"I Want to be a Part of IT, New York , New York...."

As I walked into Grand Central Station today, a thought walked across the forefront of my mind – a thought that was at once a question formed on the framework of feeling unconditionally in love with New York City and the ever-present curiosity surrounding such a soulful and comfortable sentiment.

And again, after class, as I walked across the main floor of Bloomingdales, smelling my sample of the new Channel parfume, swinging my medium brown bag satisfiededly from my fingers, and feeling myself a veritable goddess of my Manhattan, I was again struck by the city’s sheer power to transform the attitude with which I walk through it. Where before I was slumping, now I was skipping.

Maybe it was the shopping, but I doubt it...I think it’s this – New York is a world unto itself, full of stories. Broadway at 6 p.m. is a veritable buffet of bodies, flowing in seemingly endless abundance, providing ample opportunity to disappear within them, or to stand out amongst them. My mind matches the mass of Manhattan’s streets with a plentitude of words, a constant stream of language, bursting to be written out, so much so, that I stopped beside a Strawberry’s on 43^rd and Lexington to scribble all this out, purging my mind of the fear that I’d forget the sentences that were scrambling to be freed.

And yet, I love the country and find parts of myself, inaccessible when within the city, on the shore, looking out on the Long Island sound and discovering in the crevices of my mind memories long forgotten. Or at the barn, where every smell recalls to me semblances of self, forgotten on the city street. But in the end, it's New York that pulls from me the creative fruit of each place’s past. Lessons learned long ago, and memories of my childhood, are recovered by Manhattan’s movement and my place within it. New York is like my Hogwarts, I move through it magically, meeting full on its many faces, and seeing myself reflected in its ever-open eyes.