Sprung

Warm musty New York spring evening and suddenly we are all alive and maybe even well. The smells of the street are back, concrete, garbage, perfumes drift by as I navigate narrow, crooked West Village sidewalk mazes. Croci grow around barren, waking trees, and from the west, a late sunset trickles through the streets. My steps are quick, long, straight, bouncing, and when I look people in the eye, I remember what it is to be alive. Hibernation sneaks up on me like a dark silent storm each year, but spring springs with song and dance and colored confetti, dependably.

I return to Morton after viewing an apartment on Charles Street, beautiful, dreamy, tree-lined Charles Street with its magnolia courtyards and date-night-kissed stoops. It wasn't even for me but for my dear friend arriving with the late flight from Paris; no matter, the feeling is the same. The potential. Walking this street I have stepped on so many times before, this time doing so in a new light, like Could I live here, and what would that feel like? I was completely satisfied with the answer.

The truth is, tonight there is nowhere I would rather live. This beautiful city of water towers and taxicabs, of hopes and sweat and tears, my New York. April approaches, life approaches, and unending potential lies in the margins. I take my notebook and I get on the A train. At JFK waits a newbie, and, like a junkie, I long to see the city through her eyes; a dream come true, a life in the making, bright, shiny, and unexplored. How could it not blow us all away?