Homesick on the Hill: Meditations in an Emergency

"One Need Never Leave the Confines of New York...," says Frank O'Hara. Uploaded to Flickr by wallyg

The Hill is Home. Indeed. Is it though?

I returned from New York Sunday night, but before I had left I found myself caught in a crying jag, sitting in a 100 year-old family-run pastry shop, which I have to leave again, with only a biscotti for company, trying not to wake the sleeping old man slumped on a vintage ice cream soda chair. And I miss the City, now, even with Eastern Market in all its renovated warm brick  beauty rising before me as I walk in my flip-flops to buy  treats and shoes and chocolate and things. I still miss my New York, because it  promises more among all the cold and hot places in what’s left of the rest of the universe.

I know we all talk here about the Hill and its wonderful offerings–one  seems to spring up each week, by golly–its well-worn paths, cheerful new rites we embrace, its food, art and good folk offerings, real estate, gardens, cozy neighbors (and even cozier dramas), its walkability and talkability. But the truth is, many of us come from someplace else. And what happens when we miss it? When we have the jagged episodes of belonging elsewhere even though we belong here and have made lives here?  We aren’t supposed to talk about that amid the glories of our adopted neighborhood. But we  still miss our old homes. I never lived in New York for long, but that is beside the point.

Because I miss its rats, its overheated subway cars quivering with lusciously  patient riders, its insistence on serving the best things you have ever tasted (over and over again, with the best people you have ever met); where so many things you could love forever can be spotted out of the corner of your eye, chased own if you only had time and could live there forever.  I tried to counsel an earnest, bespectacled man on his  younger brother’s troubles (he started stealing, lying, getting in with a bad crowd) while stuck in a tunnel on the L train well past midnight on the way back from my favorite corner of Brooklyn, even if I get lost each time going there.  The younger brother, chubby and dozing-off, angelic face belying no mischief, was only awakened with a flick of a towel. New York, since this is a paean to it, is like magic on steroids–something always happens wherever you wander,  only because 1,000 other things were only trying to happen that you didn’t notice or take on.

“One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.”  Thanks, Frank O’Hara.

I found that quote written in metal letters wrapped around the fence  on the plaza facing the Hudson River down past the  Trade Centers, and lingered by it on breaks from my reporting  job in the World Financial Center. It is still there and although the record stores have been replaced, New York hasn’t, and I haven’t.

I was simply at home there, too, and feel like I lose all luster upon reentry to the Hill. I sometimes wish I hadn’t left. It seems that it is something that cannot be said aloud here. I miss it so. So there, I said it. The Hill Gods and Goddesses haven’t struck me down–yet. And some day I might miss this place, but that will be sad, because it will mean I have left the Hill. More tears.

So, what places do you miss? It’s okay–you can tell us!  You aren’t betraying the Hill! It can take it.