So, we're leaving NYC on Wed, Sept 8. We will pull into our new hometown in the hills of Western NC on my 33rd birthday, Thursday, September 9. There are so many emotions, it feels impossible to give myself the time right now to capture them all, but there are some things I wanna remember about this time.
Like -- how many references to LEAVING NYC are popping up everywhere right now...First and foremost is the amazing article in THE ONION this week that is making its way like wildfire through Facebook. The article, titled 8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live 'We're Getting The Hell Out Of This Sewer,' Entire Populace Reports is hysterical and yet, RIGHT ON in so many ways.
Then, while reading an article about Ralph Ellison, who asked an old man at a bar "Do you like living in NYC?" the response was: "I'm in New York, but New York ain't in me. You know what I mean? Listen, I'm from Jacksonville, FL. Been in NYC for 25 years. I'm a New Yorker! Yuh understand? Naw, naw, you don't get me. take Lenox avenue, take seventh avenue, pimps! numbers. cheating poor people out of what they got. shootings, cuttings, backbiting, all them things. Yuh see? Yuh see what I mean? I'm in New York, but New York ain't in me"
And then, when reading about the "godfather of rap" Gil Scott-Heron, there is reference to his new song, "New York is Killing Me" which has a line that goes, "Bunch of doctors come around, they don't know, that New York is killing me / I need to go home and take it slow down in Jackson, Tennessee."
Three anti-New York moments in 24 hours in pop culture references -- okay, okay -- thanks for the swift kick in the ass to remind us about the downs of the City when we are "romanticizing it all out of proportion" as Mr. Allen would say. Tis helpful to keep us from clinging to tightly to a City that had served us so well, for so long. Got it.
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