On Home and Belongingness—And Why I Miss Paris

Okay, so it's been 92 days since I returned from my five-month stay in Paris. And I don't blame my friends who have repeatedly commented on the fact that I have often unconsciously vocalized differences between life in Paris and life here in the NJ/NYC area, or talked about how Paris simply does a lot of things better. I know hearing such remarks can be tiresome and annoying, and can make me sound arrogant and pretentious at worst. I'm sorry. But please, believe me when I say there is more to it than that. And if you don't believe me, well, then let me justify myself. I've had this post ready for a very long time now, but I wanted to give it some time before I delved into this.

...but bear with me, because this will take a while. 

The concept of home—and more generally, of belongingness—has always fascinated me. My parents have owned the same house here in New Jersey since they emigrated from Macedonia to the United States a few years before I was born. We never moved houses (though we did put ours on the market for a short few years hoping to find something more spacious, but the search ended in vain). The most residential change we ever underwent was to relocate a few years ago to the slightly bigger and better-lit second floor of our two-family house. But that involved nothing more than moving furniture up a flight of stairs. Not an easy feat—it's a narrow staircase that spirals at the top slightly—but regardless, my point remains that I have always called this same, small, humble abode "home" for the entirety of my twenty years of life.

Thus, my view on the meaning of home has always been slightly stagnant and more or less unexceptional. So when I moved into my dorm in New York City last year, everything felt...off. I had always loved New York City. I would come into the city all the time, and even spent my freshmen year of college commuting to school there. Yet when it came to actually living there, I felt as if I had left a heavy part of me behind in New Jersey. There was a strange internal imbalance that arose, something inexplicable that made me think, "This doesn't feel right."

Of course, as with most changes, the uncomfortable feeling faded soon enough. The four months that I spent living in New York City ended up being some of the best months of my life. I had transformed part of a school dorm room into a home for four months, and when the time came to strip it of my identity and lug my belongings back to New Jersey, I felt as if once again, a piece of me had been left behind. That strange sentiment arose again, the sense of something being off. However, I did not have enough time to explore the intricate workings of this feeling, for three weeks after I returned to my permanent home in New Jersey, I was off on a flight to Paris to spend my spring semester abroad.

Paris came to be, undoubtedly, the biggest change, the biggest chamboulement, I would experience. I was over 3,000 miles away from home—both homes, that is, my permanent New Jersey residence and my newer, more youthful NYC home. Moreover, when I was living in New York City, I was still only a train ride away from my permanent home in Jersey. On the same day, I could have lunch on campus and dinner with my family in our kitchen. Not that this necessarily happened often, but nevertheless, the proximity masked my life-away-from-home with a kind of false separation. My parents still wanted me to come home on weekends as often as I could, and so the limits of my independence were always visible.

I arrived in Paris on a snowy, slushy, gloomy day, and once again, I was met with that strange feeling that I could never describe or name, that feeling that was both familiar and foreign, that feeling of things just not being right. Once again, though, after a week or so, this malaise subsided into a growing sense of understanding of my surroundings and a strengthening appreciation for them. Slowly, I fell in love with Paris.

Yes, Paris was obviously different—not just because of the distance, but because I was living entirely on my own. For five months, I had only myself within my small, small, small chambre de bonne (and I really mean small). This was not a problem in the fundamental sense of what living alone entails: I know how to cook, clean, maintain my financials, and generally take care of myself. It was not a challenge to support myself; if anything, it was a great liberation. Instead, the problem was found, once again, in what defined my sense of home. I quickly fell into the quotidian groove of boulangeries and I became a maître of the métro; picking up the morning paper became muscle memory, speaking and hearing French on the street, in cafés, and at the supermarket became not only second nature, but something I loved. Few things can enrich the mind so actively and so constantly as hearing and speaking a foreign language on a daily basis, and it truly changes the way you think about and perceive all that is around you. The French esprit is quite unlike the American counterpart, and so it was intriguing to blend the two together. (But that's another story.)

