here you can see for miles & miles & miles

On Thursday, October 22, my mom and sister arrived here in New York to spend a long weekend with me. It's been exactly four years since the last time any of my family visited me here. Four years ago I was a terrified, homesick student who didn't know Uptown from Downtown on the subway. I laughed with my mom and Jennifer because their last trip here was mostly spent in my dorm room watching television and cooking dinner. I felt like a tourist as much as they did. I'd moved there 2 months ago and my sister was pregnant. It was a recipe for a stressful trip. I've come a long way since 2005. A long, long way.

I have a life here in New York now. I have favorite places to go and people to see. I have sources of comfort in this city of hustle and bustle. Somehow I have managed to love this urban city with all its beauty and tragedy. Simply put, I am in awe. I took my mom and sister to favorite places like Roebling Tea Room, Grey Dog (where I get lunch on a weekly basis with Katie) and 71 Irving Place (where I spent every weekend studying my senior year of college). We went to the Sunday flea markets which I frequent almost every week, unless there are subway service changes as there have been as of late. We saw Wicked, the "Where the Wild Things Are" exhibit at the Morgan Library, ate at Chelsea Market and Frankies on the Lower East Side, saw the Robert Frank exhibit at the MET, the Pumpkin Festival at Central Park, FAO Swartz to get gifts for Caleb and Seth, and rode the Staten Island Ferry. I introduced them to the Marriott kids and they saw where I go to work everyday. I showed them my life and I showed them New York. I think I wore them out, but we checked off everything on our list except the Brooklyn Bridge.

At the Morgan Library gift shop, I bought a book of poems about New York. I've only read a few, but I enjoyed this one in particular.

Whitman in Black by Ted Barrigan

For my sins I live in the city of New York

Whitman's city lived in in Melville's senses, urban

inferno

Where love can stay for only a minute

Then has to go, to get some work done

Here the detective and the small-time criminal are one

& tho the cases get solved the machine continues to run

Big Town will wear you down

But it's only here you can turn around 360 degrees

And everything is clear from here at the center

To every point along the circle of horizon

Here you can see for miles & miles & miles

Be born again daily, die nightly for change of style

Hear clearly here; see with affection; bleakly cultivate

compassion

Whitman's walk unchanged after its fashion