This month, my Dad invited me to spend a few days with him in the city while he worked. Therefore, I found myself alone in the city one cool Thursday morning. Our hotel was on Lexington Avenue so I walked a couple of blocks and found myself in one of the prettiest busy corners. The entire trip was a happy blur, but the beginning was such a happy adventure for myself including warm NY bagels (and I quote Wicked when I say I do believe I have been changed for the better) that I happily ate on a walk to Central Park and a successful coffee shop hunt (completed in Ninth Street Espresso). T’was a good morning.
New York is transparent in the spring, when the dead things are paraded with sudden life. The whole city matches the beat of the hearts that it holds.
That’s what I love about the city when it comes down to it. It’s a big bundle of reckless love and longing tucked into five different boroughs.
Manhattan was always like a dream, even before it was real to me. The pure idea of the city was one of wonder. I clearly remember the first time I visited at age 8, crying as we flew away, the skyline in the distance. “I fear I view New York much like a crush,” I remember remarking to a friend one day, “It appears to be this great thing, but I fear eventually it will bring disappointment.”
Yet each time I go and leave, New York has yet to collect dust for me or grow old like a girlhood fantasy. Perhaps it’s the thing I love most; New York is a dusty place. It’s everything in a small distance: you’ve got the financial district, you’ve got the art neighborhoods, you’ve got the bridges that cross to Brooklyn and Queens, and a short distance away you’ve got the different world of Harlem and the Bronx. In New York, you have everyone: the tourists, the immigrants, the soul-seekers, the money gainers, the young and old.
New York, you make me a whole human being in the way that tears me apart the most. Manhattan is still a a dream to me and I have no intention of waking up.
McNeeley Ann 
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