i wrote this in the 'do you like where you live' thread last night, and decided to post i t here, too

I grew up in Wyoming (When I was telling this during my cooking class, a woman replied 'Wow. I don't think I've ever met someone from Wyoming!'). And moved east after a few stops in the midwest, ending up in New York City of all places.

When I first moved to NYC, the building I worked in had ~50 floors. The county I grew up in in Wyoming had ~11k people (and more cattle). I suspect the building I worked in easily had that many people working it.

NYC is a harsh mistress. It's an abusive relationship, really. NYC just doles out as much as you can take, and then some Then, occasionally, there's this utter and complete glimpse of pure humanity that's amazing. I've seen random people do anything they could to help some random person on the subway, or someone hurt on the street. While this isn't really that big of a deal in and of itself - also remember that on the same subway car, there's homeless people as well as people making over a million dollars a year. People in NYC don't harbor illusions that they can make it on their own - everybody needs help here and there to make it. Even little things, like the Bodega (Think convenience store.) owner knowing your name can help out when you loose the keys to your apartment.

But, there's a certain quality of life to New York City. It's a beast in and of itself, a living being. My favorite time in the City is about 5-6 AM, and on to about 7AM. This is when the city goes from a sleeping state, often with beautiful, bright orange skies and the city slowly wakes up. First, more taxis and more traffic start appearing, then the '24x7' bodegas start to slowly open up - the shutters on the stores opened up. Finally, people start walking around, going to wherever they need to go.

Like an abusive relationship, part of you gets damaged somehow, but other parts of you sees the dream of New York City - for me, that's late 1970's NYC - CBGB's, SNL, the Disco scene - the 1950's New York City from The Godfather - and the 1800's when waves of immigrants were first making their stake in this city and country. Ultimately, they merge into one thing, the damage is mostly done, but the glimpses of the dreams are still there. And the abuse doesn't seem so bad anymore, almost something you start to enjoy in a twisted way.

Now when I leave to the 'outside world' as I call it - not New York City - it's pretty much the same thing. The first few days, I'm left thinking 'wow. this is kind of nice, having a car, being able to easily get around.' A few days later, I'm standing in line in a deli wondering if the first customer can possibly articulate their order in a meaningful way to the daydreaming employee before the sun turns into a supernova. Everything's so slow. And I need a stupid car to get around. Finally, by the end of a week, I've had it, and I reaffirm that it'd probably take a pretty significant event to get me to live somewhere else.