When I was there I stayed with my cousin, her baby Hudson, and my Aunt Diane, whose flight had been delayed for a couple of days by the snowstorm.
Since the last time I visited, my cousin has moved to Brooklyn, a borough where I've never spent much time. Yet, it feels very much like home, as does the rest of NYC.
In a lot of ways, this makes little to no sense. After all, I only lived in NYC long enough to get mail there while I was doing a brief program at NYC in the early 90's. For years afterward, I was lucky enough to visit my former roommate Cora, and get to briefly drop into her NYC life. Hanging out with Cora and her modern dancer/Martha Graham School of Dance friends, I got a window into the city that I would have never gotten as a plain ole tourist.
But as for part where NYC feels like home, I can't really explain it, expect to wonder if maybe it has something to do with television and movies.
While I was in the city in early February, I stumbled across the filming of a remake of the 80's movie Arthur, starring Russel Brand. The filming had closed down the front entrance of the Strand book store, (close to Union Square.)
I couldn't help but wonder if all of the location filming that's been done in NYC has sunk into my brain, making me feel at home just because of all the images that I've absorbed from the screen over the years.
I spent some time contemplating this, until I came home to Austin. While sitting on the floor feeding my dog, I looked up at a favorite childhood toy that I had recently rescued from my mother's garage. It was a plastic copy of a toy brownstone, made as a Sesame Street tie-in during the 70's. It's kind of eerie how much the plastic toy looks like a real brownstone!So does my strange at-homeness in NYC have something to do with mass media? Maybe.