I mentioned several months ago that Paris has an undeniable charm that is nearly impossible to channel into words, and once again I find myself needing to reiterate this fact—if not even more so, since this feeling only amplifies with time. When I say that I miss Paris, I don't mean to be annoying. I don't say it as a means of boasting that I spent part of my life there. Let me be immodest and say that I actually am very modest when it comes to talking about how hard I work in school and generally in life, so spare me this moment to shed this humility and say that I worked really damn hard for everything that has brought me to where I am right now in life. I worked really hard to get good grades, to receive financial aid, to receive extra financial aid, to save money by commuting to school every morning and night for my freshman year, to eventually move on-campus, and now, to work on campus as a Resident Assistant. I work hard to achieve what I want, and I worked really hard to make studying abroad in Paris a feasible goal, both financially and academically. So when I say "I miss Paris," please don't roll your eyes and think, "Ugh, he's just some privileged rich kid who should shut up." Maybe I should shut up, but know that I am neither privileged nor rich. The other day, my father randomly sighed and said, "Never in my dreams did I imagine I would be able to send one of my kids to Paris to study for a semester." I couldn't help but smile. My parents emigrated from the seventh poorest country in Europe in the hopes of raising a family under better conditions. It is one of the most flattering things to be viewed as a symbol of their success: my sister and I are essentially the incarnations of what the American dream has meant to my parents. It can be a burden to be viewed as such, but I will never stop working toward my dreams with every ounce I have, because I truly do believe in the value of hard work and earning what you want. 

I apologize for that personal and dramatic digression, but my point is that I spent five months living in a place that was only ever a vague, distant dream for me. I couldn't help but grow appreciative of life in Paris and become so grateful for the experience—and nostalgic for it when it was over. Many of my friends in my school were dissatisfied with their experiences abroad, simply because they awaited the same kind of treatment and availabilities as back in the United States. So some restaurants close from 3-7; so we don't have cellular data, and have to rely on the occasional WiFi network found while roaming around; so bagels aren't really a "thing" in Paris (or in most of Europe, really). These are things I could and did deal perfectly well without, in part because I knew I would eventually be returning to a place that had such amenities, but more so because I knew there would be countless things to which I had grown accustomed in Paris that I would no longer have when I returned to the United States. Things that I had learned to love without even realizing it, simply because they were everyday items that of which many took advantage.

So when I say that I miss Paris, I can't help it. Paris was my home for five months, and when I departed, I felt, once again, that I was leaving a piece of myself behind. Only this time, it was a very different piece, a piece assimilated into an entirely different culture, language, gastronomy, music and film scene—a different everything. A different city, a different country, a different continent, and a different and new layer to what I think about when I think about home. Of course, the culture shock I experienced when I landed in Paris was one to be expected: I had been plopped in a new place for first time and expected to figure life out there. That was a normal part of the challenge. However, it was strange to experience the same kind of culture shock when returning to the United States, my home-home. Things should not have felt foreign; yes, I spoke English immediately, I knew how to navigate JFK Airport, I hadn't forgotten how to drive a car, I hadn't forgotten the road home, I hadn't forgotten most things. But it still felt foreign, weird, different. In a way, I remembered America in a mechanical sense: I knew how to do things, where to go, etc. but mentally and emotionally, there was still a sense of foreignness, a detachment from a social fabric that had continued to grow for the five months that I had been gone. Yet I was no longer a part of France's fabric either, for I was thousands of miles away again. 

And so, I felt as if any trace of my grounded existence had been effaced. I was met with a curious feeling of limbo when I realized that I then had more than one kind of home. Yes, America will always be my more permanent home, but I do consider Paris as home now too. Between these two realms, there is a feeling of nearly impossible reconciliation. I miss hearing French, but when I am in Paris, I sometimes miss the luxury of English fluency. I miss the Paris métro, but when in Paris, I miss not having 24-hour subway service. I miss the calming beauty of Parisian streets, but when walking to class in Paris, I hated the uncurbed dog merde that scatters the sidewalks.

