Greetings From: New York!

I am typing from your awesomely average New York diner. In this dream, I have the laptop I have so desperately needed for so long. Something about New York diners...In my experience, the true diner in its most romanticized image, only exists in New York nowadays. Much like Italian restaurants or pizza joints, everyone has their favorite. Mine is Cosmo's on 23rd and 2nd (kind of disappoints me that they actually have a website) for no better reason than the time I've spent there. I can still hear in my mind many of the conversations I had over coffee at that diner, not to mention the Monte Christo which was incredible.

As a man who does more than my share of ipod walking, I can say with conviction that there is no finer place in the U.S. for it than New York City. It's a very cinematic city, and since our generation tends to think of our lives as movies about ourselves, it makes for a rich setting for a musical montage of our walk to work or to the deli on the corner. With so many unique characters crammed into such a small space, every turn brings a surprise, every first glance of daylight climbing the steps out of a subway station, stimulating. New York is also such a walking city in general that it provides frequent and varying opportunities for ipod walking. I can recall walking to A Tribe Called Quest while on my way to an internship and feeling cool, if not tough as my steps subconsciously fell in rhythm with the beats. Another time I was walking to class along Washington Square park, listening to one of my favorite bands whom I had just discovered, the now dissolved Nickel Creek. As I huddled inside my pea coat listening to "When You Come Back Down," it began to snow and I remember the music and the scene intertwined so beautifully that, even if just for a second, I was pulled out of a very upsetting time and reminded that if moments like this could still exist, maybe everything else would be okay too.

I believe that certain things, or people, happen to us in our lives at the exact right time, so much so that it can't be coincidental. Maybe not the most convenient time, but as it turns out, the right time. I think certain songs enter our lives at certain times in the same way. Have you ever heard a song for the first time and been overwhelmed by a sense of greater truth and understanding, an injection of a feeling that someone else truly empathises with you, more so than any friend who says they "understand?" For me, this song in this moment was exactly that. In hindsight, I don't think it's that great of a song, but all that matters is that it reaches you. It doesn't always have to be a tear-jerking tune lamenting lost love either. It can be a song that gives you chills and makes you sing because nothing else can express the excitement and joy you're feeling inside. It's like the scene in "Jerry Maguire" where he's just left Cush's house and is searching the radio for something to rock out to. Rolling Stones aren't doing it. Definitely not Juice Newton. Then he hits "FreeFallin'" and he's...freefallin'. Sometimes, of course, it's luck, even bad luck. But sometimes it's more.

Back in New York, I would be finishing my Monte Christo and coffee and off for a walk through Central Park. The leaves might not be changing quite yet, but if the right song comes on, I could be embedded in autumn just the same.