Charles Mingus - "Mood Indigo"

New York - a city like no other. Yes indeed. I was thinking this to myself yesterday afternoon riding a train back to New York after a couple days in suburban Delaware. The skyline of this city was starting to come into view, home was.

This thought - that New York is a city like no other, that that's why I live here - was soon followed by an opposing thought. New York - a city like any other.

I have lived here for eleven plus years now, have taken that train into the city up through the Meadowlands of New Jersey so many times now. When I first started to do so, the thought that would come in to my head would be: NEW YORK FUCKING CITY! And I would bop up and down either literarily or metaphorically, so excited about this place and the potential it held, the potential I saw for myself in this city, for what I could be. My excitement about New York was a proxy for my excitement about my own life and everything that it might hold, everything that might come of it, here, in this place.

At some point, that giddiness shifted into something else. The city has become my home and so the feeling of approaching it now is more of relief, of that soon I will be back home, and then I think about all the things I need to get done in that approaching skyline. New York is a city just like any other in that it is a place where people go about their daily lives, struggling with bills, frustrated with their jobs, and trying and failing at romance. This is the story of every city, and in that way New York is no different. I thought about the little money in my bank account, about how I need to actually get hired in the new year, about my approach to hitting on men I'm attracted to, how it's clearly not working, how that needs to change. There were many other shortcomings I found in my life on the train ride in. For a moment, looking at the city from a distance, I was able to see my own life in that city from a distance, was able to clearly evaluate where I am and to assess how far the gap is between where I am and where I would like to be.

In a couple days, it will somehow be a new year.

Last night, back in this town, I hung out with some friends at their apartment and had drinks and talked about goals for the new year. I then went out to various gay bars and danced. I ate a burrito at the end of the night and rode home in a taxi with Diego talking about the past, the future a night's sleep away.

The dreams I had last night I don't remember. I woke up with other dreams in mind, bigger dreams, and they are going to come true. I am going about trying to become the person I want to be and there are stumbles along the way, certainly, but it's part of the process. NEW YORK FUCKING CITY!