In the city that never sleeps, I really need to

In four hours I have to wake up. I'll have to disassemble my bed, and then leave the apartment that I have spent so much time in, grown so much in, and head off to begin a new experience. As I said, new york is like a dream. Soon it will be time to wake up.

There was so much I wanted to write about in my last few days here, but, as always in this city, the time just flew by. The entire last month has been a blur. The Met, the Cooper-Hewitt, Greenwood Cemetery,and tiny little galleries. The Staten Island Yankees vs. the Batavia Muck Dogs and the Coney Island Cyclones vs. the Vermont Lake Monsters. Fireworks and more fireworks. Introducing old friends to new, reconnecting with folks from my past, and burning a few bridges for good measure. Dancing - oh lord, the dancing! 'til all hours of the night and morning - at Taj, at Lincoln Center, at Pier 54, and on the roof of good old 271. I said goodbye for now to some of my very best friends and loved ones. I ate a ton of incredible food, and I came to strongly realize that the me who came to New York City, twice, is not the same me who leaves here now. I hope I can say more about all this later, but it's late.

So here we go, kids! Off to a new adventure!

Time left in the city: oh, about three-and-a-half hours now.

I want to be a part of it

Topping the good list, though, is easily this: the scale and complexity of new york; its energy, its liveliness, its spirit. Like living under power lines pumping a billion volts throughout - you can't help but feel it and take it into your bones. So much to do; you'll have to say no to 95% of the things you actually hear of to do, which comprises maybe 1% of the things going on at any given time. People are unabashedly creative here. They go searching for whatever it is they're after and they live these big, bold lives. You could never see or experience it all, even if you lived here a hundred years. It's incredible, and alive, and so diverse, and, while this sounds terribly snobby to say, if you're not here, you can't really understand it. It's just amazing. And I'll miss it terribly.

The concrete flower has poisonous charms, of the sort for madness

Numero uno on the bad list.
I'm going to keep the details light here for the sake of those who read this, but first and foremost on the "bad" list has to be dating. The very first woman I went on a date with in NYC warned me that dating here is, in her word, "brutal." She could not have been more right. Frankly I'm tired of it. It's so easy to get exhausted by the you-can-be-my-self-confidence types, the I'll-dress-up-like-snow-white-and-leave-the-shades-open-so-the neighbors-can-watch (and they will), the i-really-just-want-to-date-my-not-so-dear-old-dad. The requests and demands for physical violence, emotional abuse, verbal degradation, for a relationship that improves status at the office or fits into a gym schedule; they pile up with the phone numbers of women I won't be seeing again. As the woman who loved to fantasize about actually torturing her cheating ex used to tell me, "dating is kind of intense here." And by all accounts from some of the more normal women I know, this insanity is not contained simply to the female gender - it's everywhere. And it's horribly disheartening. "We are all just big, wounded, walking responses," says playwright Carol Churchill. Nowhere more so than in the dating world of New York City.

Brooklyn Was a Dream I Had

The conclusion of my time in New York brings with it the expected retrospection and autopsy. The unexpected guest to arrive, though, is that realization of how I regard the time I've spent here: that is, as a dream. Or dreamlike, I'm not sure. Definitely parallel to, but distinct from, the regular or normal course and drift of life. New York is like another planet, and the experiences I've had seem similarly extraterrestrial. So may I recount to you that which was the stuff of pleasant dreams, and which of nightmares? Well, I'm going to, so there.

Days left in New York: 10.