I was driving Sydney home from the airport the other day, and I got a little lost on the way back. I found myself on Brooklyn streets that were so familiar to me, more emotionally familiar than physical. There was the obvious reason why - it used to be where I lived - but more than that, I felt the gravity of returning to somewhere where so much happened. I drove along the streets where I used to walk home from work everyday... near the place where I stayed, so homesick, my very first night in New York... past a corner where I had kissed someone in the rain... by a restaurant where I had had a horrible date... near the building where my sister and I had lived together... past the apartment of person with whom I'd had the most frustrating romance of my life. This was the place where I did so much growing up.
It felt like unexpectedly bumping into an old lover, someone you had really cared about, but hadn't seen in a long time. All those me memories come flooding back, all the emotions. You sit down and talk and remember events, places, friends, what he wore, what you said. It feels like it just happened, and at the same time it feels like a movie you saw once a long time ago. You wonder what it would be like if you got back together, after all the time and all of the changes you've gone through. Maybe you feel that you left too soon or too casually. But you know that you're already gone, and if there was something that you had left undiscovered, it's not there anymore.
As I drove over the Manhattan bridge, heading home, this song came on the radio, and it felt right.
From the plane on the way home
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