Paris

It's been over a month since I've last posted on this blog, but more importantly and notably, it's been almost two weeks since I've been in Paris.

Paris. France. Paris! A city and country I've dreamed of visiting since I took my first French class in high school (more or less on a whim). Yet this is not merely a quick visit; I am studying and living here for a little over four months.

In some respects, that can be a short amount of time, but in others, quite lengthy indeed. I'm not one who deals well with goodbyes, and so parting from family and friends is always a great emotional ordeal.Add Paris to the mix, and four months, and living alone, and being over 3,000 miles away from home, and having Skype as the only means of tapping into my permanent life that I left behind—suffice it to say, it was not an easy transition.

And so, I deliberately chose not to post anything as soon as I got here, and I even felt the need to retire my camera on the shelf for a few days—not to gather dust, but to allow myself to absorb the first hours and days here, the preliminary moments of foreignness that hit me all at once as soon as the airplane landed in a snowy Charles De Gaulle airport.

I was met with sharp pangs of nostalgia and longing for my loved ones back home. My former dream to visit Paris had whittled down to a bygone, inaudible whisper in a matter of minutes.

This is why I chose not to post or take photographs or do anything of that sort, because I knew the first days would be academic, orientation-related activities that would fill my time up without leaving room for exploring the city I would be living in for the next several months and acquiring a proper sense of it. So I dared not fashion prejudgments of the sacred land of my dreams, dreams that had become (quite palpably) tenuous. But I knew that there was more to the city than the icy winds or the cold beds of the hostel that all students remained in until we were given our housing assignments.

I need not dwell on or recount those first few days, for they were comprised solely of arduous meetings and presentations and activities as part of our orientation, and they offered little taste of the true essence of Paris—especially since the hostel was in an area far removed from the heart of the city, devoid of any welcoming atmosphere. It felt like I was still in some part of New Jersey, and perhaps such a similarity would foster a kind of consolation, a comfort in familiarity. Yet the result was the opposite, and so I came to understand the nature of the initial malaise I encountered during the first few days of being in Paris—a complete lack of belongingness. Back home, both in New Jersey and in New York City, my existence is anchored; I have links, attachments, groundings. I know people, I know how to get to that café or that library or I know what highways to avoid during rush hour, I know the fastest way to get to the MET on the subway, I know how long it takes for an L train to arrive late at night. But I knew little of Paris, at least when it was real, right around me. Thus, I could not simply navigate my way out of the heavy and restless ennui that characterized the first few days. My presence served no purpose, and I didn't know the city well enough to wean some kind of purpose from it.

This is, of course, natural, and I noticed that this general feeling was not particular to me; many other students in the program echoed the same sense of disconnection from the world, a feeling of insignificance and ignorance of the surroundings, of not belonging here. That is the underlying discomfort and challenge in traveling to a new place—ridding yourself of the strings that fasten you to a particular location and thus create a relationship between you and "your place". This was not "my place", but I couldn't expect it to be. Not just yet.

Despite initial complications with housing/apartment assignments, I ended up in a chambre de bonne. Historically, a chambre de bonne was a small apartment for the domestic worker of a middle- or upper-class family living in the same building. Over the years, these small studios have been rebranded as studettes, for they are mostly rented out to students nowadays. The space is tight, but has all essentials. With each day, it gains more and more a kind of quaintness and charm in its modest possession of all that one needs without taking up much space. (I'll try and take some pictures of it some day soon.)

After settling down in my own dwelling, there was a new feeling of "my place". I could look at and explore the city anew, and I have to say, the city is beautiful. But the problem with saying "it is beautiful" is that such a phrase is overused and overheard to the point of rendering it completely banal and insubstantial. "Paris is beautiful" is both true and not true, because Paris is both beautiful and more than beautiful. The inherent difficulty in expressing Paris's appeal and wonder is that throughout my life and the lives of many others, Paris was a place only and always framed by a postcard or photograph or computer screen. To see Paris was to see an image of the Eiffel Tower, the most well-known icon in the world.

