Personal Musings

I love Seattle, but I've lately realized that my true home is New York. It's a good thing to realize, but unexpected. Last time I traveled to the City, I decided I didn't want to be there; I chose to stay here.

However, I recently began questioning that decision. First I thought it was simply because I couldn't be happy in New York. When I first came West , it was because I hated the crowds, the filth they generated and the target they represented post 9-11. I desperately wanted to commute in a private carriage with reserved seating, a radio, and a place to put my bags. Here, the pace of life has helped me get centered. I've quit smoking, I'm eating healthier, I swim, I go to the gym, and I have time to blog. When the air smells of anything it's pine and rain, not piss and trash.

But in leaving behind all those people, by getting in my car, I was cutting myself off from the part of life that makes it so wonderful. All the millions of people in megacities enable a diversity insupportable anywhere else. Statistically, all manner of businesses, organizations, and activities are viable in places like New York simply because it takes such a small percentage of the population to succeed.

Living on the West Coast is very much a process of active self-removal. People exile themselves from public living. They commute in cars, often alone, and physically detached from one another. In subways and on street corners it’s the easiest thing imaginable to say “excuse me�? or “can you move to the center of the train?�? – a thing different, by definition, from the blast of a horn. And when West Coasters are not commuting, they wall themselves off in constantly re-decorated homes with immaculately landscaped yards. It’s easy to filter all manner of uncomfortable ideas and people without seeming too much of a snob. If you pick the right neighborhood, choose the right friends, and watch the right TV, life becomes a blissful little hobby.

Seattle has its charms, but great museums, dozens of old bookstores, and the thumpa-thumpa of global commerce are not among them. I once told Gavin that New York is a city with a park in the middle, while Seattle is a park with a city in the middle. I still hold that opinion. But now I miss the daily staple of unexpected events. I crave the barrage of uncomfortable ideas and a people willing to always speak their mind.

Having a car and wide open spaces has been wondrous. But I need to be around people; to eavesdrop their conversations held in Portuguese, Russian or Yiddish; to see them slink, saunter, scurry and strut along streets and in subways. I need to hear them yelling at one another and telling each other stories. I need to see middle-aged punk rockers loitering on 57th Street and silver-haired dowagers chasing down cabs. I need to be offended by the odd juxtapositions that only occur in New York. And I can’t do that from my car.

For now, I am happy enough here. I have a good job, a good life, and good friends. But at some point the detachment, the geographic distance, the personal isolation, and the cultural paucity in the Northwest will all become wholly intolerable. I will succumb to the draw of New York. I will go home.

I filed an extension. I'm not eager to deal with the paperwork this year. Something about government spending on war, Medicare Part D, Gitmo, excessive regulation, and my general repugnance for politicians sapped my motivation to "get around to it." I'll report my income later, with the help of a discounted, day-after copy of Turbo Tax.

My intention was to blog about pollution in China. But that invariably led me to think about U.S. grain exports that may be needed to feed the Chinese (whose remaining arable land is being sucked into megacities). Then, I started thinking more generally about trade with China which meant thinking specifically about the federal deficit and the national debt. It all led back to the fact that today is Tax Day, which just wears me out.