NYC Revisited: Day One

Earlier this year a few girls in my first period class taught me all the wonders of Snapchat. This obviously made me feel old, but also brought me around to capturing the fun moments in life as they arise, writing all over them, and then adding stickers. Like this...

And while instagram is trying to steal the Snap thunder with their story feature, I've only just recently gotten the hang of these, and won't be converting to anything new too soon. So, since you probably aren't one of the four people who ever look at my snaps, let me use them to tell you a little about J-Man's and my trip back to NYC.

First off, it should be noted that Facebook reminded me that J-Man and I have been friends for ten years now. And that's pretty exact, because back in '06 I was pretty quick to add a friend right after meeting them in order to preserve that connection forever. I was in a brand new city, he was a crazy guy who invited me to see spectacles, we were both on a journey to make a difference and be grown-up teachers. Oh, and he had air conditioning.

Ten years later we were back to see another Teaching Fellow, E-Drizzle get married. We hopped on an Amtrak train, left the little guys behind, and set forth into nostalgia.

Within minutes of hailing our first cab (J-Man didn't want to subway and I felt weird using Uber in the world of yellow taxis) we remembered just how loud and smelly and hot and vibrant the city is. We dodged a street fair and multiple ambulances as we swerved our way to the Upper West Side to stay in our friend EK's lovely apartment. There we'd stay alongside another couple attending a different NYC wedding while EK and her husband were off at yet another wedding in Wisconsin.

Within the next hour we bumped into my friend V - who tends to disappear for months at a time - so it was pretty amazing that our paths crossed at all. We promised to catch up later and continued on our way.

E-Drizzle's wedding was lovely, even though we ended up inside rather than the outdoor park as they'd hoped. It was me, J-Man and two other former NYCTF English teachers and we hung out and talked books. My self-published one, another's upcoming poetry one, and another's currently in the query phase one. After some bouts of not feeling very accomplished in life lately, that conversation reminded me to snap out of it and enjoy the things that have made me happy. I wrote a book. It exists, imperfections and all, and it's ok to feel proud of that.

I proceeded to eat too much, meet new people, dance a bit, smile a ton, and have a fantastic time in the upstairs bar reception. The whole event was incredibly New York, and incredibly them and came along with the beauty of remembering my own vows in the place where I met the man I would love more passionately than I could have ever imagined.

cab ride home - 2016

cab ride home 2006

The day was wonderful, the company too, and it was only the first of the fantastic trip.