Coming Home

I've been thinking a lot about how I don't write anymore. (...or I guess I should say, how I haven't written in so long since I am definitely writing at this very moment.) I have thought about it so much and how much I miss the feeling of finishing a simple blog or article when everything feels like it makes more sense and I can be proud of what I have been able to put into words.

Today I found myself venting to my husband again about how I feel I've lost my creative spark and it occurred to me how ironic my reasoning was. I used to write because I wanted to go to New York and the very thought of that inspired me to put words together. What I told my husband today was that I haven't written because I'm afraid that inspiration is gone and now that we are hoping to get back to New York, I don't know how I will make myself write something when I can't find the inspiration again. (Whatever will I do?) But if what inspired me in the first place was just the prospect of living in New York, would not the actual experience of living there be ten times more powerful as inspiration goes?

I began to think about the short amount of time last year when I was able to go to New York for school and I began to draw out all of those old feelings again. I remember just the way it felt to fly into the city after the sun had gone down and the blackness of the night sky had taken up residence behind the city skyline. It was like arriving in a new world--it was nothing like home and just flying by those sparkling skyscrapers brought tears to my eyes. In many ways, it was just as I had imagined my flight back in would be, but it somehow also overwhelmed me in a way I hadn't expected. I had arrived. I had been writing about this place for two years and I was finally there.

New York is like no other place. One of my favorite things about it is the fact that it has inspired so many people over the years. Say what you will about cold, heartless city life, but I can still remember all the moments I had there that felt so intimate, so extraordinary... and many of them were just between the city and me. I remember how I loved to find the Chrysler Building from wherever I was in the city and how just the fact that I could find it in the skyline made me feel like I hadn't gone too far even if I was neighborhoods away from where I started. I remember walking for blocks with my head tilted upward to experience that sort of vertigo you get from walking while looking up at the tall buildings beside you. I remember taking the train in every morning and out every night and always making sure to get a glimpse of the skyline as it approached or faded away. It is the same feeling I get when I look into my husband's eyes: hope, love, promise, elation, that feeling that everything is right even if it is just for that moment.