I'm running in Central Park, with only Tom Petty's just another "Face In The Crowd" (read: how I felt in New York City) for company. As I turn a corner, a grounded homeless man, no younger than 65, grabs my ankles, and screams, "My favorite Jelly Belly flavor is spaghetti, can I have a couple bucks?" After I ask myself if that is this man's legitimate version of singing-for-change, or if jelly belly really does make spaghetti-flavored bellies, I come to one definitive conclusion right there and then: The next flight to the far-too-Big Apple does not have to save a seat for me.
After interning with a company I would love to work for this last off-term in New York, one large hurdle manifested itself in order for me to do so (not counting the Goliath obstacle of the company actually wanting me back). They, like seemingly every other visible vocational option, call New York city home; a call I'm not ready to make anytime this lifetime.
So as not to alienate presumably countless people who deem New York the end-all, be-all, allow me to make the obvious concession. It has tons to offer (but doesn't any place with a ten-plus million population have to?). I will probably never dine so fine, sit behind Spike Lee at Madison Square Garden, meet Muhammed Ali at the ESPY's, or see a better Les Mis anywhere. But I'm taking my gut instinct over a filet and a play this time.
To be fair, it may just be a case of my resident bias to Northern California, or my perpetual tendency to connect taking a bite out of the Big Apple to the biblically exiled Adam. I honestly tried to enjoy myself. I would tell myself, "C'mon, Marc, when in Rome," and I went to the top of the Empire State Building. On my way down, seven people were shot. "C'mon, Marc, when in Rome," and I went to check out Wall Street. I saw the trading floor, yellow Do-Not-Cross tape, and a man on the floor from a heart attack. A rat in a race or a clown in a circus ought not be anyone's fate.
When you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, you're close to the mountains, beaches, Yosemite, Napa Valley and weather as nature intended. When you're in the New York metropolitan area, you're close to ... the New York metropolitan area.
Come early June of next year the Graduation deck of cards will deal us two general hands: We can choose what we want to do and go where the best opportunity presents itself, or we can choose where we want to live, and present the best opportunity for ourselves there. Call me passive, but my winter in the "City of Cities" proved enough to catapult me into the latter. I figure the job we choose can be altered, changed, or tailored until we're happy; the place in which we live cannot be.
Compromising my sincere occupational interests, I am not. Instead, I'm banking on the notion that the person behind this whole liberal arts philosophy knew what they were doing. Heck, as long as we're independent ("hey roommate, come with me to the HBs, please!"), self-motivated and driven ("yeah, let's go to Baker ... after we rent 'Last Action Hero' again?"), and intelligent ("this milk is so sour ... here, taste some?"),the right job should fall into our laps, right, Eleazar?
The Italian cuisine Jelly Belly lover didn't convince me that New York wasn't for me because of his abnormal taste buds or his equally abnormal petition for a buck. He just helped bring my gut feeling out. That and the taxi driver.
After leaving work one evening and strolling past the customary sirens and man-gunned-down-in-midtown-floral-shop, I jumped in a cab and the driver offered the most sage words to grace my ears all term. "I tell you what, my friend, if you are looking for a friendly place, don't come here." The simplicity of the statement accompanied by the agreeable Ethiopian accent really hit home. He went on to tell me that if Greenland was icy and Iceland was green, then there should be a Pizzaland so he could just eat cheeseburgers all day, but that's no matter.
The point is, his words of wisdom struck a cord. Sound silly that this epiphany came to me from a senior citizen without a home and a taxi driver who previously found work as an Ethiopian chef to be fruitless? Well, epiphanies are like that girl of your dreams. You don't find them when you set out on a calculated pursuit. They both just stumble upon you. (That's my logic anyway, but I'm still single, so go figure).
Besides learning that undergraduate life beats the heck out of the working world, I take with me an invaluable lesson from an invaluable experience in New York. I never liked Robert Heinlein's "Stranger In A Strange Land," and I don't want to make the same mistake Adam made.
