I have a sense that New York will always feel like home to me, even if it were emptied of all those close to me who are there. It is at root physiological, an emotional bond alloyed by sight and scent.

Though I have seen New York as long as I have smelled it, it is the latter sense – oldest in nature that it is – which is the strongest and most changeless. When I first came to The City, I saw it with the same drawling yokel eyes that most kids, emerging from the tunnel that goes from Wichita to Williamsburg, do – though I was young enough to be dazzeled without any sense of irony. Though I am still as in love with the face of New York, with its craggy, stolid beauty, as I was when I arrived, the initial romance has long sense dulled. There remain places and moments of architectural fancy that bring me back to that honeymoon – crossing the East River on the subway, craning my neck about the deco giants of lower Manhattan, or wandering idly among brownstones – but it is not too often that the look alone burnishes my heart.

The impact of smell, however, never abates, no matter how long it lingers in the back of the sinus, or how accustomed I come to it. There is a crisp smell of autumn in New York that I particularly love – it has the cleanest, most provincial quality that metropolitan air ever acquires. I was happy enough to take long draughts of this on my visit. But there is another smell, far less pleasant but far more distinguished, that strikes my olfactory bulb like a wielded signpost. Most people would call it “trash”, but that does it little justice, nor fully describes its range. I have to go in for “miasma” or “funk”, because it is not the smell of trash alone, but the smell of trash in the sun, of foul air banked in sewers and subway tunnels, of the animal and vegetable debris of Chinatown markets. It is neither as simple nor as small as a single wastebin. It is almost regal in its awfulness.

I imagine every major city will have it’s own variation of this miasma, depending upon their own infrastructures, cuisines, hygiene, and culture generally. One could say that city funk has it’s own terroir, and I believe that this is why – when rounding a corner into a new, passing through storm drain halitus, or waiting on the subway platform – wherever I was struck by New York’s particular scent, I was inspired by a sense of home and the familiar.

Places are nothing without people, of course, and it would be difficult to say that empty phonebook and solitary evenings could be replaced by the smell of waste. I am not saying that, simply stating the obvious – that smell orients. Friends are, of course, the meat of the matter, and this trip to New York, more than anything, reminded me how wonderful it is to have one’s people. To make a few calls and end up with a crowded table at brunch, or for a midweek dinner, is beyond heartening. It is one of the more reaffirming sensations that must exist outside of faith, conjugal, or filial love. To see my people, changed only in age, and with age now a topic of conversation, was the highlight of my trip. I only regret not being able to see more. The obvious corollary to the equation between absence and fondness is this: reunions are the sweetest of events, even if they are short.

When I first arrived in Paris, I couldn’t get over the lack of conveniences I had grown accustomed to in New York. The bodegas – or, as they aptly (if inappropriately) call them here, les arabes du coin – were not half as abundant, nor did they stay open all night as is customary in the city that never sleeps. What’s more, these alimentations generale charged exorbitant markups compared to their stateside counterparts, and to the typical French grocery. Buck-twenny-five Coors tallboys? Hardly. Try 2 euro (or $2.60) pint cans of Kro. The situation was even more dire for late-night, post-bar bites. Sure, you could grab a vile panini or a soggy crepe around Pigalle or les Grands Boulevards at 2am, but you could hardly get a made-to-order grilled sandwich at the corner store at 3am, or mozz sticks and jalapeno poppers delivered at 4.

Having just returned from NYC after a month of unrelenting “catching up” (read: socially-sanctioned dissipation) with my friends there, I have a renewed love for Big Apple delis, but have achieved an inner emotional detente over the relative conveniences offered by different cultures and different cities. Obvious though it may seem, there are distinct species of instant gratification native to every Western society, despite the march of globalization and the leveling of expectation. A textbook case would have to be the Netherlands, where you can of course pickup tree to your hearts content…but which, if you are a good and circumspect tourist, you will not smoke curbside in front of God and toe-headed Dutch children.

As is often the case, the stark contrast between what you can and can’t do, or have, and where, orbits around vice, and came into greatest relief when I first arrived back in NY with the lifestyle expectations I had grown accustomed to after half a year in Paris. Suddenly, I couldn’t drink in the street, buy booze beyond beer in corner stores, or smoke, well, inside. I suppose it is not so much a question of whether I would trade those doites for all-night grills and fryers – I’d take them all, natch – but rather a very telling expression of culture.

In spite of all civics class propaganda, it is apparent that the French approach daily life with a deeper sense of la liberté than we Yanks do. Sure, Californians can buy a fifth of rotgut at Safeway, but woe betide you light a fag within the state’s borders. And forget about New England buckle-shoed blue laws. We may have different tolerances to vice from state to state, but – with the exception of Louisiana, I’m guessing (parce que c’est Nouveau France, peut etre?) – even states that have cause célèbre liberal laws will also have some hypocritical, draconian policies to even the keel (I’m talking to you, Nevada).

But who knows? Social liberalism is a double edged sword, cutting individual freedoms as soon as as the political climate surrounding an issue shifts to privilege, or ostensibly “protect”, society. Sartre said, “Hell is other people”, which I think goes a long way to explain how the French covet their, let’s not say individual, but personal rights to pleasure. A ban on smoking in indoor public spaces is coming down the pipe, however, and it will be interesting to see how much it is flaunted or enforced here. Liberté or fraternité - which will prevail?

Welcome to my blog.

I was born today, October 8th, in 1979.

I am writing this to know myself better.