A couple weeks ago, I was sitting at one of Madrid's many spectacular cafés with three friends and I asked them that cliché question that everybody hates, but which I think is worth contemplating from time to time: What would your ideal life look like?
I've lived in Brooklyn, worked in Manhattan, rarely been to Queens, coasted through the Bronx, and touched my toes on Staten Island. I've had one experience of the city, and it is hardly representative. But it is still authentic.
Last days are never as profound as they appear on television.
Home is a base, a starting point, a fixture to which I latch a tether, however temporarily. Like a climber reaching for the next anchor point, I’m always searching for somewhere new to fasten a hold.
A New Journey: A little chaos can be exhilarating, to be sure, but living without any parameters, well, that’s frankly terrifying.
Since World War II, we have been a nation that said we were a home for the outcast. It has been our identity in the world; it has been our beacon, a figurative idea made literal by the statue of Lady Liberty that stands roughly 5 miles from where I type this. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
10 Cities/10 Years was the scaffolding upon which I built my life; now I can stand without it.
These are my plans for 2017. Beyond that, who knows? Maybe I'll spend a year in Spain, maybe two, or three. Perhaps I'll follow it up with travels in Asia, South America, Africa. Maybe I'll never set foot in the United States again; just as plausible, I could return to New York in a couple years. I know only one thing at this moment: I want a life up in the air and out on the road.
