I've been in NYC for the past 3 years, and about to move to SF in a couple weeks. Here's a reflection of nyc I've been working on: My first vivid image of New

I've been in NYC for the past 3 years, and about to move to SF in a couple weeks. Here's a reflection of nyc I've been working on: My first vivid image of New York City was from Salinger's A Catcher in the Rye. It was an intimidating and claustrophobic image. It was a city filled with sleepless characters running around in the cold trying to figure themselves out or trying to con someone somehow. To Salinger's credit, after almost three years living here, my first impression wasn't too far off. It's hard to find a city more stratified along class lines. Or a place more materialistic yet also so bohemian. A city of greed and poverty but also of immense heart and empathy. It is a city to suite every mood while at times suiting none. A city of everything. A city you want to describe as a muse but stop when it seems it could not be any more machine like and heartless. Among its eight million inhabitants, it breeds patience out of necessity but can explode with anger without warning. And when it does, it may be rude and it may be ugly, but it does not fester and you learn that in New York nothing is personal. If you fly into La Guardia in early autumn, the lights of the city make the overcast clouds glow a synthetic orange. It reminds you the city is vibrant and will be long after you decide to leave. The lights dazzle and mystify me still. Flying in for one of the last times before i leave for the other city on the coast, I don't try to find the places I know but scan the skyline for places I may have never been. Maybe that's the New York mystique, at least for me. After three years, those lights still look alien. When I look back, I don't think of what I did but of the so many things left undone. This is my lasting impression of this city, and it leaves me not with regret but instead hope, for I can always return as if it were my first time.