I'm in a New York state of mind, just like Billy Joel

I was at the gym today light-hearted and feeling almost weightless, listening to Billy Joel sing I’m in a New York state of mind over and over.  Me too, Billy.  That city symbolizes something to me – I’ve watched so many films that were shot there, so I guess it represents a world of possibilities, the kind that come to fruition in movies and sometimes in life.  I call that romantic.

I stayed there once for two weeks and fell in love.  With the gritty rawness of downtown Manhattan, with Central Park whose trees were turning in autumn colors.  With the hugeness of and classy sophistication of some of the architecture in the upper East Side.  Americans sure know how to build grand monuments to their fertile imaginations.

I went to the Guggenheim and saw the most incredible exhibition of Armani designs; and to the Metropolitan Opera where what was left of my heart was stolen.  I strolled Broadway at night, watched a play starring the actor who plays Mr. Big in Sex and the City.  I got to the top of the Empire State Building and imagined I was waiting for Mr. Right and his kid, a laSleepless in Seattle.  I went to a jazz club where 14 musicians jammed before going on to their jobs on Broadway, and I heard an old woman sing the blues in a down and out joint.  My god she was beautiful.



It was before 9/11.  I stayed in a hotel in downtown Manhattan, close to Tribeca, where I was treated very rudely and with much suspicion.  I didn’t care.  I walked all over the place until I dropped.  Strangely, I felt safer there than I do at home.  Late at night I went to sleep to the cacophanic music of New York police and ambulance sirens and woke up to it again at 5 in the morning.

I loved every bit of it and cried when left.  I’m going back some day, oh yes I am.  I’m in a New State of mind.