This afternoon, a friend emailed me a link to a New York Times blog, teasing, “Did you break some New Yorker’s heart?” The piece is by a city transplant returning West after a soured love affair with a red-haired girl. Its author, Christopher Solomon, is an acclaimed travel writer whose work has appeared in Outside magazine, Men’s Health and Ski.
On his website, Solomon claims he likes to write about passionate people. He is a passionate writer. Each sentence is infused with an instant sense of time and place. Reading about the Virginia native’s attachment to the Pacific Northwest, I was back in the passenger seat of my friend’s vintage BMW, watching the Cascades loom like giants. Despite being a lifelong New Englander, home appeared in the macaroni and cheese I ate at Pike Place Market. It appeared again in the shiny tail of Puget Sound.
Like the red-haired girl he chased East, Solomon’s Manhattan is as alluring as a new love. Hopes are built on the heat of possibility. Over time, flaws appear. Reality emerges slowly, uncomfortably. Pedestals crumble under the weight of expectations. Lovers become like strangers in an overpacked subway car. Solomon’s Gotham infatuation ended with his relationship.
Oddly, the piece includes a picture of a young man peering at the city’s skyline. Most of the blog’s readers presume Solomon is young, not tough enough to stand the city’s grit. In truth, Solomon looks well into his 30s or 40s. According to his biography, he has eaten whale blubber and chased sunken treasure down the murky bottom of New York Harbor. He is not a young man, nor one who lives life passively.
After all, he knows when it's time to say goodbye.
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