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Written Wisdom: Waverly Place

My sister is renting an apartment at Waverly Place. I would be sharing it with her this coming year, or in the years after that, if I were staying in New York, but I am not, and so I am just using it from time to time this summer. Either to hang out after work is done but before I meet someone for dinner or drinks, or to go to avoid the commute home after a night out. 

Waverly Place is the perfectly located street. It is near the border of the East and West Village, incredibly easily accessible by subway, and walking distance from enough restaurants, cafés, and bars, etc. that one never needs to go to the same place twice.

I stayed in the Waverly Place apartment last night. I knew how to get there from the subway, how to enter the code to gain access to the building, how to turn the keys so as to unlock the absurdly complicated doors to the apartment. I knew how to turn pull-out couch into a bed and set it up before I went out for the night. I knew how to get from the apartment to the restaurant, from the restaurant to the bar, from the bar back to the apartment, because I knew the neighborhood, or felt like I did, and felt like I was part of its pulse, taking in the heat of the crowded sidewalks and the warm night air, walking with a purpose and no purpose, and letting my shirt sleeve slip down my shoulder because there are 8 million some people in the city and not one of them could care less about my bra strap.

I got back to the apartment on Waverly Place and thought about knowing my way, and about belonging to a place, or some semblance of belonging, and of knowing its people who are your own people and knowing the way because it is your way. And of how I am giving that up in three weeks for a year, and then for three more years, and how I know that that is my choice and it is a fine one, but that last night there is nothing that I would not have given to spend the foreseeable future walking down Waverly Place.