Goodbye New York

Listening to: "Little" Louie Vega; Arnold Jarvis - Life Goes On [Dance Ritual Mix]
via FoxyTunes

How do I begin?

It has taken me several months to write this email. I don't really know where to begin and much less what exactly to say that would sound appropriate. Presently, I type on and feel so maudlin reflecting on the entirety of my five years here. Some of you I haven't talked to in months and sometimes years. But believe or not, if you've gotten this message, you are always in my thoughts.

The story of my five years here in New York has been one of pain, sometimes Pyrrhic sacrifice, loss, and betrayal. It is also a mini-saga of how misunderstandings can lead to anguish and isolation in this enormous city. Conversely, it has been also the story of strangers clinging onto the life preserver of and in the constant hustle, becoming friends, sometimes lovers, and even family.

I want to make this move while I am healthy, still unburdened, and still young and resilient enough to take risks and recover from my mistakes. I'm proud of what I've accomplished, proud of the things I had the guts to try to take, and proud at what I've lost (which meant that at one time, I at least, had it). In the various the stages in which I've met all of you,you all of touched my life, all of you helped me learn or added new mysteries to my life for me to contemplate further. All of you have had a hand helping me become something I was not when I first came here. I am now tougher, wiser, more patient. Like it or not, all of you helped me become a man, fully capable, and indomitable like those I aspire to become more like.

But it is time I go home.

This departure is the real deal. Sometimes my plans simply evaporate into stale talk but it's very real this time. I've already squared away my apartment in Miami Beach. My mail is already being forwarded home starting yesterday and I'm transferring within the company I work for to work back home. Funny, my landlady is actually a bit distraught that I'm leaving at the end of February (for some of y'all who've had to hear my trials with the various landpeople I've dealt with over the years, I'm certain that at least raised an eyebrow). Several months ago, I asked myself a question, if the whole point of me coming to New York was to create something that would make me happy, what if I failed to do it or changed tack and did something else; could I just bypass the whole "trying to be happy thing" and simply went someplace where I've always been happy? Wasn't it the the whole point?

I realize now that no matter what, I am happiest at home. If I lose everything I own in a fire, be relentlessly pursued by killer watermelons, or be beset by wild dogs; if were at home somehow I'd find a way to be happy. I cannot explain it to you very well except I know Miami Beach is kind of my spiritual home. I want to stop complaining about and how much New York City sucks and just do something about it.

So I'm gone. I'll be in New York a lot after I leave, mostly for business and shopping (I think I've turned into a chick), but I'm done and tired and I've proven everything that I needed to myself in relation to this city. I'm just too old for the struggle, I rather chill at home and climb my mango and grapefruit trees in the backyard when they're bearing fruit and eat my Argentine steak sandwiches in the evening.

Thank you all for the experience.

Kamal.