My Garden State Adventure

I went to New Jersey this weekend.

A friend and fellow TC student of mine is moving from Connecticut to New Jersey in order to be closer to the city. Ebony and her husband Deep just bought a home, and last Sunday was moving day. The two of them spent most of the day caravaning down the East Coast, Deep in their 26 foot Penske and Ebony following closely in her sedan. So, at around five o'clock—only a little behind schedule—I hopped the 1 train from campus to Penn Station.

I like Penn Station. I like it mainly because it feels a lot like an airport (and I'm a sucker for airports), however it does, in my opinion, lack two things that airports have an overabundance of.

First, there are no security lines.

Second, there is no flying involved. I'm not a fan of flying. If you ever want to travel with me I suggest you find either (A) a train, bus, or boat to our travel destination, or (B) a bottle of Xanax and a good book. The book is for you, I will be quite busy self-medicating and staying as far from self-awareness as possible.

And so I procured a round trip ticket to Newark (a steal at $7) where I'd be meeting Ebony, and was fortunate enough to find a train on the Northeast Corridor line already boarding at the platform 12.

I nervously boarded the two-story train, having never been formally introduced to the New Jersey Transit (Long Island Railroad doesn't speak very highly of her, but I think he's just jealous of her curvy lines). It didn't occur to me to say goodbye to New York. It had been 24 days since I moved in to my apartment and this was the first time I'd be leaving the city.

The train lurched into motion. It accelerated much more swiftly and quietly than the rickety city subway trains I was used to.

My ears popped as the train exited the tunnel above ground. And I was in New Jersey.

The eternal six year old in me had insisted I locate myself in a window seat when I boarded the train, and it was that six year old whose face you would have seen plastered to the window for the brief and uneventful ride (not the 22 year old graduate student, I swear). I couldn't help but reflect, though, on the everyday things that rolled past me—the trivial details of life that already seemed alien after only 24 days in the city.

Power lines. Highways. Shopping malls. At one point the train passed over a creek with bright green slicks of algae. There was grass. And open sky. Space.

And it was quiet.

I think it would be hard to argue that Manhattan isn't a strange place. It's not the real world, not by a long shot, and I wondered about how quickly and easily I had forgotten the rest of the universe on the other side of the Hudson. The universe that drives and shops at Walmart and sleeps.

The next time you find yourself in Manhattan, do this: try to find a rock. Just a rock. Any stone, maybe fist-sized, even smaller. It's actually kind of impossible, especially if you avoid the park.

It's a strange place. And it was a strangeness I was suddenly aware of when the train crossed back into the world where streets were given names and not numbers.

Newark was only the second stop, so before I could grow uncomfortable against the window glass I found myself hopping over the nefarious gap between the train and the platform (NOTE: in the U.K. you mind the gap, in the U.S. you watch it). I grabbed a magazine and a bagel and passed the time until Ebony picked me up.

I won't go into an excessive amount of detail about how our night unfolded. I don't think Ebony and Deep would appreciate documentation of the woes that only the combination of relocation and sleep deprivation can earn. I would like to pass on a little recently acquired wisdom, though.

Incidentally, you are not allowed to drive a 26 foot truck on Garden State Parkway.

In fact, after picking me up from the train station in her packed sedan, Ebony and I (and her dog, Coco) arrived at the new house only to find that Deep hadn't arrived with the moving truck. He had indeed been both kicked off the Parkway and thoroughly disoriented by the less-than-intuitive back roads of New Jersey.

So Ebony and I (and Coco) left the empty home and departed again. What followed can only be described as a military operation—two GPSs, two Blackberrys, three college-educated adults (plus Coco's canine intuition), all coordinated across thirty miles of highway in order to arrange a rendezvous point in the parking lot of a 24 hour diner, followed by the careful extraction of the 26 foot Penske back to the new house.

And then we had to, you know, unpack it all.

It was quite late when we finished, we were all hot and sweaty, Ebony and Deep were exhausted. And out of sympathy for them both I won't try to describe the looks on their faces when we discovered the water hadn't been turned on in their new, now less-than-empty house.

Then what bits of the night that hadn't unraveled yet did.

They decided it would be best to return to their apartment in Connecticut. The promise of a shower there overruled the hope of sleeping on an actual bed (which was now in their New Jersey home). Of course that meant we had to turn in the moving truck (it was due back in the morning), which meant it had to be refueled, and as nearly every diesel gas station in a 30 minute radius was closed we yet had some driving to do.

I'll just skip to the part after the truck was turned in and the three of us (and Coco) were at last together in the sedan, headed back to Manhattan—Ebony and Deep had graciously offered to drop me off at my apartment before the three hour drive back to Connecticut.

So here, sitting in front of me, are two of the nicest people you'll ever meet, more than excited to move into their first house, and I just don't think there should be that many obstacles to their happiness. Talk to them for five minutes and you'll know they deserve nothing less. And still, from the backseat I watched them both manage to chuckle at the situation they'd found themselves in. Oh well, better luck next time.

Dear World, next time treat these two a little nicer, okay?

And so we sped across the deserted Garden State Parkway, having finally ditched the truck. The air conditioning was cranked up, frigid air relieving our hot, fatigued bodies. I would have shivered, had it not been for Coco, who was warm and asleep in my lap.

Orange shadows from the sodium vapor lights outside danced back and forth inside the car.

I missed driving. I never really missed it before. Something so mundane as that. I was suddenly troubled, again. What else from this real world was I missing out on? What had I already forgotten after existing only a few weeks in the over-caffeinated, over-saturated, Our-City-Goes-To-Eleven mentality?

And then it appeared as we rounded a curve in the highway.

The Skyline.

Even in my earlier childhood I would have recognized it—from the countless TV shows and movie posters and advertisements. New York City. Arguably the apex of human civilization, the entire world crammed onto a crooked little island.

It's even improbable to look at. It's like a joke that somebody half-told, and eight million people are all patiently waiting for the punchline. The Human Aquarium.

And a feeling stirred in me. It was distant, vague, but persistent.

I was home.

The Skyline grew before us, right up until we plunged into the Lincoln Tunnel. You could have hit the fast forward button as we descended below the Hudson River, as the world behind slowed down and the world at the end of the tunnel sped up. And then we were in it. At 4 a.m. this was as quiet as the city could get, yet the air hummed like it always, always does.

Ebony and Deep dropped me off at my apartment, and Coco gratefully rearranged herself on the now-empty back seat. They were anxious to get on the road and I was anxious to get to sleep, so we said our goodbyes quickly.

And then I'm lying in my bed, waiting for sleep to come. I realize I haven't pulled down the shade on my open window. The sun will soon be rising on my 25th day in the city, but I don't bother to get up and close it.

Outside, seven stories below me, the air brakes of the M60 bus hiss as it ambles around the corner of Amsterdam and 120th, then turns onto Broadway.

I smile. And then I sleep.