Icon. That is the point, here: Paris has always been beautiful from afar to the point where it has become an icon for everything—gastronomy, fashion, architecture, art. But when you walk into the courtyard of the Louvre, when you turn on a random street corner and suddenly the real Eiffel Tower is pasted against the sky (and it is lot bigger than I thought it would be), you realize that it isn't a postcard or photograph or computer screen, it is the real thing. The streets are often cobblestone-like, every building retains its old structure and beauty, there is a general charm laced with everything you see—and that is precisely what makes it so difficult to fathom at first. Everything is almost too beautiful to be real, too beautiful to exist outside of a postcard. But it is real, and when you are in the middle of it, when the buildings are real around you, when the intoxicating scent of bread wafts from the open doors of boulangeries that are sprinkled on every street, when an old man seated by the edge of a bridge starts playing an accordion as you look over the Seine, evoking the spirit of Paname (although Parisians will roll their eyes at the slightest sound of such accordion tunes)—this is when it becomes overwhelming, almost to the point of disbelief. I can't believe I'm here. But then after a while, you realize you are here, and that it is time to accept it and live it and breathe it and take it for everything its worth.

Late one evening, Jackie and I decided, on a whim, to go out to eat somewhere. I say "late" despite the fact that it was 10:30pm—early evening, by NYC's standards, but by the standards of Paris, where stores and restaurants close much earlier, it was late. When we opened the door outside, it was snowing softly, and the streetlights painted everything with a soft orange glow much unlike the sickly orange streetlights found in the U.S. that I find induce a vague, dizzying nausea. There is no such harshness here. The air was sharp and cold as snowflakes fell on our eyelashes. It was quiet, but not eerily so. The quietude that reigned was one characteristic of snowy nights, a quietude of tranquility. As we walked towards slightly more bustling parts of the 16th arrondissement, a group of teenagers were congregated at the corner of an intersection, laughing and throwing snowballs at each other. We couldn't help but smile at them, despite the fact that we were probably not much older than they were.

We ate at an Italian restaurant, then went to a McDonald's. Not very classically French, and yet at the same time, it felt so. I'm not a frequenter of McDonald's, but in Paris, they have frappés that come in a pistachio flavor—subtle, with a sweet aftertaste, akin to the scent of almond extract. I may sound silly for heightening the grandeur of McDonald's food and drink, but really, everything is heightened in Paris (including the prices, of course). It was quite strange to have something taste so good from a place that I would never normally visit back home, precisely for its characteristic subpar quality.

We walked back to the apartment as the snow continued to fall. The next day, the snow continued, and Jackie and I went to the marais to hang out with a fellow NYC friend, Logan. This time, Jackie and I agreed that we would pick up our cameras and finally take pictures of the city to which we were beginning to warm up (despite (or sometimes because of) the icy cold winter that surrounded us).

We ate at a falafel restaurant and afterwards, walked all around the narrow, winding streets of le Marais, then made our way to the Notre Dame, the Louvre, the pont des Arts. Snow, I learned, is quite rare in Paris, and yet my first week and a half constituted little else. It was an added fortune to see the city covered in it. Snowball fights became a common occurrence, and as I held my camera's viewfinder to my eye to capture a snowy street, a woman passed by and said "C'est très rare !" And that was exactly it: it was rare, and so everyone was taking advantage of it, not just us newcomers. A bunch of adults were having a snowball fight in the middle of a random street; on one of the bridges, a snowball fight erupted between passersby on the bridge and a bunch of tourists on a sightseeing boat on the Seine just underneath. I couldn't help but laugh. It was all unrealistically quaint, or—dare I say—cute? I'm not a terrible fan of that word, but when you see complete strangers having snowball fights between the top of a bridge and a boat underneath, smiling and laughing and acting like children, how can it be anything else?

Everything is calming in one way or another, as if the city wishes to ease your worries or concerns or anxieties in any way that it can. That is the true beauty of Paris—its subtleties, its feelings, its unexpected moments of smile-inducing delight and charm that simply cannot be channeled into words, in part due to their complexity and in part due to their complete novelty. Like when you realize the Eiffel Tower is not just a pretty monument seen in small photographs, but also an excellent directional compass when trying to find your way around the city. Or when restaurants stop serving food late at night but you have no where to eat or buy food, and so an elderly restaurant-owner lets you in anyway because he knows how hungry you are, and then proceeds to ask you about life and school and what you're studying. Or when you buy a pain au chocolat without the boulangère even recognizing that you aren't originally from here. Paris is daunting at first, but if you scratch at the surface, you uncover its richness, its layers, its intricacies. It is a city that does not merely present itself, rather a city that must be explored and experienced, for it is only through direct experience that one can understand the true, elusive wonder that has come to characterize the City of Light.



