have you ever run into situations where friends, people you have known for years, make assumptions about you that you know are not true, but which bother you anyway, and then you start to believe they are true and so you become those assumptions?? it’s very disconcerting. it takes you to a place of such shame, a place where you have strove to move as far away from as possible. and then these assumptions take you right back there again.

and that’s when you might start to imagine living in a strange city like a complete unknown. a place that is assumption-free. or a place with so many twists and turns, all you have to do is turn yourself around to be in an entirely new city, with an entirely new fresh start. that is part of the allure of new york as a place of endless possibility, a place where I feel great affinity and community that is also a place where I can be completely lost. at the same time.