Love, like New York City, is an Idea…

Still Sundays.

October 16th.

I am writing from a new place this Sunday morning.

When you say something like that in New York City, you more often than not mean it quite literally.

I am not in my own neighborhood or even inside my apartment. I am in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood around 44^th and 9^th avenue. I don’t live here; I had to return my rental car this morning around the corner. When I woke up this morning I almost forgot I had even rented a car to go out of the City to attend a wedding this weekend. The only reason I remembered is because I realized I am out of tea and coffee and maybe I should treat myself again like I did yesterday. Yesterday morning I didn’t fix my own tea or coffee but had grabbed a delicious cappuccino at a small artisan bakery. The recollection and desire led me to the realization I had something to do: return the rental car and soon or I would be charged another day! Always interesting to learn how the brain works.

I used to have a car here in the City prior to July of 2009 (July of 2009 to June of 2010 being my year long hiatus—not quite uninterrupted—from New York). Having a car in New York City is like having a baby: you can’t forget you have one. The alternate side parking regulations is the equivalent of changing diapers, except it is your bank account that gets a rash if you forget to park on the right side of the street on the right day and don’t change when regulations mandate.

So, this morning, as I rushed to return the car so as not to be charged another day, I decided to grab my laptop—without the charging cord—my way of showing my brain that I was still on the fence about writing this Sunday morning given last night my final thought before sleeping, confirmed via text to two loved ones, “this Sunday morning I will take a break from writing and walk through stillness because it was a busy week.”

I slept in a cocoon of dreams. While brushing my teeth I considered what if everyone woke up in the morning to take a little bit of time to gently groom some good memories. I think the luckiest people in the world only remember the best of what’s happened to them. My mother is such a person.

I had a dream last night that a group of my friends and I learned that stillness was a person! So we were arguing if it had a gender. One of my friends said, “Well, now you have to write in the morning because it is a person.” Another friend said, “We don’t know its gender so it can’t be a person!” I spoke without my mouth moving to say, “Then I don’t have to write!”

I haven’t had time to check my emails since Thursday. This morning I did take a quick glance at one email before stepping out. It was from a dear friend who wrote, and that is all the person wrote about it, no other story, “There are so many ways to look at love.”

While I drove down here on the Henry Hudson Parkway, also known as Westside Highway, zooming past sailboats and yachts basking in the October sun in the Hudson “river”, I added my sister’s words from this weekend to my friend’s statement: “Love has wiggle room so people can grow.” I thought about my love for New York City: my attachment is touching, distressing, and borderline pitiful.

Someone recently had calculated the consecutive amount of time I actually stay in New York City as a retort when I replied, “Of course, I am in New York City. Where else would I be? I live here!”  Although I live in New York City I am often not here. That being said, I also can’t be away from New York City longer than 5 months. Yet, after 4 months of being here I consider going away again. And no, I am not paid to live this lifestyle; actually I must reconsider “what next” given this can’t be sustained.  I can’t afford a car and monthly parking in a garage like I once used to in order to live in New York City like I used to.

For all who come to New York City—for a visit or to stay for some personal intention—New York City is not whatever they thought it would be. I don’t mean whether they are disappointed or pleased, but they soon discover that all New York City is—is an idea—no different than love. You have to stick around long enough to know there are so many ways of looking at it.

I love looking at New York City for it is ever changing and never changing. A lot of people who live here and have been here for a long time are no different than a lot of other places: they have just been here and can not relate to my obsession. A lot of people here are as ignorant about the rest of the world, although they live in the “center” of the world in many ways, as are people who live in small towns whose only connection to the other world is stories by those who pass by and television, and if available, internet. But those who stay here consciously or keep coming back consciously, I believe they make New York, New York. They are in love with an idea, and when you are in love with an idea, it’s hard to get over it. If you can imagine it, you can create it.

At the beautiful wedding I attended this weekend, the groom’s grandparents had been married for sixty years. Sixty years is so many lifetimes. What was their secret? “We like talking to each other. And we listen to each other.”

The older I get the more I realize the perceptions I have of my parents’ relationship, married for over thirty years, are just that: my perceptions. The enviable to what I would discard, the adorable to the not quite right. My father would always say to us, if he decided not to joke around when we inquired, “Marry someone you can’t live without for you can live with anyone.” I have met people who can’t live with just anyone (family, friends, or room mates) and who are happily married to people they can live without.

I suppose it is true, love, like New York, is different things to different people.

And love is the one story we must create on our own no matter how  many other ideas about love feel fitting.

Well, I wrote whether Stillness is a man or a woman or real or an idea in my head. My Mac’s battery is about to finish. Regardless how much we would actually accomplish if we knew how long our life batteries are to last, I think we all would live more happily, for however long, if we could look at the invisible icon within about what ideas really matter to us so we can make them into whatever we want.

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