Then there are some people who feel slightly insulted when I say I miss Paris. They think that I would rather live there forever, alone, separated from everything and everyone who shaped the past 20 years of my life here in America. This is not what I mean when I say I miss Paris. Of course, coming back to America was a wonderful thing on many levels. Getting to see my family and friends again—that kind of joy is unparalleled. Not to mention, there is a feeling of connectedness that is resumed when I am here. I no longer feel the disconcerting effect of being 6 hours ahead, of going to sleep when my loved ones, thousands of miles away, are just beginning to enjoy each other's company at night. I missed all of this, for sure.

But when I say I miss Paris, it is hard to explain unless you too have ever missed a place that you once called home, a place that is long gone now—at least, relative to you. I miss Paris, but that does not mean I could do without everything and everyone I have here in America. Missing a place is not the same as missing a person; it is much more complex than that. (Yet I would venture to say that Paris is, in its own way, a person, fully equipped with moods and feelings and personality and character.)

I said earlier that when leaving Paris, it felt as if a part of me had been left behind on the French soil. I think that perhaps it is more so the reverse—that the place, in this case Paris, imparted to me a piece of itself when I left. To say that we shed a piece of ourselves behind when we leave a place is to be somewhat egocentric, for this idea suggests that a piece of us will have some kind of effect on the soil from which it was left. Not that it couldn't; I just mean that for many of us, it isn't the case.

I know, I know—what the hell am I actually talking about here? Well, I am talking about the simple, somewhat depressing fact that we try to ignore sometimes: you can miss a place all you want, but that place won't necessarily miss you. In fact, it doesn't even know of your existence.

That sounds dramatic, but let me explain. After a year of constantly shifting my idea of home, I have come to understand that feeling that kept coming back when I moved from one place to another, that feeling of things not being right, that feeling I experienced when I moved to NYC and when I moved to Paris and even when I moved back to NYC two weeks ago. It is an inherent discomfort with the feeling of not being connected to our personal sense of "home"—more specifically, the intricate network of thoughts and memories and people that constitute that concept. That's how I felt when I left for Paris, and that's how I felt when I came back from Paris. Disconnection. Things will continue in Paris without me, just as things in America continued without me being here. Things will continue without me, because technically, they don't need me to function. They don't even know who I am. By "they", I refer to some kind of personified embodiment of all the inner and outer workings, the cogs and gears, that fuel Paris every day. I am not even a ripple in the ocean, and it is that feeling that hurts the most, no matter where you go. That is the feeling I felt when I moved to NYC, when I moved to Paris, and now most recently when I left Paris to move back to America. That is the feeling I kept experiencing each time my concept of "home" was threatened once more, and yet I could never understand it or put a name to it—the feeling of disconnection, of having severed my belongingness. Why do we feel anxious when our phone dies while we are out? Why do we consider things like an Internet connection a right more so than a privilege? Why do we sometimes leave TVs on in the background? It is because of a fear of being disconnected from—from what? Friends? Family? The world? All of it, really. We like to be a part of something larger, and the lack of such a connection ultimately boils down to the disconcerting, uncomfortable, and frightening feeling of not belonging. You feel lost and lonely and when this concern is vocalized, you are reassured by your surrounding friends with the "you are not alone, you have us" mantra. But being alone is not synonymous with being lonely.

So when I left the United States to live in Paris, I felt disconnected. But then, five months later, when I left Paris, that feeling was reversed; now, whenever I read French news (ugh, I know I sound pretentious, but it really does help with practicing the language), I feel the gentle hum in my heart that signals a sense of connectedness—a deep resonance that makes everything in France as relevant to me as if I were still there. It is like hearing news about a distant relative; when it is bad news, you are upset; when it's good news, you are happy. But even when you are happy, there is a tinge of sharp somberness around the edges that makes the happiness painful, because you are not among those for whom the news is truly relevant. You are a distant island that gets messages from the mainland who knows little to nothing about your existence, and yet you still feel so deeply connected, like an ex who simply can't get over the breakup.

