memoir

Last week we spent a few days in Manhattan. While I was there I had flashes of previous trips to the City. There have been few enough so that all six or seven journeys north are memorable.

In many ways a trip to New York City is about as different as life can get from living in the suburban upcountry of South Carolina. A trip there always feels like true travel to a foreign place. Strange things always happen. The energy comes in waves. There's the density-a million and a half people living in 22 square miles-but it's not the density that makes the air feel so different and strange in New York. It's the intense life of the island, the way the folkways and culture of the mythic place have developed their own rhythms and surprises. It's the power and the madness and the excitement.