Willing To Be Lucky

on leaving my greatest love.

This week’s issue includes an audio version for paid subscribers. If you’d like to hear me read to you, like a lullaby but not as sweet or a standup routine but not as funny, you can find it here.

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My first apartment in New York City could be described as a room with its own mailing address.

It had a lofted bed and a miniature kitchen one accessed by squeezing in sideways, like the galley on a commercial jet. Its sole window faced a neighboring building, providing an unobstructed view of white-painted brick. As I couldn’t see the ground nor the sky, I’d stick my hand outside to determine the weather.

These are observations I made in hindsight. None of this registered when I lived there, because as far as I was concerned, I’d just moved into the Plaza. I had four walls surrounded by the world. There was nothing more to want.

That was twenty-two years ago, a number that feels staggering to type, not because of its length but because I never noticed it passing. What I did notice over those twenty-two years was the landscape shifting around me. The set changed. So did the cast of characters.  

Friends complained about walk-ups and crowds and the perpetually broken subway system. They lamented over rent hikes and shady landlords and kids who rang their buzzer posing as delivery workers, then stole everything in the halls. They grumbled about pests or trash or when someone defecated in front of their building — very much human, very not dog — and it proved the final straw. After they left, they wondered aloud why they didn’t do it sooner.

To be clear, I don’t relish such experiences. But for me (who’s also seen all that and more) that was part of the package.

I know New York isn’t perfect. Nothing is. But this was the place that saved me, that made me, that (if not quite welcomed me) never asked me to change. I planned to live forever in its filthy embrace, engulfed by the din and the chaos.

Until I didn’t.

*

There is a thought that comes to visit.

Maybe it doesn’t have to be so hard.

It starts as a whisper. Over time, it grows into a polite suggestion, like the salesclerk who offers you a basket when the dozen items wedged in your arms threaten to crash to the floor. Maybe, it suggests, in a tone so gentle it borders on irritating, there is another way.

At first, I am offended. I’m excellent at struggle. Multi-tasking is my middle name. Pulling rabbits out of hats is my specialty.

Do I look like I’m having a hard time? I think.

Yes, it replies, without hesitation. You do.

The view from the hallway of a former apartment building.

The more I ponder it, the more I begin to wonder if I am uniquely wired to this life. Not to the shape of urban living, exactly, but to the enthusiastic embrace of difficulty.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve carried a core belief that nothing good comes easy. That love must be earned, its terms ever conditional. That there is value in perseverance. That help and hand-outs should never be requested, nor accepted.

I could go into why this is, but that could fill a book. So may it suffice to say, I am accustomed to striving. If Frank sings that making it here means I could make it anywhere, the obvious conclusion is I would not wish to dwell in any other place. But for the first time, I find myself wondering if staying here might be a form of masochism. Am I reinforcing a pattern it’s high time I learn to break?

Maybe it doesn’t have to be so difficult.

Huh. I concede. Maybe it doesn’t.

*

I didn’t choose New York. At first, I didn’t even like it. I came here for school, I stayed here for work, and somewhere along the way, I fell madly, deeply in love.

Was it the night less than 24 hours after my arrival when I passed someone wearing a string of battery-powered twinkle lights, unironically, as an accessory? And no one batted an eye? Or was it the first time I saw snow blanketing Central Park? Or the first time someone asked for directions and I knew just what to tell them?

Was it set in motion long before I arrived? From the New Jersey beach town where I grew up, if I squinted just right across the expanse of ocean, I could make out Manhattan in the distance — a speck of light and promise. Or was it some idea plucked from a Nora Ephron movie, the set so idyllic it was destined to fall short?

I’ll admit, the city did disappoint, but only in terms of square footage. Never in terms of spirit.

A favorite photo, captured on a walk in 2016.

And now we stand at a precipice.

