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.
"strangeness to a familiar place in a different time" is pretty much how I feel a lot of the time, but I guess that's what makes it interesting and keeps me here too. The evolution of cities and what we know as "home." This is why the energy and the feeling is how I've come now to define what home means.
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!
Thanks, Maya! I like how you describe it - "rewriting the script in my mind." It feels surreal - unfamiliar and strange at the same time. Times Square is soooo different than it used to be that it feels more "new" to me than anything else.
"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?
That song gives me all the feelings! And Paris is lovely, I so want to go back again. Either climate change or ridiculously high cost of living is the thing that will kill it for future generations. NYC infrastructure is old, and recent rain storms is really testing the system and showing cracks and weaknesses. It is all very concerning.
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.
"strangeness to a familiar place in a different time" is pretty much how I feel a lot of the time, but I guess that's what makes it interesting and keeps me here too. The evolution of cities and what we know as "home." This is why the energy and the feeling is how I've come now to define what home means.
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!
Thanks, Maya! I like how you describe it - "rewriting the script in my mind." It feels surreal - unfamiliar and strange at the same time. Times Square is soooo different than it used to be that it feels more "new" to me than anything else.
"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!
🥰 Thank you, Anne.
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
Beautiful! Thank you.
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?
That song gives me all the feelings! And Paris is lovely, I so want to go back again. Either climate change or ridiculously high cost of living is the thing that will kill it for future generations. NYC infrastructure is old, and recent rain storms is really testing the system and showing cracks and weaknesses. It is all very concerning.
Please be in touch if you go back!
Love this. And yes, you are definitely a native New Yorker!
Thank you, Christina!