10 November

Return to New York City

by Jon Katz

  I have a ton of memories of New York City. I took my daughter to see a dinosaur there. And her first Yankee game. I worked in television in Manhattan and was ferried to and from home in a limousine. I lunched with TV anchors and famous faces.
  And was managing editor of a national magazine. I met an analyst there, and began the exploration of my life, interrupted by life. I loved the theater there. I brought my first novel in a cardboard box to New York, and it was knocked from my hand by a street rat and blew all over Times Square. I lunched at the Algonquin there. Shopped on Madison Avenue.
 I first fell in love in Greenwich Village. I worked for a renegade news service there. I was thrown out of the New School for Social Research there. And saw Bob Dylan playing in a cafe there. And walked the streets of the East Village all night. And got engaged to a young girl who died soon after. And taught college there. And ate pizza with runaway kids on West 3rd St. We were all outcasts together there.
 And watched the sun come up over the Brooklyn Bridge. And covered war protestors and riots there.
  I was always mesmerized by New York. And loved it. And then I fell out of love with New York. And ran away from it. Now I’m going back and am dancing with New York again, the place of my aspirations and imagination. Far from the farm.
And plotted my dog books there. And had lunch with my editors there. It’s time to go back. And see how it feels.

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