After just two weeks of exposure to New York City, I found myself abruptly uprooted from the apartment in which I was finally beginning to feel at home. Right in the middle of my orientation with the streets and the neighborhoods of this new city, I came down with a mix of illnesses and had to return home. Back in my Pennsylvania suburb, confined within the walls of my house, I wondered if there was a way I could continue my budding relationship with New York, outside of the city. I began some of the required reading and tried to get inside the minds of John D. Rockefeller Jr., Edgar Allen Poe, and Rem Koolhaas. Yet, as much as I read of these authors and characters, my body just couldn't get excited about it. I thought at first it was due to the fever, and then when the fever went away I figured it must be the sore throat, and then finally decided it was none of the above and gave up trying to find a reason why my heart wasn't in the right place to get inspired by New York City.
I turned on the TV instead, hoping for a quick fix for my imagination, and found that one of my favorite movies was playing. I settled down into my couch, sipped on some chicken soup, and began to watch the two main characters. Suddenly I found that the scenery looked very familiar and realized that the beginning part of the movie takes place in New York City. My attention turned toward the background of the scene, as I gazed at the very Rockefeller Center I had just been reading about in one of the required books. I recognized the ice skating rink and thought momentarily about what this scene would look like if the original plans for building a great opera house had been fulfilled. Would opera season center around Christmas and would ice-skating be restricted to just the winter Olympics? I began to muse about how life may have been different.
Just as my mind was beginning to develop some interest, a commercial came on, and my chain of thought was broken. It was at that moment that I came to my conclusion. I could not hope fully to experience New York unless I was there. The knowledge I was gaining was interesting, yet I could not really appreciate what I was learning without being in the actual city. How could I completely comprehend the plot of New York's life story if I wasn't in the appropriate setting? Let's just face it, as much as you might try to transplant yourself to a place through the use of books, television and memory, nothing quite compares to the successful combination of living in and learning about New York City.