When I was in Paris, I felt like I was missing out. What was happening in the United States during the five months I was away? What did I miss? In fact, I missed a lot. Joyous occasions made me smile, tragedies resonated in me with a heavy sorrow and mourning, yet at the same time, I was detached by the force of nature, separated by thousands of miles of salt water from the source of joy and pain and everything that came out of my homeland, the United States.

Now, such is the case with Paris. Is there a protest going on today? A concert? I wonder who is sitting right now in the seat I sat in at the café Les Éditeurs a few nights before my departure from Paris? I wonder what the reflection of the sun looks like right now on the Canal St. Martin? What the hell am I missing?

And so, I always knew I would miss Paris, and I do. I miss feeling the cool nighttime breeze that would whoosh through my open window and put me back to sleep when I couldn't fall asleep in the middle of the night. I miss sitting outside in cafés, even during the winter when the warm overhead heating lamps allowed for comfortable conversations with friends and customary people-watching. I miss the métro system, which is far faster and more efficient, frequent, and understandable than the New York subway system. (Why hasn't NYC hopped on the tap-and-go bandwagon yet, instead of swiping a stupid, flimsy metro card that takes 14 tries to work?) I miss the fluffy, choux-praline paradise that is Paris-Brest, or the soft, buttery, flakiness of  a pain au chocolat that is so simple and inexpensive yet full of a humble, surprisingly complex, melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness. I miss being asked directions by passerby. I miss reading the free daily newspaper provided in metro stations. I miss hearing French conversations on the street and learning new slang. I miss the countless parks and squares that have their own particular vibes, atmospheres, crowds. I miss being able to watch French music videos on YouTube without being told that they are not available in my country. I miss the way the orange glow of streetlights is reflected on the cobblestone streets when they are coated in rain. I miss strolling aimlessly through the book stands that line the Seine River. I even miss mundane tasks like grocery-shopping at Monoprix. I miss this time a drunk man pirouetted through the aisle of a metro car, blatantly singing in French "give me some money to eat, to eat, to eat, and drink" as he took a swig from a bottle of some kind of alcohol (an act strongly frowned upon in a country where wine is a religion and drinking from a bottle constitutes a blasphemy more sacrilegious than murder (for it is, in a way, a murder itself—the murder of an honor bestowed upon the righteous drink)). I miss seeing the Eiffel Tower slide into view from the window of the 6 métro train as the sounds from the dexterous accordion players resound in a cinematically Paname way (even though when I was actually in Paris, I quickly started to roll my eyes and sigh in unison along with the irritated French commuters at the sight of an accordion player walking into the car).

This is the Paris one imagines and sees and hears about in films, and so when a sudden, unexpected moment becomes the real incarnation of such an imagined image, it is a surreal experience that makes you realize—holyshit, I'm in Paris. That is how it was every day, and when it came to a seemingly abrupt end, I felt like I had been stolen of a beauty and wonder that was too short-lived.

I imagine myself, years from now, visiting Paris and retracing the routes I would take to go to my apartment or to go to school or to go to a museum or to go to a park. Everything will be more or less the same, of course—the same as when I had been there in the past. And therein lies a simultaneously happy and sad feeling, a paradox of change and stagnation that coexist in a way that could never coexist within myself, a growing and changing and shifting human being. I miss Paris; I miss being a part of a new community, a new city, a new country. But I miss it without being missed in return. 

