Transcontinental
10 o'clock, May 29, 2003
Back on the Left Coast for about 40 hours and I still haven’t quite caught up. This was my fourth trip to New York, at four days the second longest, and the first where the temperature was consistently over 50°F. I just can’t get over the place; it’s London and Tokyo and San Francisco all rolled into one.
Doubtless I’d feel differently if I actually had to pay Manhattan rents. But I think by nature I’m either a metropolitan citoyen du monde or a rural college-town eccentric; probably both, in alternating seasons. A provincial capital like Seattle is not, I’m afraid, a very good compromise.
When I was planning to move to NYC, one of the things I loved about it was the idea that I could live in the heart of a bustling city, but if I wanted (since I have the SoCal blase attitude towards driving), I could sit in a car for a couple of hours and be in the middle of rural nowhere.
But Columbia had the audacity to turn me down and I never did get to intern at the UN, so we're in Big Bear instead.