One often can fantasize about fabulous New York apartments when reading magazines, watching movies and unrealistic TV shows (actually filmed in LA), and have a completely skewed view of the spaces New Yorkers actually inhabit. Reading such examples of journalistic excellence like People magazine, Vogue or Cosmopolitan, one could assume that Manhattan is full of nothing but gorgeous little "pied à terre" units on cobblestone streets with bright red doors and flowers adorning ivy-covered window boxes. As this is true for a select group of the glamorous few (and I can vouch from personal experience that these "humble little flats" actually do exist), I will reserve my nastiest judgments for other much more bold misinterpretations of the truth. In any case, for the majority of New York living situations, I am here to set the record straight...

I live in an area of Manhattan called Morningside Heights, which is just really a nice way of saying "nearly Harlem." I'm right next to the Columbia University campus, General Grant's tomb, and The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (a.k.a "the Rabbi factory). It's a quaint little neighborhood with rolling hills, tree-filled parks and loud angry people. My building, like most others on my street, boasts a lovely red brick façade with a green canvas awning, brass light fixtures and a toothless bald man who always seems to be out on the front steps during all the sunny hours of the day. Once inside, one immediately notices the five flights of rather narrow stairs leading up to my apartment (conveniently located on the fifth floor) with no elevator in sight. Upon entrance of my humble abode, one also may notice the apparent lack of air conditioning the building (built sometime in the first decades of the twentieth century) has to offer. Luckily, we do have such amenities as beautifully high ceilings, hardwood floors and paper-thin walls, through which anything and everything can be heard. For a small fortune each month, I am able to live high above 123rd street between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway, looking out over the world below and reveling in my newly obtained New-York-ness.

I call a small hexagonal bedroom home. It's not much, but it's a peaceful place of my own in the middle of the chaos and the violent force of the city. On one of the diagonal walls of this room, I was lucky enough to find a small cupboard, which is merely an insinuation of what a closet should be, but it holds the few worldly possessions I now obtain, and quite comfortably so. On the opposite diagonal wall, I have been furnished with a rather tall window that looks directly into the building next-door. The line of sight from my bed is directly into the stairwell of the neighboring edifice, through which I can see a myriad of comical things. I have woken up in the middle of the night to scenes of fumbling men chasing suitcases down the landings. I am lulled to sleep each night by the funny little sounds coming from the open windows all around me (hoping to release some of the early summer heat), many of which are voices in no familiar tongue I can distinguish. I have never felt so small or insignificant in my whole life, but there is something charming and quite humbling about such a feeling.

I am slowly coming to the realization that this is really my life now (I haven't just daydreamed or falsely-willed it into existence). I am no longer in the mountain home I came to know so well. Now I am one of a great many, trying to find my way in a vast world beyond my own comprehension.