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Showing posts from August, 2011

Culture Shock In Three Parts

Act I: This is not my beautiful city. Day 3 of officially living in New York. I have found, so far, that as long as I choose to accept New York and everything it is, it continues to accept me and everything I am. As such, I think this will be a divine friendship. Don't get me wrong, I miss Seattle so so much. Every few hours I can't believe how horrible it is that I left my friends and family and home to get another degree. It's not like I was on a dead end track or anything. Listen, I know it's good that I'm back in school and it's totally fine to be far away again, it just seems like such a drain of resources when I could be on the west coast where plane tickets to Phoenix are not so expensive and where I can decide to drive down to see my dad or brother over the weekend. Beyond the existential, NY feels so different. It's too short to be downtown, too residential to be capitol hill, too busy to be SoDo. Not to mention, though they're both in Man

oh yeah... Cambridge.

It's really weird to be back some place i used to spend so much time. I've been much more comfortable than I thought I'd be. While I was here, I was under such a high level of emotional and mental stress that I never really acknowledged that I was okay. Maybe not always happy, but always safe. Walking around the streets of Cambridge, unexpected memories have been flooding back to me. Not even super significant things just this acknowledgement that SO MUCH happened here. Countless life changes. Long opinion-altering conversations. There were so many reasons I would ditch whatever I was doing and go on a long walk. Or so many times over the summer we'd find ourselves trekking it across the city. There are so many restaurants and hole-in-the-wall stores i'd forgot about. So many personalities. So many hidden side-streets and beautifully decaying buildings. I'm glad I had enough time away from this place to be able to appreciate it as a home i had. It is excee