but you're still the one pool where i'd happily drown

i think maybe a year ago, if i'd found this song, it would have hit every nerve on my body. yet i'm glad i didn't find it until i'd fallen in love with new york and then left it to have an affair with australia.

and i love the title. "new york i love you but you're bringing me down," by lcd soundsystem. don't worry, jay, this isn't another music post, i know how you love to skip them, but i am entirely in love with this song, and the handful of "video tours around midtown" clips on youtube that accompany it, like this one:



it reminds me of the truth, that yes, of course, i do love new york, but like any good marriage, there are days where i don't know how we ended up together. it's not a good relationship if you wonder, "how did we ever become so unhappy in each other's company?" but it's something more entirely to know that, even if you are questioning the entire sociopolitical practice of monogamy, you're in this one together. i think that's what new york and i have together.

i miss the old girl, even if i've never been fond of her times square tourism, or the wet garbage on the subway tracks (why should i care? except that i have to stare at it when waiting for a c train to finally come), or the teeming douchebaggery of the meatpacking district or bleecker st on a friday night. it is what it is, because there's always cedar hill, unlimited mimosas at brunch, the ray's pizza on 8th, and a new issue of "time out" in the mail every wednesday. we have fights, but we never go to bed angry.

back in august, i questioned leaving my good marriage with new york for the one who that wouldn't go away, australia. and as i've started talking about coming back, hopscotching around ideas like, "why did i come to australia?" or "should i have just stayed in new york?" the resounding response from an assortment of supportive friends has been the same, essentially: i came here to find out what could happen.

for the record, despite the life crises that have met me along the way--and maybe this is a speech i should be saving for some post at the end of this chronicle, but it's christmas and it's a time to be grateful--i absolutely had to come to australia. i'm writing this play right now--would i have done this if i stayed in new york? maybe not--and there's this resounding theme of just "sitting with it." i found a lot of ways to avoid my pain in new york, and then i figured out a plan to flush out my pain. but i always had somewhere to go, something to do, some way to tend to whatever wounds.

in australia, with little to no work to distract me, not a whole lot of people to run off with, and a lot less noise to block out the silence, i finally learned how to just sit with everything. to sit in my life and do absolutely nothing about it but let it be.

in australia, i stopped running.