The City Burns Bright

My life revolves around one central contradiction between my city roots and country upbringing. Born in Brooklyn during the apex of the crack epidemic, the first four years of my life consisted of both innocent fun and real fear. Faced with what seemed like an intractable drug and crime epidemic, my mother and father opted out of the city and moved my brother and I to quiet Connecticut, far enough away to keep us safe, but close enough to feel the city’s electric magnetism.
There I spent most of my conscious life, learning and growing, with kids ,who like me, had been moved away from New York. And while our parents retained a hard-edge from their time spent in the city, we all slowly grew soft around our own edges. Unlike New Yorkers, famously quick to temper, we grew docile and petty. Petty because we had nothing but pettiness to keep ourselves entertained. By high school it seemed that we were tied to the city in name and proximity only, we were no more from New York than our parents were from Connecticut.
But all is not always as seems. Strip away the docile exterior, ignore the soft-edges, and you find something unexpected — the same hardness and intensity found in most lifelong New Yorkers. Maybe it is in everyone, but that internal flame burns closer to the surface for us transplanted New Yorkers. And like any flame, you can harness and utilize its heat, or you can let it slowly burn you away. “You are ambitious” I have been told by my brother and friend Tom. I hope to god that that ambition, fueled by that internal fire, won’t burn any less bright now that I am so far from its origin.