Toward the end of our time in New York, amidst the quickened, canon-fire pace of which things seemed to move, there was nary a time for contemplation, meditation, nor reflection. Then, as though momentum stopped obeying the laws of physics, it all came to a halt while I sat in an assigned window seat and watched the Rocky Mountains pass under me. I desperately tried to write down the billowing number of thoughts that entered my mind as there, for the first time, I had no distractions to command my attention elsewhere. As I went from one device to another upon battery death, my at one point partially coherent stream of thoughts began to get jumbled and ultimately failed to reach a conclusion. After touching down, obtaining my two checked bags and one cardboard moving box (a previously unknown form of checked “bag”), greeting my father, and embarking on the car ride home, my considerations of the last three years, of New York, of what that time meant to Marielle and me, slowly shifted to the back of my mind, pushed out by the breaking waves and rugged coast of Highway 1.
It wasn’t until I had a moment alone again to open back up my computer, recharge my phone, and compare sporadic notes that I came to realize the written output of my brilliant thinking resulted in little coherence and less legibility. In efforts to reconstruct the mile-high moment’s fervor, I tried and failed multiple times to rewrite my thoughts, ultimately amounting to nothing more than frustration. But as I had struggled to formulate any written substance, I was forced to grapple at least mentally with what I thought to be salient marques of the past three years. Once in LA and visiting friends, some questions were asked that I had come to earnestly ask myself since. And so it came in attempts to answer these questions both personally and publicly that some coherence grew out of the spoken word rather than the written. Given the temporality of all things uttered, it seemed only right to return once more to these black keys illuminated in white light and make something more permanent.
So now I sit, writing in an attempt to hint at what all of New York meant over the last three years and instead only talking about my previous failures to do so. Perhaps it is because much of New York was simply that: a series of necessary failures. Attempts were made often with results fluctuating between different degrees of failure while at times reaching notions of success—all to be considered, learned from, and then begun again. Failure however—though forming an often undesired hardness to small moments of ease as I simply waited for it to all go wrong—meant for us that we were not settling for the simple things, for the given and granted things, but pushing ourselves into situations and scenarios that took great effort. Often this resulted in some form of failure, yes, but never were we resigned to it. New York became a place of great struggle, but with it great joy. It was three years of high emotional swings where, regardless of which side, its vibrancy stayed consistently rich. Each moment of heartache, sadness, and failure was experienced fully and would be paired by equally joyous, fulfilling, and (even if minor) triumphant ones.
New York was the first city I lived in, the first city I came to know well, and ultimately developed some affinity for. It was the place in which Marielle and I came to know one other most intimately and concerns of our own failure faded away. It was where, after noticing recently developed character faults, I could return to a better version of myself not by fleeing from their varied manifestations but by facing them—all the while with her next to me. It was where I met some truly dear people and became closer to friends I hardly knew before—all the while thinking I had left my closest friends behind. It was a place where family relationships were rekindled with those previously distant—all the while thinking I had left my closest family behind. It was home. At least for a while, while we waited for what came next or perhaps what is right now.