Thanks for this, I so relate. There are ghosts on the streets of all the places we used to live, and not just at Halloween! Travel lets you experience the strangeness of new places. But there's a strangeness to a familiar place in a different time, too. Makes you feel like a time traveler or a survivor or something, and yet, like falling in love and having children and all those proufound-slash-commonplace experiences, it's the most ordinary thing in the world.
Love this essay! I always feel super weird when I visit a place where I used to live and it’s radically different from what I remember. The links between your embodied experience in the past, your current memories, and the present experience can be difficult to reconcile. I worked in NYC in the 80s and every time I visit I have to rewrite the script in my mind. Although at least now Times Square is better!
"What I love about New York isn’t anything tangible or concrete. It isn’t a neighborhood or a particular building or institution. It’s a feeling, an energy that I learned I couldn’t live without because I couldn’t find it anywhere else."
I hope you'll take it as a compliment when I tell you that Alicia Key's New York immediatly started playing in my head while reading your post. I absolutely share the feeling. I wasn't born and raised in Paris, and I moved there to finish my studies - not because I was particularly keen on it, and ended up falling in love with the city. I still get a kick of endorphins walking there and while I now live in an adjacent suburb, would never leave. I do wonder, though, what climate change will do to city living - might we be the last generation to really enjoy it?
Thanks for this, I so relate. There are ghosts on the streets of all the places we used to live, and not just at Halloween! Travel lets you experience the strangeness of new places. But there's a strangeness to a familiar place in a different time, too. Makes you feel like a time traveler or a survivor or something, and yet, like falling in love and having children and all those proufound-slash-commonplace experiences, it's the most ordinary thing in the world.
Love this essay! I always feel super weird when I visit a place where I used to live and it’s radically different from what I remember. The links between your embodied experience in the past, your current memories, and the present experience can be difficult to reconcile. I worked in NYC in the 80s and every time I visit I have to rewrite the script in my mind. Although at least now Times Square is better!
"What I love about New York isn’t anything tangible or concrete. It isn’t a neighborhood or a particular building or institution. It’s a feeling, an energy that I learned I couldn’t live without because I couldn’t find it anywhere else."
Love this! I feel the same.
Thanks for the mention!
I don't know you but you ARE a New Yorker my darling...remember, it's not where you're from, it's where you're at! and I can feel it in your words..
I was born in California but 18 years in Paris, there's champagne running thru these veins. I'm Parisienne af <3
Hi Jenna,
I hope you'll take it as a compliment when I tell you that Alicia Key's New York immediatly started playing in my head while reading your post. I absolutely share the feeling. I wasn't born and raised in Paris, and I moved there to finish my studies - not because I was particularly keen on it, and ended up falling in love with the city. I still get a kick of endorphins walking there and while I now live in an adjacent suburb, would never leave. I do wonder, though, what climate change will do to city living - might we be the last generation to really enjoy it?
Love this. And yes, you are definitely a native New Yorker!