A Lifetime of NYC

 

New York City is awesome. It is to me at least. I've been going there once every three months for the last 2+ years, yet it feels like I've spent a large chunk of my life living there. And, in some weird way, I have.

Last August marked my two-year mark being cancer-free, but the confirmation of that freedom was accentuated by Monday's CAT scan which officially cleared me. It felt like a homecoming of sorts. The always-impressive Dr. G greeted me with his usual 'let me soak my hands with Purell before shaking your hand so we can all be squeaky clean' before telling me the good news. He then recapped what I'd been through, and reminded me that, from now on, the chances of getting sick again drop significantly. It was a relief, it always is. Despite the fact that I sometimes feel like that part of my life ended two years ago, I still get anxious to see the results. Even though it's another three years until I'm officially "cured", it feels good to keep surviving every day.

I do miss my badass skinhead look.

 

Another one of the things I love about New York is the fact that you can find pretty much anything there, and that's what I did Wednesday night. I went out to a bar with my friend Xavier where we had previously dominated the ruit table for hours three months ago thanks to our Gettysburg preparation. However, we weren't so lucky this time around. We got knocked out in the first game against a guy who goes there every week (and has done so for the last four years). We took solace in the fact that our late-game baskets burst their over-confidence bubble and made them focus. Nevertheless, we were disappointed. We decided to make the best of the night by walking around for an hour and had a great life talk about girls, job applications, college, job rejections, and food (basically a summary of every 22 year-old guy's life). We even got an early preview of the parade:

 

 

 

 

Xavier expressing his love for multi-racial goldfish.

 

The rest of the week was just as good. Thanksgiving was pretty low-key. Supermarket turkey with family can be just as good, and Friday I got my culture fix with Dvorak's New World Symphony(a masterpiece best known as the soundtrack for Ridley Scott's masterpiece: Bread) played by the New York Philharmonic and they were outstanding. The week in the city was capped off by a classic Saturday night of Mexican food, margarita pitchers, and getting to see other Gburg grads surviving the post-grad life.

The week was an overall win and it was a celebration of what the city has offered me. It reminded me of how our experiences create not only who we are, but also a template for us to go forward with. And just as scary as the uncertainty of the future can be, there is a certain sense of comfort in knowing that one can be living in a brand new canvas the next day.

Kind of like this postmodern rendering of Karl in the city.