Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books

Live In New York

Live In New York

I don’t live in New York, because I am not from New York.

Actually, I think this idea is universal…

It’s just hard – past a certain age – to live in a place that you are not from, a place you find lacking in roots and context.

New York, Sao Paulo, London, Paris, Moscow, Dubai, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo – are probably exaggerated examples.

I mean, sure. You can live in these places just fine. But you will always feel like a bit of sojourner.

Thanks goodness summers here, I have always felt I was “from” Texas.

I want to explain to you, and in the process perhaps to myself, why I no longer live in New York. It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.

-Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Constant About Kerrville

Constant About Kerrville

I feel a bit like this about Kerrville, Texas, where I went to high school.

Each time I return, there is less and less of that kid who, once upon a time, wanted to live there forever.

A town growing dimmer every time I see it…

The only constant about Kerrville, TX is the rate at which my youth disappears.

I have said that the trip back is difficult, and it is—difficult in a way that magnifies the ordinary ambiguities of sentimental journeys. Going back to California is not like going back to Vermont, or Chicago; Vermont and Chicago are relative constants, against which one measures one’s own change. All that is constant about the California of my childhood is the rate at which it disappears.

-Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem