New York anniversary, year 4.

I'm a few weeks late on my fourth-anniversary-in-New-York post, or something, which is just about perfect for my current state of mind and affairs. This is not to say that I've taken toward tardiness, as my yoga schedule relies quite a bit on heavily-pointed promptness - it's more like I've refocused the lens in terms of which things do and do not require certain levels of attention and priority.

I've fallen out of frenzy into a softer variation of busyness. A softer variation of everything, even, but still within the context of the city. Still a bee, but probably not the first one out of the hive on any given day. Definitely not, in fact - as I slip further and further into this warm bath, I've found myself staring at the hoards of subway riders exploding forth from the doors like water from a dam while I putter about, wondering what exactly they are rushing to, and for.

It's a lot of this - time for wondering about inane things. I love it so much. I imagine that it's a little bit like being in a coma, or an extremely pleasant and extended dream. I understand that it is probably super annoying. But I can only take care of myself and my family, and so here we are.

The city is playing very prettily toward my little tableau, with the sunbeams on full blast and seemingly doing its level best to hold off on the god-awful stinking humidity for as long as possible. It's golden hour after golden hour, and if you steer clear of Chinatown in direct sunlight I would say you can really do pretty well to avoid that fetid summertime ripeness that New York is so famous for. No promises for July and August, though.

We're rounding the corner on three months in our third apartment in our third neighborhood in Brooklyn. It's our favorite spot yet - the aesthetic a combination of modern and vintage, the neighborhood a combination of grit and warmth. Three being the auspicious number of balance, and I would say that we are feeling pretty darn balanced as we settle into our new cubbyhole. No longer wishing for more space, a different view, or really much of anything at all. And as we talk more and more about what's next, I actually feel for the first time like we can't leave. Because of all of this - this neighborhood and this community and my amazing, amazing friends.

These friends! I am sometimes so surprised to look around me and see such a dense and varied garden of loyal compatriots. It seems like a lifetime ago that I was sitting alone in our Dumbo apartment night after night, waiting for Clay to come home. My yoga situation actually allows me to balance soothing my inner introvert with my tendencies toward friend-neglect, giving me plenty of alone time during the day and freeing up nights and weekends for socializing. My friends are envious of my schedule and I of their income, and we all do our best to support each other anyway. Between the husband and the lifestyle and the city and the people, I've never felt so supported in my whole life.

I feel so here, really here, moreso than I ever have. 'Putting down roots' is the best way to say it. No longer arriving, a polite observer and a thank-you-very-much-for-letting-me-squat-here-for-a-while sort of participant, but a solid and fully-acclimated piece of the root system. Like if I left, the city might notice, might lose its own balance, if only for a minute.

Today I stand in tadasana on our new balcony and let the hot wind whip through my hair and splayed fingers, feeling every inch a mountain as the trains blow by on the Williamsburg bridge. I can feel myself growing right up out of the concrete, reaching as far down into the dirt as my skull is tall. The people continue to burst out of the subway cars like ants from a desecrated anthill, but I am not one of them, no longer. I am the earth, I am the wind.

I'm losing, loosening, my grip. And it's nice.

New York anniversary, year 3.

Over the long weekend, we caught up with a friend of ours who is wrestling with a decision to take a dream job in another city. Seriously, this is a Dream Job/Career Maker, and the potential city is, from what I've heard, a very nice place to live (details withheld to protect a lovely person who didn't ask for his/her life to be publicized here). Seems like a no-brainer, but said person is not entirely sure he/she is ready to leave New York.

Of course, I was all, pfft, dream job! You can come back! Live while you're young! and so forth, but I think that the idea of an unbreakable tie to the city is something that, despite all my talk of Colorado dreams, I'm finally starting to get.

***

Today marks three years since I first set foot in Manhattan without a return ticket. Three years! And as I start to round the corner towards my twenty-eighth birthday (no-longer-a-spring-chicken-hood looming ever closer), it grows increasingly obvious that the most significant relationship of my twenties is this one, the one between myself and the city. My partnership with this pulsating, roiling, vibrantly enthusiastic, stubborn, sullen and always richly incredible place. 'Place' doesn't seem like a quite substantial enough word, but I suppose she can be found on a map, and 'state of mind' seemed to err on the side of perhaps a bit poetic, which didn't seem right here. I'm officially putting a fork in it, calling her my most main of squeezes (sorry darling) mostly because of the unparalleled part she's played in helping me to foster and cultivate my relationship with myself.

Actually, I should probably be my real main squeeze. So she's like, number 2 (again, sorry honey).

A quick side note that seems worth mentioning: I'm going to continue to bless her with that holiest of pronouns ("she"), in agreement with the hordes of songwriters, authors, screenwriters, poets and otherwise artists who have labeled her as such over the years. The energy of the city, while sometimes dark and violent, does feel uniquely (and sometimes divinely) feminine to me. I see in her Shakti, Diana, Gaia, Aphrodite. Creator and destroyer, pursuer and seductress, muse to many and unmistakably motherly - she is She, a modern-day and ever-morphing goddess; she is all that is love.

Looking back on my first anniversary post, it is painfully obvious that I was too young to understand, that I was so scared to commit. That I was frustrated with her for not eagerly reaching out to me as I arrived on her shores. Even my eventual understanding was shallow (although throw a couple more years at it and I'm sure this will look puny as well, but here we are). It wasn't about whether she had the time; I needed her validation to be able to grow and she was unwilling to give it to me. I hated her for keeping it from me, something Chicago had so easily given.

But she needed to know that I was serious about her, that I was serious about me. She needed to know that I would, at some point, be able to let go of my attachment and be that validation for myself.

And I have.

So now I've relaxed, she's opened up, and we've settled into something comfortable, something familiar. I see her, through the dirt and chaos and frustration and hate and hurt and all that's been dumped on her over the years. I see the pure electric love throbbing at her core, pumping through the streets and tunnels and rivers as she cradles these millions of people in her arms. She's more mature than I gave her credit for, quietly and non-judgmentally allowing her masses to walk all over her and blame her and use her as a stepping stone to becoming what they want to be. Day after day after day she takes beating after beating after beating, and she thrives and blooms and flourishes around her scars, shining so through all the ashes.

And somewhere in the midst of all of that, she sees me and returns the favor.

For every crowded subway ride through Manhattan, she trades me a moment of cobble-laden silence on a Brooklyn evening. And for each gray and dreary morning, a lunchtime seat warmed by sunlight in Meatpacking plaza. One terrifying hurricane in exchange for crisp afternoons spent with old and new friends at the tiniest and best dive bar garden in Red Hook, which I'm so thankful can continue to thrive. We go on like that, me being patient with her as she fusses and fumes, her rewarding me for my time with shy and stolen moments that she's taught me to seek, that I've learned to find. The more time I give, the more she helps me to see.

And it's me, along with the city, that comes into ever-clearer focus.

So tonight I raise a glass to you, sweet city, in honor of our three years together. I've said it before, but it still rings true - in exchange for my residency, I will continue to try, to take it in, to expand, to arrive. And I will know for certain that I am always enough.

And I will never again be alone, not here.

New York anniversary, year 2.

There is a feeling that New York fosters within the bowels of the subways, a moment that feels as though someone has cooked it up specifically as a smack in the head for anyone who was thinking they could remove themselves from the wonderful demographic cesspool that New York is so famous for and escape to the suburban pockets of uniformity of their youths. This, of course, is the moment when you realize that the person sitting next to you on the subway is getting off at the same stop as you. I mean, sometimes this person looks like you, but, let's be real, more often than not they look like nothing you've ever seen before and can't believe exists in polite society, and now they are getting off at your stop. With you. Moving in tandem through your neighborhood, potentially living in your building. My narrow midwestern mind has a moment of panic as it tries to process how this person could possibly be existing on a parallel track to my own. New York smiles quietly at the literal and metaphysical tableau it has created just for me, gently cracking open my skull and prying until the light and air starts to hit me right in my under-used brain.

New York is a constant reminder to each and every one of its ridiculous inhabitants that we are all the same.

*

I remember the exact instant that my small brain expanded to house the information that I was part of a connected ecosystem, that my tiny actions on this earth could potentially impact every other human being on the planet, if not every creature. Maybe some people are born with this sense of scope hard-coded into their brain, but I was definitely not. I'm guessing I could say the same for many of the folks who grew up in nice shiny bubble communities in the midwest. Not that I'm knocking any of that. It certainly was nice.

Anyhow, I was eight years old and we were moving from one lovely suburb of western Michigan to another when this particular expansion took place. Despite the fact that a move meant I would have to switch schools, I had generously decided to forgive my parents for this as it meant a new bedroom for yours truly, and I had long since proclaimed my current bedroom to be tragically undersized (my tendency to over-dramatize situations has not progressed much since then). I remember that in the midst of my triumph, my mom was stressing out because the people trying to move into our current house were anxious for us to get out so they could move in, but the owners of the house we wanted to move into were stalling on closing because they had not yet found a new house to move into. She was explaining the situation to me on the verge of tears, and I did not understand what she was making such a big deal about. My brain was registering one one channel only, and that channel was the huge purple bedroom in my future - how could anyone possibly be upset with times such as these ahead of us? So she ditched the realtor-speak and went for a simpler explanation.

"The people buying our house can't move in until we move out, and we can't move out until we have some place to move in, meaning we need the people in the house we're buying to move out. And they don't want to, which means we have to wait. Us moving depends on whether they move."

At that moment, the light-bulb went on and I realized that not only did our move depend on their move, but there were people trying to buy the house of the people trying to buy our house, and that THEY couldn't move in until we moved out and the people buying our house moved out of their house and into our house. And someone was trying to buy the house of those people as well! And the same went in the other direction, for the people who were moving out of the house we were trying to move into. What seemed like a singular event ("let's get a new house!") was in fact a much, much larger affair, and involved jumping into a line of millions and millions of people all moving houses at the same time. You couldn't, then, decide to change your own situation without impacting innumerable other people, people you will never meet but that were involved in the transaction you made when you were eight years old and begged your parents for a larger bedroom.

I don't remember my reaction to this, but I do remember trying very deliberately to digest the shock and take in the enormity of the truth I had just uncovered. I don't think I've slept quite the same since.

*

Today marks two years since I moved to New York City, another year of catalyst added to the heat of my particular journey of self-expansion. I closed year 1 on the beach in Miami; year 2 at the office preparing all kinds of planning presentations, so I hope you'll forgive me that my reflections aren't quite as blissed-out as they were last time around.

Everything has changed, but not much has changed. I still hate the heat, I still miss Chicago (the tulips on Michigan Ave in the spring! ack), and I still create all kinds of stress for myself from the energy and dichotomies that the city presents. But the whole thing appears as a more mature sort of struggle, through a lens of gratitude for the proliferation that my life here continues to foster. Life is, after all, pretty grand.

Someone told me this weekend that the first two years are the hardest. As these have been two of the best years of my life, I certainly hope they're right, and I continue on.

I continue to try, I continue to take it in, I continue to expand, I continue to arrive.