Saying Yes to New York City

As I contemplate "moving on" from my work at Wagner and becoming a writer in New York City who seeks also to write of New York City, I have come to see the city as a manufacturer of positive spins, as a place that wrests from you an interminable stream of affirmations, assurances, appreciations, and yeses. It is the city of can-do, a town of towering ambition, a site of spectacular achievement and magnificent failure. It is nothing more and nothing less than the sine qua non of urban existence. As such, it is a locale that demands our best and most inspiring imaginings and deserves our most challenging and thoughtful critical reflections. And yet, New York makes me want to vote aye before I have heard all the pros and cons. It pushes me to want to pitch in despite not fully understanding the cause in question. It inspires me to shout "I love you," even when the object of that love is little more than an acquaintance.  It is a city that cannot be resisted, a metropolis that cannot be encompassed, a grand urban complex that can never be explained. 

It feels wonderful to be a writer in New York. Published or not, successful or not, talented or not, the writer in New York is immersed in a tiny world of such richness and multiplicity that only a wry, perfectly inscrutable smile can do it justice.