I get this amnesia of sorts. A memory wipe of this season last year, losing everything other than the overall takeaway. I can only remember “I hate summer” and “I cannot wait for the fall” sprinkled into my repertoire last year.
Here’s what changed: New York is perceptibly way more fun this year than last. Competent elected officials, the Knicks winning, subsequent outdoor camaraderie everywhere, and the general feeling that New York is the place to be will do that. Cost of living banded everyone who can’t pay for shit together and brought them outside to repeated chants of “we outside” over distorted bluetooth speakers blasting high DB beats.
New York was the place to escape from, not in. I spent a few summers inside taking care of a sick cat, so seeing the city empty led to major FOMO. (Is this why I hated summer?) Those people fucked off to Majorca or the Riviera once again, but this time they’re missing out. Remaining put would be the most fashionable choice. Now, I’m only missing out on sleep.
Because I’m outside. I have to be as the city’s pulse picks up. Yes, the weird glass towers and artisanal pizza chains with lines a mile long still dot the boulevards. A scoop of passable ice cream currently costs a whole $10. Tourists and transplants alike still stop in the middle of fast moving sidewalks for selfies. Yet those towers stand empty (and crumbling further uptown), those self-centered pylons get “asked” to move, and the woman selling tamales on the corner by the subway went down in price when the seasons changed.
It’s a time to be offline, ride bikes through the street at golden hour, and generally put a newsletter to the side for a spell. I’m ducking my emails for 60 hours at the end of the week and auto-archiving every non-essential inbox item for the remaining waking 66. Asking an “audience” to make an exception for moi seems self-centered if not hypocritical.
There is also less for me at home. My wife is toiling away at a theatre in the West Village, only hanging out in the wee hours of the evening and when leaving five hours later to start the next performance. The phantom obligation of being here in the off hours to take care of our Stella is what tethered me here in the winter and spring. The pain of loss remains, perhaps greater than before, yet the magnet that pulled me back home to helicopter over her ghost lost its strength somewhere in the midst of Knicks celebrations and strays showing up on my security cameras. I’ve also taken a liking to the ocean breeze over the stale air of mini-splits.
I finally like summer, and there’s a lot left to like. I can train to ride a 107 miles from Prospect Park to the Rocky steps in Philly, or I can keep a regular cadence in writing these indoors. I can’t do both, and though I’ve started my next book with the notebooks in my messenger bag, I’m loathe to bring a laptop and sit with it under the sun.
We’ll see each other again before the season’s over, naturally. Until then, you can find me somewhere between Prospect and Central Parks. Do try to keep up.