I feel lucky to have something so beautiful to even miss in the first place. It comes in random pangs: I will see a photograph of a Parisian street, or a gust of wind will suddenly remind me of the springtime breeze blowing in the Luxembourg gardens, or I close my eyes while on the NYC subway and suddenly the rumble brings me back to the Paris métro. All at once, I feel Paris: I feel it alive again within me, yet this lasts for only a second or two, and I am left with the gnawing, stomach-twisting reality of nostalgia.

That's why the nostalgia hurts, that's why the longing feels bitter more than sweet, that's why the feeling of missing something is never satisfied, exhausted, depleted. It is a one-way street, and you are met with a mixed sense of belongingness. I belong in New Jersey, I belong in New York City, and now I belong in Paris too. I am split into three channels; none of them care for the other, none of them cross paths, none of them need me to function. But I need all of them, and it is impossible to have them all at once.

And so they must take turns.

Hurricane Sandy

Well, now that I am back in my dorm with power, heat, and running water, and things seem to be slowly winding back down to the normal grind of routine life, I thought it would be a good time to write about the past week.

A few days before Hurricane Sandy hit this area, I was one of many who were barely thinking that anything serious would happen. There have been lots of hurricanes before, and they all ended up being weak incarnations of gross overestimations of destruction. So no one, including myself, was expecting the "stock up" warnings to be necessary in the long run.

The clouds were dark and overcast on Sunday, October 28th, and the wind and rain were picking up momentum. Class was cancelled, at first just for Monday but then for the entire week, which gave us students a euphoria that now seems terribly inappropriate in the wake of the storm. How could one grateful for a natural disaster? The power went out on Monday and the night was, I daresay, quite enjoyable. There was a strong sense of camaraderie that took hold of everyone on our floor. New friends were made and older friends became closer. The storm strengthened a lot of ties in some of the sweetest, most heartwarming ways—but I don't want to talk about that.

An uprooted tree.

It was soon announced that due to the widespread power outage (a transformer had exploded on 14th Street, a video of which can be seen here), we would have to evacuate to one of the few NYU buildings that has back-up power. The subways were completely shut down—flooded, with no estimated time of recovery. There was no way for me to even go home in the event that I wanted to go home. I didn't, though. I wanted to stay here and ride out the storm and its aftermath like those too who were stranded here.

Two friends and I decided to walk down to the Lower East Side. Swarms of people crowded around various fire hydrants, gripping buckets, jugs, water bottles—anything that could hold clean water for the thousands of people who had none of it. One woman was drying her hair with a towel as she leaned against her car, conversing with two others. I could only assume she had plunged her head under the freezing cold water to maintain some sort of hygiene. Not only was there no power or water, there was no heat, and with the constant, icy winds, it felt like a winter that could not be abated, even though autumn still has almost two months left in its arsenal. Winter, with its guerrilla warfare, had crept up and taken hold of a city just when the city was at its most vulnerable.

A woman with a radio, dancing alone in front of her home.

Yet despite everything, kids played ball in a playground, forced to retrieve their football every so often from a large, invasive puddle of water that, in its size, resembled more so a lake. One middle-aged woman stood all alone in front of her apartment complex, holding a small radio on her shoulder. As the music played, she swayed slowly with her eyes closed, and when she saw us with our cameras in her direction, she beamed. "Oh, me?" She continued smiling as she danced. One man walked his dogs at the same leisurely pace that almost everyone seemed to have. Strangers talked to strangers. There was no work to go to tomorrow, or the day after, so what's the rush? Trader Joe's offered free pumpkins outside their store to keep them from going to waste. Two men had set up a small grill near a church and were barbecuing. A Fourth of July celebration at the close of a cold October.

We walked by the power transformer that had exploded two nights prior, the source of the massive power outage in downtown Manhattan. We snuck into a subway station (the L) and plunged into the jet-black depths of the platform, using the intermittent, focused glare of camera flash bulbs as guiding lights. No need for Metrocards, no need to go through the turnstile, no need to even avoid the emergency door because no alarm sounded when we pushed it open. This particular station had not been flooded, but to see a place normally swamped with people and illuminated by harsh fluorescent lighting, now left in a state of dead blackness—it felt apocalyptic. And as we made our way back to home base—the crowded NYU building—we came across a car on the side of the road.