Lots of photos below.

From the plane

First photo of the Eiffel Tower (I had to take it, okay)

Logan

Jackie

Snowball fights

Le pont des Arts, where couples write their names on locks, attach them to the sides of the bridge, and throw the key in the river below

Crêperie

Random news reporter

Louvre

The street I walk down to get to my chambre de bonne

Life, etc.

I feel compelled to make a new post more out of a desire to have a somewhat thorough update of life since the last time I truly updated—over a month ago. So much has been going on and yet nothing has been going on at the same time, which tends to cancel out thoughts and emotions and leave behind a muddled mix of slosh that I don't have the motivation to clarify. Exams, papers, finals, an insanely chaotic academic semester have now come to a close. This was, quite simply, the most difficult semester, yet the fault lies with me for choosing to double-major (English and psychology) and minor (French). Oh, and it didn't help that I had three finals on the same day. Oh well. In other aspects, my life has been the best it has ever been. And for that, I am grateful. I was lucky to have lived in NYC for these past few months, and sitting on my bed at home in New Jersey makes me realize, after a mere 3 days, how much I miss it.

And then there is Paris. I have barely moved back home and yet I am already trying to finalize the paperwork for studying abroad in Paris this spring semester. I leave on January 14th. It seems so soon. Everything has been happening too fast and I just want to chain everything down for a minute so I can soak it all in without feeling like it will all slide away.

There are parts of the past that are still relevant now, and thus warrant a continued portion of my brain for reflection. Naturally, the present is also relevant, and so many of my thoughts are in that domain. And yet, the future is more relevant than ever before, so my thoughts—and actions—are dedicated to future events that have not yet occurred, and who knows if they even will?

This is all very rambly, disjointed, fragmented, etcetera. I recognize this, for it is the exact carbon copy of my current state of mind. A lot going on at once, a lot to do at once. I hope I can use these 3 weeks to get it all together and unwind. I need to write more, draw more, paint more, finish some design things, cook more, bake more, catch up on TV shows and movies, see the friends I haven't seen in ages.

A lot is happening, and a lot is going to happen quite soon. I think the worst part is that I don't know how to write it all down.

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.

Necessary Updates on Necessary Changes

I started writing this post on a moving bus that was just passing West 43rd Street going up 10th Avenue, on my way to Boston from New York City. Typing was quite uncomfortable because the passenger in front of me had chosen to recline her seat as much as it could extend on its hinges. I prefer sitting up straight, and so the laptop was awkwardly close to my arms, which were too long for the compressed space—you can imagine my hands hanging limply on the keyboard like a tyrannosaurus-rex. Anyway, I was on my way to Boston to visit a friend. Leaving my home, New York City, for about two days.

Home. It is not a word I readily attached to NYC a couple of weeks ago, and I realize that I have not written anything about my experience living here for almost two months now (and about a month during the summer as well). This silence was due in part to the fact that I wanted to first acclimate fully to living here—I wanted to develop the inner workings of my quotidian life as it became a comfortable routine, not a foreign one. I think part of what was always strange to me was that I have lived in New Jersey my entire life. New York City, while certainly an entertaining city, was always so close, so accessible, that I never understood it as the covetous hub of culture and connectedness that it truly is. My parents were averse to the city when I was younger, and so our visits were infrequent and my interest relatively nonexistent. They did not like the hustle-and-bustle, mostly because they understood NYC to be Times Square and nothing more. Large, glittery advertisements, epileptic lights, swarms of tourists, retail-priced stores—all show and no substance.

It was when I started interning at Random House, Inc. my senior year of high school that I started to ground myself more in the city. My sister too began taking frequent trips for shows and friend visits and the like. My "love" for the city grew slowly and incrementally. I use the word within quotation marks because I am always hesitant about applying love as ubiquitously as it usually is nowadays. I am not an "I <3 NY"-shirt type (although I do have one that was given as a gift, and so I wear it to bed occasionally, but pajamas are okay). Moreover, my perspective of the city was always that of both an insider and outsider—the former because I have always lived so close to the city, the latter because despite this close proximity, I was never truly under NYC's daily spell, its grinding lifestyle, its true vigor.

