The places we seek

reflection on years of moving, friends, and capitulation

My last apartment in New york, day before the move.

When I feel lonely, I find myself gravitating towards places where I am anonymous or where I am known deeply. I find safety in the invisibility. It is a fantasy. To be discovered and have salvation come to you when you think yourself hidden.

Maybe I’m just a performative man disguised so well that I have forgotten the performance.

Leaving New York three months ago meant leaving behind a home of the past three years.

I moved to New York, superficially, for a new job.

The kind that I was promised would be the end game, where Elysian comes calling, manifested into a comfortable 9-5 with the fabled ring of good WLB and good pay.

But one can find work anywhere if one really tries. No. I moved because I was lonely.

Boston was a time of intensity muffled. Late consulting hours underneath both metaphorical and literal storms. A pandemic raged on. Snow beat down on the windows of our 500 sq-foot apartment. We would take bong hits on Friday and play Call of Duty until our attention or our eyes gave in and the final round rang.

I gained 30 pounds. I lost myself in work. It was a desperate, visceral attempt to fill the Deficiency. In what. Worth maybe. Money perhaps.

But really, I worked because what else was there to do?

I didn’t have many friends in Boston. 5 maybe. The holidays would come and go. I would stay. I would bemoan my fortune, yes. But I was grateful also for what I had. The company we carry in hard times is that we find most easily to look fondly back on.

It was hard. But I endured.

I had hoped for New York to be different. An opening up of the world meant an opening up of possibility. It was like the first spring, the world awakening. The escape I had been planning finally made manifest. Yes. I would thrive in my new home.

The first year was a cliche. I made friends. I went to lots of parties. Some I hosted like my first housewarming in Greenpoint where we got kicked off the roof and had security called on us. We poured into hallways, neighborly consideration be damned. Most others I was invited to.

It’s a strange place. New York. Strangers invite you into their homes if they like the way you dress. If they realize you’re from the same state. We exchange social handles like cigarettes among addicts. We seek, don’t we all, even in places novel and foreign, for something familiar.

If I was lonely then, it was not for lack of company.

My first friends were my oldest friends. Those I knew from college. It was, truthfully the entire reason I had moved to Greenpoint to begin. It is an irony, perhaps even a tragic one, that proximity bred greater distance. Being close seemed to preclude intimacy, and what we could not make up for in frequency we failed to do so in depth. My best friends did not remain so. It is hard to see the loss of something that stays physically present. But it is one of the most enduring losses. What becomes of branches that grow apart from the same root?

My second year was a depressive one. One, many of those who know me are not privy to. We moved apartments into the city. Leaving behind Sundays watching The Last of Us for a 2-bedroom flex in Gramercy. We lost the in-building gym and rooftop. We gained a few subway lines and walking distance to the office. The things we sacrifice on the altar of convenience.

When we speak of that time now, we can see more clearly how deeply it affected us. It is an an impossible trade-off. Did I pay rent to live here or to be here? If I was home, I felt I should be out. When I was out, I felt I should be home. I was restless, but I wanted to rest.

I was surrounded. Buildings. People. Coffee shops within walking distance and the world at my doorstep. It was what I thought I had wanted. I even got promoted. But I felt poor. I worried constantly about money. I would step into my building, the harsh overhead lighting, the rusty doors, the elevator that jolted violently when it announced itself, and wonder to myself, was this what I really wanted?

That’s when it began. The seed of a deep dissatisfaction planted that I would not allow myself to feel for a long time after.

It is easy to see in retrospect that I was never meant to stay. I moved 4 apartments in 3 years, 3 cities in 5. And for all I wanted to, desperately hoped to, find, I did not ever arrive at a place of lasting ease.

Year 3 was the closest I would come. In proximity, there was closeness. I loved my friends. Those I could see without much planning and, yes, those cross-borough ones too. Yes, I would transfer trains for you. Yes, even local.

I became a Knicks fan. I would work-out every week with friends. We would cook for each other. There was turbulence at home, our relationship tugged at the corners, but in the moments of peace, we tried to make of our time, a time worth remembering. It is not the adventure I miss. But the mundanity of habit I find myself nostalgic for. Morning walks along Prospect, our imaginary dog frolicking around those who actually roamed. Coffee. So much coffee. That we brewed at home. That we tried and experimented with outside.

It is no small grief to no longer be on Washington Ave.

I think that if we allow ourselves to, what we need will find us. I’ve been reading more lately. Losing myself less in my work and more in art and in words. I came across a poem lately. It plays in my mind often. It feels as if it were written for me. Isn’t that strange?

“Every year we have been witness to it:
how the world descends
into a rich mash, in order that it may resume.
And therefore, who would cry out
to the petals on the ground to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married
to the vitality of what will be?”

The last few lines speak to me so.

Who would cry out to the petals on the ground to stay, knowing as we must, how the vivacity of what was is married to the vitality of what will be.

I did not know when I left New York where I would be. There’d be a place for me somewhere. And maybe that somewhere was far off, Chiang Mai, Barcelona.

I have surprised myself by staying in LA. It was meant as intermission. Curtain drawn up as I wrote the next act. But it is here that I’ve found something I have not felt in a long while. I don’t have the urge to leave. I feel doubt, yes. Some days I am filled with it. But when I get into my car, put on my favorite song, the song that feels so strangely written, as if it just for me in this precise moment of my life, I am struck in place. I forget the traffic. The noise in my head quiets. And in that space before the light turns green, I am in awe.

The beauty, and loss, of this world is overwhelming.