nyc

If you can't tell by the recent explosion of posts, I've finished the semester and am back in NYC, for a total of about five weeks with two weeks of Egypt/Gaza in the middle.

Through a Chinese fire drill of real estate that could only happen in the New York rental market, I'm back in the same apartment I first rented with my (now ex) girlfriend nearly four years ago, subleasing our old bedroom from the friend who became her roommate after I moved to California. (I know it sounds complicated, but if you live in NYC you know that people will do anything to keep a cheap place with a good landlord.)

The apartment has been rearranged enough to not feel like mine anymore (not complaining--the new occupants are more enterprising with decorating than we ever were), but the neighborhood is still familiar, although a few things have changed. The Middle Eastern place that replaced the drug-front deli has itself been replaced by a pizza place, but the Chinese food place whose number is still in my phone is exactly the same--even the same delivery guy, gosh darnit. The music is still blasting from Cavo (clearly I'm still on West Coast time--it's 2:30 am here) and while I'm sad to report that the Astoria Diner closed (!!!), I did eat a delicious, delicious bagel at good old Lite Bites this morning.

It is easy to fall back into the routines of this neighborhood that I know well enough to traverse on autopilot. It is lovely to sit by the window and close my eyes and feel connected to the pulsing, vibrant, ever-awake city stretching out around me, in a way I never feel in Los Angeles. My current bedroom--at 88 square feet, around half the size of my bedroom in LA--feels not too small, but just right. And I realized before I left LA that when people asked me if I was going home, I had been thinking of New York and saying "yes."