Feeling like home

This week I left New York for the first time since moving here two weeks ago. I went back to Boston to visit my former roommate, Kelly, and to see her current art show. I don't miss Boston. I never have. I left at the end of the summer of 1996 and I have never regretted it. I do like the city. I was there at an important time in my life and I did a lot of growing up and becoming my own person there. But that's where it ends. I have never had the urge to move back and when Rich applied for faculty positions out there I was not excited about the prospect of returning.

Nevertheless, I think it can be healthy to return to your old stomping grounds. Boston is a city that has changed a lot since I was there. Places, like people, have a way of staying fixed in our brain as they were when we knew them. By returning and seeing the change first hand, it serves as a reminder that life goes on and I am just one small bundle of energy amidst the millions who flow in and out of cities. But some things have remained. Yesterday I walked past the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square. That was the first art house movie theatre I had ever encountered and I was thrilled. For the first time ever I saw my favorite movie, Wings of Desire, on the big screen. Just walking past that place I get the same visceral thrill I felt the first time I went there, that thrill of discovery that there is so much more I haven't seen and that the world is full of experiences waiting to be had.

New York City inspires that same thrill in me. Every time I walk out the door there is a new experience to be had. As my bus entered the City last night on my return from Boston, I thought to myself, "I'm home". Of course, home will always be where Rich is, where the cats are, but I don't feel like a visitor here. A total newbie, yes. But a visitor, no. I feel like I belong here.