2004 was my second year in New York. I was attending graduate school at Sarah Lawrence College and, with a classmate, had moved to Crown Heights. I was cold or homesick. Sometimes I was cold, homesick and hungry.
In Los Angeles, if I was hungry, I had a car which made the getting of food easy. But more importantly, I had a Nanay and a kitchen filled with Nanay food. But here in New York, I had neither a car nor a Nanay nearby, and I missed Los Angeles.
The center of feelings isn't always in the heart, sometimes feelings find its nerve center, depending on the ailment, in different parts of your body—the slow ache in the middle of your palm preceding the memory of an ex-love's hands or the dull throb in your throat preceding real talk with a present love. Our bodies often know before we consciously know.
The homesick for family, friends and the familiar rooted itself in my stomach and manifested in hunger. New York City has some pretty delicious food; there's no denying its pizza. But hunger is physical and metaphoric, and there's no pizza slice good enough to stop missing home when home is lumpia, pinakbet and an unreasonable amount of rice.I found Elvie's through the Internet. And it was a trek to get to. There is no easy path from Sarah Lawrence or Crown Heights to Elvie's, which resided at 214 1st Avenue. It takes a good year or two to understand mass transit in New York City. There's the system that cannot be understood by map alone. It hazes you: the subway doors never open fast enough to catch the connecting train across the platform, or it's the indecipherable weekend service changes that adds hours to your transit time, or the mad humility of witnessing the very public shitty/crazy/intimate moments of a stranger's inner life.
New York City forces adaptation and inventions of self-preservation. You take sanity where you can find your sanity even if it's a little insane to get there.
I don't remember if Elvie's was good, but I remember that when I walked in, it was familiar enough--the sound of mother tongue and the recognition of tastes on tongue was enough to feel sane in a city that did not yet trust you.
In Los Angeles, if I was hungry, I had a car which made the getting of food easy. But more importantly, I had a Nanay and a kitchen filled with Nanay food. But here in New York, I had neither a car nor a Nanay nearby, and I missed Los Angeles.
The center of feelings isn't always in the heart, sometimes feelings find its nerve center, depending on the ailment, in different parts of your body—the slow ache in the middle of your palm preceding the memory of an ex-love's hands or the dull throb in your throat preceding real talk with a present love. Our bodies often know before we consciously know.
The homesick for family, friends and the familiar rooted itself in my stomach and manifested in hunger. New York City has some pretty delicious food; there's no denying its pizza. But hunger is physical and metaphoric, and there's no pizza slice good enough to stop missing home when home is lumpia, pinakbet and an unreasonable amount of rice.I found Elvie's through the Internet. And it was a trek to get to. There is no easy path from Sarah Lawrence or Crown Heights to Elvie's, which resided at 214 1st Avenue. It takes a good year or two to understand mass transit in New York City. There's the system that cannot be understood by map alone. It hazes you: the subway doors never open fast enough to catch the connecting train across the platform, or it's the indecipherable weekend service changes that adds hours to your transit time, or the mad humility of witnessing the very public shitty/crazy/intimate moments of a stranger's inner life.
New York City forces adaptation and inventions of self-preservation. You take sanity where you can find your sanity even if it's a little insane to get there.
I don't remember if Elvie's was good, but I remember that when I walked in, it was familiar enough--the sound of mother tongue and the recognition of tastes on tongue was enough to feel sane in a city that did not yet trust you.