My vagabond shoes did a lot of walking this weekend

New York is one of those cities that have become so embedded in the human psyche that you don't have memory of a time in your life where you didn't know what it is.
I do recall an earliest memory of New York being significant to me, however. I was 6 years old, in first grade in the Philippines. As part of the yearly school show during United Nations Day, my class was assigned the USA (not that I knew I'd be living there eventually), and we were to do a dance. The song was Frank Sinatra's New York, New York. I distinctly remember making top hats out of construction paper and dancing in time to the brass and percussion. Not to start making up things as to what a song like that could evoke in a 6-year-old, but I'm sure that it instilled some kind of awe in me.

As the pictures show, this performance took place on October 24, 2002.
I never could have imagined that exactly 12 years later, I would find myself in the very city that inspired the song I came to love.

Before visiting one of the world's most beloved cities (Paris being the other obviously), I had already considered myself a globetrotter. I had roamed Hong Kong, Sydney, Nassau, and Krakow, among many, many others. But New York stayed in the back of my mind as a city I would need to find myself in eventually.
After already seeing all these incredible cities in vastly different places around the globe, I wondered if finally setting foot in New York might end up being anticlimactic. Or alternatively, I wondered if there would be something distinct about it, something magical that no other city I've seen has yet offered me.

The enormously fun weekend full of wonder aside, I think my visit to the legend that is New York was a sort of culmination of all the travels I've done so far, as well as another reminder of all the travels I have yet to do. In New York, I felt connected to the rest of the world- not only because of all the languages I heard while I was there and all the people from other lands whose paths crossed mine for fleeting moments, but also because of the thought of being in a place that people on every corner of this planet knew about. I thought of the linear streets lined infinitely with skyscrapers sprawled out before me, and how I was in the city celebrated by that one dance number I did a long time ago. To 6-year-old-me listening to Frank Sinatra's song, New York was a city that was only made real by people with some wild imaginations and big dreams. How many other people residing in obscure areas of Earth nobody beyond their boundaries knows of must think of New York in that way? How many dream of someday making it there and, consequently, being able to make it anywhere?

Let me leave my philosophizing to the side for a bit.
October 25th was my 19th birthday. During the last few moments of October 24th, I found myself on 5th Ave and 59th St in view of Central Park and the Plaza Hotel. After midnight passed, the three friends whom I was with all wished me a happy birthday, and we stood in a group hug as they sang to me. All the while, cars zoomed by us, lights twinkled, people walked past us, and chilly autumn winds blew, but those moments with people who are very special to me shut out the world for a few instances. I was so wrought with emotion tears came to my eyes, tears of joy and disbelief that I had just celebrated my 19th year in a city that I had so long yearned to see for myself.

I'm not one to shut out the world for too long, so I reflected on how I must have been just one among many people in New York that night feeling like one of the most special human beings in the world. I wondered about who else out there might have felt the way I did. The marvelous thing about mega cities is the notion of them being venues for millions of stories all intersecting, all in one tiny section of our world. As I do whenever I find myself in a new cities, I observed the people around me throughout the trip. People like the couple with the Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen dog (that I knew existed but had never seen in real life until then) who conversed with someone they ran into in Central Park about the obscure breed, people like the man in the subway reprimanding his two younger companions for not offering their seats to ladies who walked in, people like the doorman at the Harvard Club who so kindly offered to show us around the lavish premises, inspiring us to return in four years once we're alumni. Yes, New York has sights to see and food to eat, but what makes it an especially meaningful, beautiful city to me is the thought of all the people from around the world, traveling through or residents of, who uphold its reputation as a city where people can do whatever they wish with their gift of life.
I realize that any revelation I make about any city or cities in general must have already been made many times over throughout history. Many of literature's greatest figures would hang out in such cities and write about their lives, the cities, or humanity in general, all adding to this collective stream of human consciousness. Even if what I say has already been said, I write to add to it and to feel like a part of it.
When I first set foot in Manhattan, I didn't feel any sudden rush of excitement or any glorious sensations; rather, I felt as though it had been waiting patiently for my arrival, whenever it was going to be, and was going to welcome me calmly whenever I chose to finally go. It seems to have taken 12 years from when I first had an idea of its status in the world to when I finally set foot in it, and yet I felt like it always had a place for me, and it will always have a place for me. A city like New York has everything one could possibly wish to pursue, considering all the people it has welcomed throughout its history, if only one has the will. My stay was very brief, and I miss the city already, but I know that I'll be back.

NOW IT'S TIME TO SPAM THIS POST WITH PICTURES YAAAAAAAY

First steps in Manhattan

A taste of New York cheesecake

The gang in the subway station

View from High Line

My birthday outfit!

City streets

The Broadway musical we watched on my birthday, one I had been dying to see

Us in Battery Park.

New York from the water.

I just now realized there's a lot more I could have said about this trip. I could have gone on to talk about seeing The Statue of Liberty as somebody who immigrated to the USA, I could have talked about the Broadway musical, but I've been putting off this entry long enough, and I think it's good to have kept the topics of this entry spontaneous. All I knew was that I wanted to write about New York and to make it philosophical in my own style.

Now that I've seen New York, the last American city I care to make an effort to see is Washington, DC. I suppose that'll come another time, but for now, it's good to call Boston home!