My parents warmed up to the city when I became a student at New York University, but again, my first year was spent in the same insider-outsider limbo that comes with being a commuting student. Waking up early, coming home late, doing homework, sleeping, with a small window available for a social life because of all my time spent on trains and subways and doing homework, and because of the fact that I simply didn't live on-campus with my friends—it became an arduous and quite frankly depressing routine. One I adapted to, but only out of necessity. I established a closer connection with NYC, but it still remained somewhat elusive in my grip.

Fast-forward to this past summer, when I spent about a month apartment-sitting with my sister in a fancy Chelsea apartment (remember this?). My parents—especially my mother—by now were already much more comfortable with the city, because my sister and I had exposed them to the truth that NYC has—gasp—parks and greenery and places that are not as insane (and overrated) as Times Square. The beauty of the city is not its commotion, but its diversity. It has everything for every niche, and that is why it is popular.

Fast-forward some more to late August, when I moved in to on-campus housing at NYU for the first time, as a sophomore. Still sufficiently close so I can go home to NJ conveniently, but removed enough so that I did not feel like an outsider in the city. I officially (mentally) branded myself as a New Yorker,  with a snazzy numerical street name as my home to match. "Home," however, was not a word I used to describe my living: I called it "my dorm" more than anything, until one day while conversing with a friend I said that I would "go home" for a bit. It slipped out unexpectedly, and I didn't mean Jersey, of course.

It was such a banal thing to say and so naturally it did not mean anything for my friend, but for me, that was the moment when it truly hit me: I am living in the city that was always so close to me but the city of which I had never taken advantage, the city of which people spend their entire lives trying to catch a distant, shining glimpse, sometimes without realizing that dream. Yet here I always was, a hands-breadth away but never quite conscious of how significant that was, how lucky I was.

Locations are strange, the concept of "home" is strange, moving is strange—it is all very strange,  especially for someone who has called the same small Jersey abode "home" since birth. Home was a stagnant schema in my mind. Location is a paradox of the permanent and the temporary—unchanging for an indefinite amount of time, then suddenly jostled back and forth. In fact, when I started writing this blog post, I was on my way to Boston. I wrote a little more of it while in Boston, then I wrote some more when I was back in NYC, then a little more when I was on my way to Connecticut the following week, and now I am writing it in my original residence, my house in New Jersey, the place where I was raised, the place where my knees chafed from learning to crawl, the place I would walk to and from every day on my way to the elementary school around the corner, the place that has remained static during years and years of chaos and sorrow and joy and anger and depression and confusion and growth and death and memories and change and change and change. As I write this, I am sitting on my bed near my window that overlooks my backyard, and the nostalgia is so incredibly palpable—it's raining, and I am stricken with the sudden recollection of running around the lawn with my friends during a torrential downpour, several years ago. I was young, but the rain was the same. It is the same rain that falls now, more or less. The same, but different—rain is rain, but time has altered its meaning.

Perhaps it is fitting to conclude the week-long, sporadic composition of this blog post within the walls of my original home. Only now, as I edit this post, I am in my dorm, my home, in New York City. That this blog post was written and edited in so many different places was not intentional but may indeed be confusing—which is the exact irony of it all. So much has moved, so much has changed, and an effort to quantify change is always fruitless, despite constant attempts to put it all in words (hence the long blog post, of course). So much has changed, good and bad, and so much continues to change, and the melange of feelings and thoughts only continue to complicate themselves and interweave in ways foreign to me.

Life is growing increasingly complicated. This is not always bad just as it is not always good. But right now—sitting in bed listening to the rain obliquely hit the large window that overlooks a Broadway intersection, scooping speculoos spread out of a jar using a cookie as a spoon, writing this post instead of studying for three imminent midterms—I realize that for all the strangeness that comes with "home" and "life" (and everything else that is just as broad and personal and significant and ineffable), it is necessary. Necessary strangeness and necessary change—good and bad, but change all the same and strange all the same.