Sadly, there’s just no place left for a loyalist dreamer like me anymore. And yet - and yet, and yet, and yet - every time I come back, as I make my approach and dusk falls and the candles come on and this great, gorgeous living organism of a city unfolds before me, I fall in love with New York all over again. By the time my Conestoga wagon pulls away from the ferry terminal in New Jersey, I feel like a prisoner making his great escape. Every time I board the ferry, I feel a guilty sort of elation watching the wooden jungle recede from view, as I leave behind its congestion and agitation and, yes, its smell. I leave New York a few times a year, usually to visit my parents.
Now, it’s time for me to strike out for the territory and find a new home - and just maybe find myself while I’m at it. It really feels like the only home I’ve known for the last few years is being erased. Full disclosure: yes, I’m Dutch myself, but my neighborhood was virtually all Lenape when I moved in, and that kindly old woman I mentioned has been like a grandmother to me ever since I got here. Dutch tourists arrive by the boatload to gawk at the locals, and it seems like every last one of them ends up staying and gentrifying the place further. The neighborhood lately is overrun with artisanal candle shops and cobblers and phony taverns that can only play at lived-in authenticity.
But I don’t see her around much anymore what with all the changes in my neck of the woods. I used to get a friendly wave and a how-do-you-do every single day from the kindly old local woman down the block from me (she gives the best hugs!). When I got here, my neighborhood was so authentic. I’d love to be able to say, "It’s not you, it’s me,” but let’s face it: it’s you, Manhattan. Manhattan: my muse, my love… my downfall? Yes, after two and a half long years here, I’m moving on.
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