Week One

[UPS came to the Italianate Mansion in the small garden neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, MA, where I had lived for the past year. Goodbye, Vee Vee and the Valachovic's, goodbye giant trees and summer mansions, frosted victorian winters and leafy green summer days. I watched my eight large boxes get loaded into the brown van, sighed, packed up my little laptap, and grasped my Amtrak Acela ticket.]

I'm home now, and it's Saturday night, almost one in the morning, here in the city. Out of the corner apartment on the 27th floor, 42nd Street spills outwards below, and towers rise above, dominated by the Chrysler Tower.

Looking South, I can barely make out NY Harbor, the Manhattan Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the East River is a ribbon of black glass tonight. I am home.

I'm on the floor for now. My furniture is in San Francisco. I hope to get a bed soon, some curtains, maybe a chair, but for now, I've been sleeping on a blow-up thing that popped this weekend, and now, a foam mattress on the hardwood.

The new job is incredible! Being home...incredible! Met with Rob and Ed, Young, and have appointments with Sohini and Arka, Victoria, and many others in my NY life that I am coming home to.

I'm tired though. The three years away, well, it's caught up with me: the hard work, new job, late hours, packing on my free time, worry about free cash, then the move, the travel from Beantown to Gotham on the train...no vacation days taken yet, just trucking through.

Exhausted, actually.

This weekend, instead of worrying, I'm looking out the windows, walking up Madison Avenue, popping into museums, and leaving messages for friends. I need rest.