exchanging the common heart for the salt in the sea

an older dominican man sat on the front stoop watching while jay and i said goodbyes fit for a weekend trip to the country. bring me back some country air, i'll tell you what you missed on this saturday night in the city. we'll hash it out over dinner on monday. ok, see ya.

and then jay and his luggage rolled up the street towards broadway for a taxi, and i went back inside, not looking at the dominican man, and only looking back once. the end of an era, my friends. bring on the flood of things we should have done before that. another photo-op adventure, another rehashed old joke or routine, maybe a final lunch at pram forest, with the socially retarded waitress, overpriced diet cokes, and good bread.

alas, alas, as a number of people have said, not knowing someone else has already made the same point and thus are only reinforcing the truth, "it'll all be here when you come back." and not...come back in six months, because i can't handle australia. (aren't i supposed to be moving to boston then anyway?) but, whenever. whenever i come back to new york. it's strange, though, how "if" has turned to "when." but in this last month and a half, it feels like everything has really suddenly fallen into place. i mean, sure, there's still the matter of the crappy apartment in the lame neighborhood, and the unsatisfying job, and the pretensions and competitiveness and crowds and noise and the costs and the fact that it is so incredibly hard to find inner peace in a city without any.

but i can always move. and get a better job. and nowhere is perfect. so maybe i have to put up with pretentious neighbors, bitchy queens, and always someone somewhere honking their horn, but if it's not that, it's something else.

now i'm talking like someone who wants to stay in new york, but to be honest, i don't. i'm just someone who isn't fleeing from new york. i have friends here now. (baffled, for months, on how people actually make friends in new york, and all the while, i was making friends.) i have a routine i don't terribly mind. as i've said before, even if i wasn't moving, i would have quit my job, and who knows what i would have fallen into. but considering the life i was able to live and the money i was able to make with this salary, i'm sure i could afford a nicer place to live and a more comfortable lifestyle.

so it's nice to know that sense of possibility will always exist in new york for me. when i come back. maybe it's for two weeks, maybe it's for two years. maybe it's not for another five or six years that i even consider moving back. maybe i say all this now, and the moment i step foot outside of this city, i decide i'll never come back. maybe i never see any of these people ever again. maybe jay and i start planning trips every six months to our respective locations for extended visits, and maybe that location is anywhere but new york.

the truth, right now, though, is that i have less than a week left in this city. and i'm not planning on cramming much more into it than i would any other week. i'm not planning a huge, weepy farewell. there will be nights out and drinks and hugs and a tear or two, but essentially, i'm aiming for that goodbye fit for a weekend trip to the country.

maybe minus the old dominican man.