In recent days, I’ve become a sort of Fran Lebowitz character, always pointing at some building or street or corner, expounding upon what used to be there and why it was better. As a former-New-Yorker friend put it, “I miss New York. But I miss my New York, which isn’t the same as yours. Everyone has their own New York.”

I miss my New York, too, even though I’m still here.

*

Was it too much time spent marveling at things only NYC would attempt? On the floor plan of a recent apartment listing, a fire escape is marketed as a “fire balcony,” while a closet (barely a walk-in) is labeled as a home office.

Was it the time a roach RAN ACROSS MY FACE — an all-caps experience — while I slept? Or too many years forgoing space or silence or a savings account?

Was it the myriad things I’ve witnessed and shall not mention here (except to say one incident involved a flasher and a hot dog and a truly alarming amount of mustard, and if you’d like to put that puzzle together, go forth)?

If you stay in any one place long enough, you’re bound to build a history. These days, I encounter ghosts at every turn. I feel haunted not only by what happened, but also by what didn’t. It might be nice, I admit, to start anew.

Every time the plane lands, I feel like I’ve just won the lottery.

E.B. White wrote, “No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.” New York is notoriously a city for the lucky — those born into wealth and bolstered by privilege, the recipients of big breaks, the stuff of urban legends. But there is something in those words that I’ve always found uplifting: willing to be lucky. As though luck — some luck — can be made. As though maybe, through grit and faith and staying in the ring, some small miracle might be just around the corner.

Perhaps Dorothy Parker put it best, “London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.”

What has kept me here all this time is not love but unrelenting optimism, my own personal brand of delusion. And though practical wisdom would surely disagree, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Still, reality persists, the glimmer of luck no match for its tenacity. The numbers laugh in my face. The promise of a new town beckons.

While I suspect I will always hold out hope for some fairytale ending — that’s just my personality — I take comfort in this cold, hard fact: If I were to leave this earth tomorrow, my story would not be lacking in magic. In many ways, on many streets, through many twists of fate, in the shadow of this great city, I have already found it.

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Card of the Week

Here is this week’s card for the collective, as well as some thoughts to carry into the days ahead. As most modern readers will tell you, the tarot is not about fortunetelling, nor is it about neat, definitive answers. The cards are simply one path to reflection, a way of better knowing ourselves and others through universal themes. If this reading resonates with you, great! And if not, no worries. Take whatever may be helpful and leave the rest.

Daughters of the Moon Tarot by Ffiona Morgan

Today’s card appears like a beacon of hope, a bright spot on the horizon.

The Sun is a celebration of childlike wonder, though not necessarily in a nostalgic sense, as not everyone carries memories of a wholesome, idyllic childhood. Rather, what this card encourages is a return to our truest selves — who we were before the world crashed in with its messages and demands.

Children do not doubt their instincts. They don’t stifle their creative impulses. They do not censor themselves. Why do we?

The iconic Smith-Waite deck with art by Pamela Colman Smith

This week, The Sun addresses each of us as a beloved child:

Worry is not your provenance. You do not control the sun. You do not control the tide. You do not control the pull of gravity or the shape of the seasons. You do not control the thoughts or actions of others. Acknowledging this does not make you powerless; it makes you wise.

Your job is simply to stay open. To do and say what is in your heart, from moment to moment. To fulfill your contract with the good to be found in this day.

This week’s card encourages each of us to trust in the process. To grant ourselves permission, allowance, the courage to chase what excites us. To explore what is unknown. To lean into adaptability. To hold space for wonder and keep an open mind for what will be.

The sun (not the card, but the actual orb in the sky) is always present. It is always with us, radiating its energy, even when it’s concealed behind clouds. We trust in its presence when it cannot be seen or felt.

In this way, The Sun asks us to trust in what we cannot (yet) see.

The Sun greets us each day, precisely as we are. In fear and anger and sadness. In confusion and complication and disappointment. In grace and hope and joy.

The Sun offers us its warmth — its love — without judgment or conditions. Maybe it’s time we followed suit.