out. Which ended up being the wrong car—another driver who looked like mine (his words upon seeing the app photo, not mine!) was also taking his passenger to the same terminal at JFK, and was the only car on the street when I stepped outside to the YOUR DRIVER IS HERE alert. He took me anyways, because he was nice. Nothing bad happened. I was back in Los Angeles before noon.
New York is funny like that. Squeezes every last drop out of you until you literally rip yourself away from it.
It was a nice trip. Random, serendipitous, fun, enough. A fever dream existence that reminded me how loud and immortal youth felt. Sometimes I see all these different versions of me when walking past streets, places, windows I used to frequent. A random memory hits me like a jump scare and it’s like a mini movie plays before me of a girl just trying to find her way to who we are now. Like ghosts of avenues past. It’s strange to feel like you both belong and no longer belong somewhere.
Somewhere in that day, I also got anxious while ordering a salad at Chop’t. The line moved quickly and my words to order did not. I laughed at myself because I used to fit into the city’s groove so well. And now I’m soft, and that’s fine. Maybe I’m more like…over medium, just depends what’s going on around me. I can adapt. I can harden. I can relax. And I can leave.
My days are a lot quieter now. This summer has been spent seeing friends and family, being outside, turning a year older, quietly creating in the background. Writing another book that may or not make it, my head down, feeling a little crazy while doing so.
Art is crazy sometimes because more often than not, no one is asking you to make something out of thin air. Most of the time, literally NOBODY is saying, hey, string together words and build worlds and make up whole ass people. But you do it because you need to, and ask yourself a million questions along the way, and drive yourself crazy when colors and words drip out messy and incoherent or not at all, some days. The days when art pours out? Euphoric.
And yet. For me, writing is this thing that is all mine, that no one is assigning me, that makes me come alive when no one is watching. I lowkey die whenever I think of anyone reading my words but at the same time, I want others to read them and feel seen. The irony. Because how else are we supposed to show up to the page if not vulnerable about all of these things that make us human?
Writing drives me nuts. The only thing that drives me more nuts than writing is not writing, and the time passing anyways.
I guess that’s why I’m taking a break from my current weekend project and writing here today. Doing so makes me feel less nuts when time keeps passing, as it does.
Last weekend, I turned a year older. On the morning of my birthday, my nephew asked me how I felt. I said I felt the same as the day and age before. We laughed about it, but it feels true. I’m aware I’m getting older, but I also feel like I still have so much more to give. In life, in writing, in everything.
I have this little delulu hope that maybe we’re all just getting started, even when it feels like so much life has been lived.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s just the Leo in me. Or maybe the point of this post is, sometimes there is none.
<3