Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

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 for summers here my entire life, 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

To Hawaii

To Hawaii

Going to Hawaii sounds awesome right about now.

I’ve never been, but this cabin fever has got me feeling the need to move.

I mean, a week on the beach, in the shade, with a book and a cold drink seems like a dream during a global pandemic lockdown.

I think I’ll stay at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort And Spa.

For a week I’ll wear a swimsuit, a Columbia fishing shirt, and sandals.

I’ll take early morning swims in the pool, pal around the island in a Jeep with the top down, and watch the waves come in all afternoon.

A dream.

Because I had been tired too long and quarrelsome too much and too often frightened of migraine and failure and the days getting shorter, I was sent, a recalcitrant thirty-one-year-old child, to Hawaii, where winter does not come and no one fails and the median age is twenty-three.

-Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Sterling Terrell