Sort of a weird Saturday Side Note, but I was feeling really homesick for NYC, and just sort of sad in general lately, and I jotted this short bit down on my phone.  There was this moment when I realized that one of my all-time favorite feelings is, “drunk in New York” and I kind of laughed at myself and tried to parcel out why.

When you’re drunk in New York the edges that outline you begin to soften.  You’re no longer an individual, with Your Wants and Your Needs and You Need to Get to Works.  You’re no longer swimming against the current inside this giant, scrawling and skittering maw, trying to find Your Place and Your Destiny.  Carving out Your Space and Place.  Instead, you melt a bit – fading at the sides – and you’re what you always subconsciously wanted to be: A part of it.  You’re in it.  You’re New York, and it’s you.  You belong here and take your place rightfully in a higher context, a small detail the artist put in almost as an afterthought – an after thought that ends up being the perfect fit, making the rest of the picture seamless.  Making it really hum and buzz and sing.

When you’re drunk in New York secrets are revealed to you because you are a part o fit and when you are a pat of something it can’t hurt you.  So you quietly tiptoe through Gowanus, giggling to yourself, all alone and thrilled about it.  And you see the chemical rainbows adjust themselves on the surface of the water.  You see a teenage girl smoking out of her window, the rest of her apartment pitch black and she shoots you a guilty look (you’re a part of this, and so emboldened, you actually salute her like a fellow member of the regiment because you are).  You go to an all night Chinese restaurant that is packed full of people and yet they still find a way to fit your party of five, smack in the middle of the place.  So much food is ordered and so little is eaten, the perfect metaphor for this place.  It’s all too much, too much too consume – in one night, in a lifetime.  But there’s no guilt for wasting food nor fear of missing out, not with the booze sloshing around your veins.  You just watch the food put into bags and sit back and happily, curiously try to remember: Why did we come here?  Were we hungry?  What were we hungry for?