prompt
Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors). #
response
I have two moments, but since I’m supposed to only pick one, I won’t mention the time Ally and I spent on the balcony of the Eldo.
Instead, I’ll mention a moment from New York, an entire trip I’ve shocking left off of this blog altogether. The entire trip with Ally to New York was incredible. The city itself is so loud, so dirty, so crowded, but inexplicably beautiful. We got to see and do some really great things, and hang out with some of my best friends from middle & high school. But none of them are in the moment I’m thinking of. Ally wasn’t even there.
It was a moment where there was a sunset on the visible horizon (above the tops of buildings), with the kind of colors you know pollution helped create. I was sitting on the sidewalk at the entrance of a hipster BBQ greasy spoon called Fette Sau drinking locally brewed beer out of a mason jar (“local” kind of loses meaning in a city like New York, but the brew was good nonetheless). My fingers still smelled like the ribs, porkbelly, and brisket we had just gorged ourselves on. Fixies outnumbered cabs in the area.
Only an hour earlier I had arrive there via the subway. I had gone underground somewhere in midtown, and emerged almost an hour later in Brooklyn. First time ever on a NYC subway, first time ever in Brooklyn. The buildings were shorter than in Manhattan, but they’re both definitely and distinctly New York. It all smells the same.
It was our first night in the city, we had just flown in that afternoon. Ally was busy doing BlogHer things, so I had the evening to myself. My good high school friend wasn’t arriving from Boston until the next day, so I had to find another way to stay entertained. I decided to get in touch with a not-quite-so-close friend that had moved from Boulder to NY sometime a year earlier. We worked together for a year or so at the Cafe and had hung out a few times outside of work. We always had a good time, so I figured we could do the same in another state.
It turns out we’re different enough that hanging out together was actually pretty awkward. Regardless, it made for an extremely memorable evening. I had a great time, not because I was with him, but because of where I was and what I was doing. There was something about sitting there in silence drinking my beer, taking in the sights and smells of such a foreign world, that made me feel alive that night.
…
Side note: From his apartment you could almost see Bed-Stuy (birthplace of Spike Lee, Jay-Z, Mos Def, Biggie Smalls, Chris Rock, and Carl Sagan (one of these things is not like the others)). I wonder if Sal’s Pizzeria is still around. “Yo, put some extra mozzarella on that motherfucker and shit.”