A wrecked car filled with debris.

It was perpendicular to all the other parked cars, and had actually collided into an adjacent vehicle, probably from being washed up by flooding. It looked like a photograph of a collision more so than a remnant of history: the front sides of the cars were smushed together, and a log stuck out of one of the backseat window of one of the cars. It was like a carefully-constructed display of tragedy, except this was no museum: it was cruel reality. The doors were unlocked, and branches, leaves, and dirt were scattered inside. A small bottle of hand sanitizer sat mockingly on the driver's seat, while the floor of the car glistened with several inches of still water. It was perhaps the strongest embodiment of all the destruction that the city had faced, and a chilling reminder that while there was so much tragedy that had been seen, both on the news and in real life, there was an entirely different realm whose ruination was unseen, and could possibly remain that way forever. This was someone's car. I wondered—and still wonder—if that person had even known of the demise of his/her car before my camera did. Complete strangers finding out that your car has been destroyed before you yourself even care to know. How many nighttime joyrides had this car been through? Drives to the movie theater with a dating couple, or a married couple, maybe some kids in the backseat where now a log sat indecently, half of it angled out the window? But even more frightening was that this was only a small fragment of a network of lives that had been changed. One small facet exposed to me, among thousands of others that I had not seen and probably will never be able to see.

Closed-off subway station, lit by camera flash. 

I couldn't believe that less than a week before, Hurricane Sandy was a distant joke. We've had lots of rain and strong winds, why would this be any different? But it was different, and it still is.

My friend Sandy (no jokes, please, she's gotten her fair share of them already) and I ended up taking a bus uptown to stay with a friend at his apartment. We boarded the bus just before sunset, and thus just before the dark night settled in—and I really mean dark. Downtown NYC was devoid of streetlights or traffic lights, and only the rare car headlights could illuminate the streets. The city had been tossed into a state of complete darkness, a darkness whose plenitude was one I never imagined could fall on a place that was prized for its sleepless, eternal brilliance. New York City without lights? It's the stuff of nightmares, maybe, but it had never been a reality until then.

The luxuriously unscathed stores of uptown.

We boarded the bus and it took a glacial three hours just to get to 42nd Street—a trip that would normally take fifteen or twenty minutes. We still had thirty blocks ahead of us, though, and so, suitcases, bags, pillow, and blanket in hand, we got off the bus and walked the remainder of our journey uptown. I had never seen traffic so stagnant. And yet when we stepped off the bus, everything around us seemed—well, quite normal, actually. The power was out everywhere below 39th Street, but everything above 39th Street was untouched. Everything we had seen downtown was barely a whisper up here. No stores were barred closed, lights glared in their fluorescence, crowds of people flowed in and out of restaurants and bars. The typical buzz of life was as vibrant as ever. A group of children in Halloween princess costumes sat at a table by the window in a McDonald's. I wondered, as they ate their French fries, if they even knew what it was like several blocks below. Worse still, I wondered if anyone would even care if they did know. A stranger looked at me and her eyes moved to my blanket and pillow hanging roughly out the top of a big bag that I held tightly. She smiled at me, almost pityingly, as if in acknowledgement of what my situation was, or perhaps grossly overestimating my vagabondage.

Downtown Manhattan was shut down, but uptown was dry, unscathed, unaffected. Power, heat, running water. Open movie theaters, late night diners, everything was functional and operational and alive and breathing. How could I blame people here for not caring as much about downtown when I too was quickly swept up by the ease with which uptown was still running? Nevertheless, after two nights, Sandy and I decided to head back downtown. I would have given anything to be able to fly (despite my fear of heights), just so I could've seen how starkly the bright lights of the city ended at a divide between the two halves. The city was a creature that had been slain in half, one side cripplingly harmed and envious of the other side that continued to survive without struggle.

