there and back again...

Every now and then, when things look particularly dire, I doubt whether I'm cut out for this city. I question if I don't belong somewhere else, somewhere where life is - easier. Less expensive, less competitive, less cramped, less crazy. Because New York City is nothing if not those things.

By a stroke of luck and generosity, I got to steal away from the city this past weekend. I got to relax by a pool, take long drives along palm-lined streets, buy cocktails that only cost $5 and hang out in my friend's condo with a walk-in closet.  Phoenix has nearly perpetual sunshine and mall parking lots half the width of Manhattan. Seriously. Oh, and self-serve frozen yogurt. And did I mention all the swimming pools?

All too soon I was on my flight back, trying to ignore my tingling sunburn and the turbulence by concentrating on Esquire's 'Big Black Book' for Spring/Summer 2011. Somehow my mind drifted from the return of double breasted jackets to the reality of returning to the city, and everything awaiting me on West 19th Street. A familiar feeling of frustration and exhaustion started to take over my thoughts. That LCD Soundsystem song started playing in my head, "New York I love you, but you're bringing me down..."

Anyway, I think I must have been asleep the last time I landed in New York, because I would remember this feeling. The plane dipped to the left, and I peered out the windows across the isle just long enough to see almost the whole of Manhattan - it's 3-D skyline jutting upwards towards the stormy skies - fearless, epic, grand, glamorous, (expensive, crazy, cramped, competitive) Manhattan.

I got a surge of goosebumps down my entire body. I smiled into my magazine, and my chest tightened like it does right before a first kiss. I was soaring above the tiny island that feels like it holds all the possibility for everything I have ever wanted in life. It's all there. Here. I wanted to swan dive right out of that Boeing 747.

So okay okay, feeling all verklempt in an airplane doesn't really mean anything. (Except that I'm perhaps a bit of a nervous flier.) But damn if it doesn't at least remind me that I came here to accomplish some things, and by god I'm going to accomplish them.

Alright, now I'm done. I that was just my long-winded way of saying "Hello! I'm back from my lovely vacation in Arizona and I'm raring to go."


We now return you to your regularly scheduled fashion-based blogging schedule...