The next stop is 96th Street.
“You know, you don’t seem like a New York person,” people will say. I do not know what a “New York Person” is, but I am, frankly, inclined to agree that I do not seem like one. There is very little on paper to suggest that I would be even casually interested in New York. There are trains and bike lanes, sure, but the whole place is dirty and loud. The apartments are bad (and most assuredly do not meet my standards for dishwashing and laundry). The tap water is good enough, but the same is true in my hometown, and I have never seen a rat on the street there.
I do not seem like a New York Person, and yet I have spent the last decade of my life dreaming of New York. It just seems right that I should live in such a strange, larger-than-life city. “The city is like poetry,” writes E. B. White. “Everything in New York is like the Ring Cycle,” says Fran Lebowitz, “Everything in New York is an operatic thing.”
In high school, I was determined that I would go to New York City the moment that I had a chance. I was certain I would be there for college until I discovered and fell in love with Kalamazoo. In college, I told myself I would move after graduation up until I found myself working very happily in Michigan government with the window of New York opportunity seemingly shrinking.
It has been a weird year. Today, I have a remote job. Apartments are cheap(er than normal). My current lease is ending. I am, through a miracle of modern science, fully vaccinated. The window of opportunity is here.
At the end of this week, I will move to a small apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
If this development had come about in 2014, I would have packed a small bag with whatever was within arm’s reach and left without any hesitation. Years later, things are a bit more complicated.
Moving is difficult when you have had time to settle in for a couple of years. Possessions must be culled and mid-range Scandinavian furniture has to be returned to its flat-packed state. Walls need patching and magazine subscriptions need updating, and that is the easy stuff.
The life I have built in the two years since I graduated from college is extraordinary. I have had the good fortune to do incredible things and know incredible people in Detroit, Downriver, Holland, and Lansing. It is a testament to what a pleasure it has been that it is so difficult to leave. I never expected that, when the day finally came, I would hesitate so much.
I am not good at goodbyes. If I had my way, I think I would simply tell people that I was going out of town for a while and not answer follow-up questions. This, I am told, is inadvisable, and I have had to spend several days ruining perfectly good meals, Zooms, telephone calls, and newsletters with the news of what is to come.
I am lucky, however, to be in a position that will allow me to continue working with the Michigan Legislature and to return to Michigan with what I hope will be some degree of regularity. I mention this because I would otherwise be treated as if I was dying.
“Ian is going away,” people unfamiliar with freeways or jets would say. “We will miss him, but we know he is finally at peace, and we’re glad that we had a chance to say goodbye.”
One strange thing about uprooting one’s life is that, outside of the unpleasantness of goodbyes and the packing of possessions, it is primarily a feat of bureaucracy. There is lots of emailing back and forth and lots of paperwork and signing on dotted lines and estimating cubic footage and reserving freight elevators. Checks are written. Documents are mailed. There are waves of terror and excitement, but nothing feels quite as momentous as a person might expect.
On Saturday afternoon, I waded through the Tulip Time crowd to the Holland Post Office to send off a lease and security deposit. At the counter, the clerk caught on to what was happening with a thick envelope, postal money order, and Manhattan ZIP Code. “You know,” she said, looking up from her computer, “nobody can ever really leave Holland.” And then she slapped postage on the envelope and sent it on its way.
Distractions
Things I have been reading, watching, and listening to this week.
"We Should All Be More Afraid of Driving” by Joshua Sharpe in The Atlantic.
This piece caught my eye last week and spoke to some of my most terrible fears as somebody who used to commute hundreds of miles each week and spends a significant amount of time in Detroit, a city with a culture built on the car.
People move for lots of reasons. I am moving for lots of reasons, not the least of which is access to public transport. I am tired of driving. I find it terrifying and exhausting, and I do it constantly. I have had enough.
When people tell you that young people will move to a place if it has more aerospace jobs or a lower income tax or a higher concentration of chain restaurants, they are lying. If I may speak for young people, let me suggest that what we really want is good transport and to not assume terrible liability each time we want to leave the house. When I think of the best part of living in New York, I do not think of bars or restaurants or museums. I think of the subway.
Here is New York by E. B. White.
“The oft-quoted thumbnail sketch of New York is, of course: ‘It’s a wonderful place, but I’d hate to live there.’ I have an idea that people from villages and small towns, people accustomed to the convenience and friendliness of neighborhood over-the-fence living, are unaware that life in New York follows the same neighborhood pattern… The curious thing about New York is that each geographical neighborhood is composed of countless small neighborhoods. Each neighborhood is virtually self-sufficient. Usually it is no more than two or three blocks long and a couple of blocks wide. Each area is a city within a city… So complete is each neighborhood, and so strong the sense of neighborhood, that many a New Yorker spends a lifetime within the confines of an area smaller than a country village. Let him walk two blocks from his corner and he is in a strange land and will feel uneasy till he gets back.”