On our way back to NYU, Sandy pointed at our feet, where on the sidewalk in big chalk letters was written: "Free food straight ahead, provided by JetBlue." We walked half a block and saw three food trucks—waffles, dumplings, and Lebanese cuisine—and indeed, it was free for anyone and everyone. Sure, it was promotion for an airline company, but that sort of commercialism didn't matter at that point. I don't think I've ever been as touched or moved by an act of generosity as I was at that moment. I shuffled my bags to hold on to the food that warmed my frozen hands and looked around at how happy everyone seemed to be. One man exclaimed loudly: "See, we don't have to pay for shit right now! This is New York!" Everyone smiled. I ate the most delicious waffle I have ever had in my life—warm, soft, with chopped fresh strawberries, a liberal drizzle of melted Nutella, and a sprinkling of powdered sugar. A gift of luxury at a time of austerity.

Washington Square Park, closed-off and empty.

After returning to the NYU building, I spread my blanket on the floor and surrounded myself with the bags and belongings I had with me. I called my family in New Jersey and they told me that, by some miraculous stroke of luck, the power had returned to my hometown. If I had wanted to, I could've taken a bus home, since the buses were starting to run again. It would've been an arduous hassle to attempt interstate transportation at that time, but it could've been done. I chose not to, though, and that night, I ended up sleeping on the floor with my laptop and cell phone charging as I drifted off into a rough sleep. Sleeping electronics beside a sleeping vagrant. I was relieved to have the privilege of this technological connectedness, yet at the same time so blatantly aware of how even at the depths of my nomadism, I was a million times luckier and more privileged than even the wealthiest of the stocks of homeless people wandering about the streets. Little water, little food, no warmth, no permanent home. I was grateful but disgusted at the same time. (I still am, and it is one of the greatest stuggles I have always dealt with, and it was during this experience that this inner turmoil for me reached its climax.)

I was sore when I woke up, but the sun poured in through the large windows with the greatest abundance of light I had seen in over a week. And an e-mail informed me that all NYU residence halls were open once again, with power and heat and running water.

I am now sitting on my bed, wrapped in a blanket, my hair wet from a fresh shower. The sun still continues to shine in so brightly through my window. My window. My room. With power, light, heat, internet, water. I have food. It's been nonstop, cold rainy gloom for over a week, and I swear I've never seen the sun shine this brightly before. I'm typing this as the burning sun illuminates my fingers on the keys. I can see all the dust on my screen. I don't even care about the glare that is reflecting back into my eyes. I would normally close the blinds on any other day, but not today.

I had the chance to go home last night. I really did. But I stayed, and I have never been so humbled by any experience as much as this past week. Power and water and heat and internet were always essentials and I, along with countless others, dismissed their existence as privilege and took them as requisites. But now I can't stop smiling at having everything that I took for granted for so long. So what if I slept on the floor for a night? So what if I carried my heavy backpack, cameras, pillow, comforter, and blanket uptown and downtown for so many blocks? So what if my shoulders are a little chafed from the weight of my belongings? So what if I was a vagabond for a brief period of time? There are so many others who went through the same thing, and there are countless more who have experienced and continue to experience so much worse. Hurricane Sandy was truly unprecedented, and it will still take some time before everything is back to "normal." But what is normal anyway? Me having power? Is that normal, or a privilege? It is without a doubt the greatest privilege of all. I have never been so grateful for everything in my life until now. It pains me to hear people exclaiming "Starbucks is open now!" or "I'm so glad we didn't have class, I had so much fun!" with utmost sincerity, as if nothing happened and as if no one was harmed by the storm. For me, this week has been one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I lived first-hand through the hurricane and its aftermath, exploring all its different facets, shiny and dull, good and bad, clean and scratched—all of it.

