Last week on Top of the Rock

“That’s the thing I’ll miss most, when I miss it – the life of New York City. And it always gets me when I come back. There’s the trip from JFK, in a cab, into the city, a route that takes the BQE, which runs parallel to the island of Manhattan on the other side of the East River, giving you the postcard view: the skyline, lit up, burning brightly, and in there, two million human beings, two million people on an island of twenty-two square miles (!). In there, they are living, they are eating, they are drinking, sleeping, doing it – and in there too, somewhere, my bars, my restaurants, my walks, my friends, my life.

And even if I am going away for a little while – for just a little while, a year or so, in order to get well – that’s how I’ll still think of NYC. Life will go on, and the city won’t so much as shrug when it learns of my departure, but those streets and those buildings and those people will still be my life – my bars, my restaurants, my walks, my friends, my life.” - Jason Mulgrew