New York State of Mind

I can’t get NYC out of my head at the moment. About this time last year I was beside myself with anxiety, trepidation and excitement because I was going to meet a boy I hardly knew in NY for ten days of summer lovin’. It was a crazy in love time and some days I felt like I was Beyonce walking down the street, my man by my side, kicking over fire hydrants then frolicking in a burning car wearing my chinchilla. Those were the good times. Other days I was so wound up with tension I was more highly-strung than Woody Allen. But that’s a whole other story.

Yesterday I was at home suffering from the cold that’s going around and I spent the afternoon reading Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City (my friend Miri designed the cover. It’s increds.) and wishing I was so badly sitting in Washington Square watching kids play in the fountain, eating a slice and reading this book. But I was under a doona and freezing my arse off.

Then in the evening I switched on the TV to find one of my childhood crushes, Griff Rhys Jones, was doing a doco on the day in the life of NYC. He got to do the coolest things: collect garbage (ok, not that cool), get special access to the roof of the Chrysler building (I wouldn’t want to be on the roof actually … terrified of heights), wash windows dangling down a 30-storey building like Spiderman (actually, I’m into that either. I’d need an adult nappy.), hang out in Central Station (I can’t believe I didn’t go to the whispering gallery with my boo!) go sing with a gospel choir in Harlem (defo my style), get to walk around the Natural History museum at night with a torch (So cool!!!) and buy a hotdog from out the front of MoMa (I yelled at the TV, ‘I did that! I did that!’). What’s the word for someone who is obsessed with New York? A New Yorkophile? For the 8th year in a row I’ve entered the Green Card lottery so I can only pray that 2010 is MY year. It’s gotta be. I want my life to be less like Bridget Jones and more like you-know-who.