Anticipation

Spring is so close, I can smell it. I stood at the Howard Beach station in Queens today and felt it in the sunlight. It tickles something deep, deep within me. Every year it's the same story. Every year, I am more than willing to fall helplessly and happily into the return of life.

Tonight I am tired. But tomorrow, tomorrow I allow the Life to run in my veins, again.

Revisited

Where are you going? the woman asked me as we waited for the AirTrain. Oh, nowhere, I replied. I'm here to pick up my mother.

Two years since last she was here, and isn't it strange to think? A life based in that Greenpoint apartment with the breathtaking view. An adventure in the city, barely out of its cradle. There was no telling where it would lead; I suspected my money would run out by fall. We navigate the West Village maze now, and it's difficult to remember a time when everything was new, every map uncharted.

It's good to be reminded sometimes: we live, we learn, we evolve. These days pass so quickly, but not a single one was lived in vain.

New York, New York.

The dog smells of winter and burning woodchips. The streets are slow, navigating mounds of slush and deceptive pools of icy water. The snowfall picks up again. After hours of Brooklyn laughter, I made my way down Hudson Street to nestle in my jet lag and my home. White Horse lay quiet and cosy on its streetcorner, the bright red sign like a beacon of familiarity through the falling flakes. Last night, by the time I was on that E train riding towards Manhattan, the car filled with so many different types of people, all united by their place in the city, already I felt at home. Already, the beautiful trip of sunshine and new faces, of family and escape from reality, was dripping off my skin and disappearing into the gutter. How quickly it happens, and I almost wasn't sad to see it go.

Hours later, unable of course to sleep despite the promising start, I lay in my own bed, in my own sheets, with orphan puppy nestled into my armpit, tickling me with her content, deep breaths, devouring music like I had been starved for a month. (I suppose, in a way, I had). I could barely force myself to wait out one song before jumping to the next, trickling through playlists like they were Baskin Robbins flavors handed out on plastic trial spoons, letting each one slide down my taste buds and fulfill my senses before it was gone and I was on to the next.

Perhaps, tomorrow, I will remember what I until so recently had, that my feet danced on Australian soil and my life had not a care in the world. But as my Home seeps in to my pores and words yet again run rampant through my head, I can't help but giggle, my heart can't help but sigh. That is the magic, of home.

That is the magic, of New York.