I wanted to make big changes. For six months, for a year, I've been talking about it. The the opportunity actually came to make the leap from one coast to another, and do it lightning quick. I wanted to close the book on one portion of my life and start a brand new book in a different locale. I had come from the East, after all, how hard would it be to return?
Waaaay harder than I ever anticipated, as it turns out. Too much time has gone by.
I had a good plan, to move back East, and it all seemed very noble and right and progressive. But I just can't make myself do it. I WANT to be there, I want to be with my sisters and my parents and spend warm and fuzzy time with my peeps and everybody, but I just spent six weeks on the East Coast, and every moment there just felt like a trial. I kept telling myself to get with it, get with the swim, try to enjoy, and I was compromising. Maybe it was about being in the cold, which I never could stand, but I think it was more about my being in the city itself. I no longer fit in there, I have lost my "Bronx skills" as a friend put it. I no longer have love for New York City, the love you have to have to survive happily in it, to be thrilled and attracted to it.
I used to have that feeling, that absolute heady romantic adoration for New York's gritty crumbly realness and crass commercial newness. Growing up there I swooned over its movie theaters, parks, and museums, I slavered over its China-Criollo restaurants and wine bars, the bodegas and Jewish delis, its funky music and dance clubs and upscale bistros, I thrilled to its old architecture, its history, its sprawl, and I strove with everyone else to be "in" with the in-crowd and the folks another friend calls "the N----rati." It was always expensive, but somehow in my youth and my excitement at being smack in the heart of the most exciting city in the world, I felt honored, even privileged to hand over big bucks for everything from cocktails to cab rides to club admission. The dearly departed (and currently in syndication) Sex & The City captured what was romantic and sweet about New York, the sheer fantasy of what kept me in love with it. But no longer. The things I used to enjoy about it seem ridiculous, overrated, and unfulfilling. That's age for ya.
Not bashing the old Apple. It has its charms. But I have become one of those West Coast hippy dippy slackers I used to joke about: Too used to palm trees, sunshine, valet parking, a certain glossiness and sheen. I love my backless mules, my yoga classes, my sushi hangouts, my Whole Foods and Trader Joes excursions, and even--God help me--The Grove, that monument to consumerism over in the Miracle Mile. They say Los Angeles has no culture, and that's not entirely true. It seems to lack a true center, but hey -- that's what the automobile is for.
Anyway, I haven't completely given up on moving closer to my peeps. I think perhaps now is not the time--I'm not quite ready. The prospect of making big changes is wonderful and filled with hope and possibility, but one must be prepared. I'm not. Not yet.