I just saw some friends who live on my floor and in my suite, and it feels like we haven't seen each other in weeks, though it has only been three days at most. I know how cliché it can be to ramble about how humbled and grateful I am by everything that has happened, but I don't care, because it is all true. I live for these moments, I live for these experiences, and they are indeed life-changing.

More photos below.

A street completely empty, without any traffic or street lights.

Sandy using flash to take photos in the dark and deserted subway station.

Last night, power was restored to almost every place that has dealt with power outages. And today for the first day in over a week, the sun came out.

Coney Island

Jackie, Rockie, Anna, Jessie, Lissy, and I spent yesterday afternoon in Coney Island, a place that, despite my location here in the NJ/NY area since birth, I had strangely never visited before. Though the skies looked apocalyptically stormy, the boardwalk and amusement park had the quintessential, neon-light-and-cotton-candy glamor that I was expecting, or rather, that all people expect. Quaint, charming, and ostentatious in the most deliciously self-conscious way.

Perhaps the more mystifying allure of Coney Island—indeed, all beaches like it—is the disparate coexistence of something so man-made, materialistic, consumeristic, and boisterous as the boardwalk, lined with yellow restaurant signs and live musicians, with the entirely natural, unchanging beauty of the water a short distance away. It is as enticing as it is mildly indecent, almost blasphemously perverse. Then again, it all perfectly reflects the amalgam of disparate emotions and thoughts that beaches in general seem to exude for me.

The feel of hot, yielding sand or the scent of saltwater or the sound of waves crashing against mossed boulders or the dizzying downwards view of advancing and receding tides all construct a sense of nostalgia, at least in my experience. A quiet splash reminds me of the time a secretly malicious wave took my plastic green pail and carried it too far for me to chase after it, while I was busy digging a moat for my sandcastle. Running children recall for me the excited cries of my sister and I as we would egg our father along the boardwalk in the hopes that we could buy a cheap souvenir whose gaudy luster was made for the ephemeral excitement and subsequent abandonment that would characterize its possession (as is the case with all childhood toys). The nostalgia is sweet but tinged with the sharp consciousness that it is all part of a past that has been blurred into one solid chunk of time, with the infinite horizon serving as a timeline.

The endlessness of water and sky fill me with the same childish wonder—and fear—as when I was six years old, only now the grand scope of a beach fill me with a humbling sense of my own insignificance, but also power. These are neither vain nor self-deprecating thoughts. They are simply truths. You are, ultimately, alone, and what do you have over the infinite expanse of rolling waves and clouds? You are small. But you have a mind and a heart and the mere fact that you can engage in such cognitive and metacognitive pensees of something as simple as a beach vista is enough to realize that our power is internal, quiet, but very mighty indeed.

It could simply be the power of nature to leave one in a state of introspective contemplation, or at least a pervasive yet elusive feeling of general existence, of consciousness, a feeling of feeling itself. It is stimulating as much as it is calming, and it makes you as conscious of time as it seems to erase it. Minutes are waves and tides lap your toes with vague recollection mixed with new introduction, a desire to remember and also keep you.

You may be rolling your eyes at how ruminative I can get over something as simply as a beach, and I don't blame you. I'm practically rolling my eyes right now (or rather, I'm typing with one hand as I eat a cookie, which I think suggests the same practiced self-patronization as an eye-roll). The truth of the matter is I simply can't keep my mind from reeling forward and back whenever I am presented with—well, anything at all, really. A curse wrapped in a blessing shrouded in convoluted and muddling thought.

Not to switch tracks so suddenly, but I think that's why I love photography. It gives me the ability to capture with such stagnant simplicity a range of thoughts and emotions. When words fail, pictures can succeed, and vise versa. Yet I like to rely on both, in equal measure.

Here are all the other pictures I took from the wonderful afternoon and evening spent at Coney Island with the best company one could ask for.