I had a Farm in Africa.

Not really. I had a loft in Williamsburg. In a neighborhood often described as the epicenter of cool, I was right where the heart of that epicenter would be, if cool had a heart. White hot. Big, light, bright, shiny. And gone.

I first saw Manhattan in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1986. The friends who accompanied me to the “pictures” declared the characters “a bunch of fuckin’ idiots,” but I knew I had finally found people like me. Not only that, but in the place where they lived, it wasn’t raining and everyone had a job. Five short years later I moved there (well, to Brooklyn). I arrived with a couple of canvas laundry bags full of possessions. All my days in NYC, I felt like I was in a movie.

Now I’m living in a place where when I refer to “the city” the inhabitants ask, “which city?” which is like asking, “which planet?”

As I reflect upon the loss of my foothold on the East coast’s greasiest real estate pole, I'm sitting on my porch with a cup of coffee, watching the wind move the trees. Somewhere amongst the rippling leaves, a bird begins singing its little heart out. It’s just as if it didn’t know that it doesn’t matter what you do if you’re not in New York City. Stupid bird.