homecoming / retorno

Back again, once more, for good(?)

“New York is yours only for ten years—after that it belongs to somebody else.”

- Andrew Holleran, “Madison Square”

Dear friends,

If you have been here for long enough, you have probably seen me say this before, but allow me to say it once again: this missive is not the type I usually send out. This time, it really is different from previous newsletters, in no small part because, for once, I have actual news to share with you. You see, by the time you get this, I will not be calling New York City my home anymore. After more than ten years, the chapter has come to an end, and I am now on my way (physically and emotionally) back to my tropical hometown of Rio de Janeiro.

This is not a sad note. I am incredibly privileged to be leaving a place I have called home for over a decade to go back to the place I called home for more than two. And while there are probably a hundred different manners of speaking about this type of move, I have to do so by culling from my Notes app and my journal the impressions and thoughts I recorded as things happened, and try to present them as directly as possible. A little less filtered than usual, a little more chaotic even. Consider it a series of snapshots, if you will, of a process that began way before I even started taking notes, and that I am sure will continue way beyond this post reaches you.

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30.March

3 months to go, to the day.

Walking down 34th after dinner with E, thinking of my moments in the city alone and with others, craving adding steps to my counter up and down the streets and avenues in an attempt to soak in as much of the grime, so my skin feels as touched by it as my heart does. Craving alone time, craving being with others, craving time away from myself.

3.April

Saying bye to N after our coffee date and making plans for the next one, we parted ways with her saying that we should make the most of the months to come. I let the escalators carry me to the subway station, trying to make sure I held on to the feeling of shared expectation and upset being a fuel, not a hindrance, to enjoying the days ahead.

5.April

Second night in a row with moving- or travel-related restless dreams. I woke myself up by shouting “okay I get it!” but I don’t know if I do—nor what it was. But when there’s nothing you can do to change the direction of things, maybe rallying against your subconscious provides at least a semblance of control over it all.

9.April

I'm having the urge to stomp down the street to the sound of Fun., just like I did right before we moved from Paris. I have no specific memory of my habits and impulses before moving from Rio, other than a general sense of thrill, whereas I remember very clearly the dread of the unknown and the sadness of leaving behind something I knew in my bones at the end of my time in Paris. Is the lack of strong feelings due to feeling like I know NY even more or because, for some reason, I have already emotionally detached myself from this city?

30.April

2 months to go.

Tickets purchased.

5.May

Non-exhaustive list of things I will miss, even though they are not part of my everyday life:

• caramel-flavored coffee creamer

• almond-flour cheese crackers

• hard ciders

• The Met

• the ease of navigating the grid of streets

• late sunsets in the summer

• bagels

29. May

“When you’re trying to imagine how to arrange your life so that the things and people that seem most important to you are at the center of it, you often end up thinking about love.” Joanna Biggs, A Life of One’s Own, 206.

2.June

“I sat down and wrote, ‘There is a delicate balance between the absolute calm of arrival and the stress of departure.’ I deleted ‘delicate’ and added ‘both are indispensable’ at the end. Then I startet to brood about what I actually meant.” Tove Jansson, Notes from an Island, 100.

18.June

The movers came to take our books away. It’s always shocking to notice how little time it takes for things to come out of place. In less than two hours, our entire library was gone, crammed into cardboard boxes we will only see again several weeks from now. The living room is now echoey, which makes both acoustic and emotional sense. Life Associate told me last week that this is like sending our books into the future.

19.June

A ladybug. An actual ladybug crawling on my bag after lunch. I have to take it as a sign of good things to come.

25.June

Last visit to the Museum. It’s strange to realize that I have reached a point where I felt completely disconnected from it to such a degree that I didn’t even realize there was something missing until I got home. Being back in the building used to feel my chest with a sense of…void. Now, I know I’ll miss the people, but in a much more melancholy way. Distance helps, I suppose, with taking the edge off even when you don’t realize it.

27.June

All the furniture is out now, after two intense days of selling, donating, and hosting pick-ups. We cleaned the apartment and curbed the last of the furniture with N, and it was just a calm experience. There’s nothing left that makes the apartment our home, other than three years’ worth of memories that inhabit our minds and bodies more than those walls now.

29.June

It’s the sense of having a “vacation days in the city” followed by the realization that that’s exactly what it is, no scare quotes, no metaphors. One last time in this place or that. And you plan for the days to go just right, only to realize that it doesn’t always work that way. The need to let go, adding to the knowledge that baggage is more than what you can fit inside your luggage.

30.June

Waiting for the car to arrive, sitting inside our empty apartment, trying to remember every second spent here and realizing that so much is already slipping through my fingers. Remembering also that it is only time and distance that allow us to realize what is worth holding on to.

Airports always give me that sense of possibilities, their liminal status both terrifying and tantalizing.

Off we go.

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I had originally planned to schedule this newsletter to reach you as I landed in São Paulo for a layover, so that its arrival would coincide with my arrival in Brazil. But I didn’t set aside enough time or energy to write around the final days in NYC, for which I could berate myself, but I won’t. The final week was draining enough as it was with getting furniture out (in the middle of a heatwave, no less), saying goodbye to friends and places, and trying to set my sights on what’s coming next.

And I could end this like Brás Cubas (iykyk; if you don’t, do yourself a favor and go read The Posthumous Memoirs as soon as you finish this), with a list of I haven’ts, a series of things I did not do in all these years. Instead, I’ll finish this with the same type of uplifting I have received throughout this process from so many different people.

I went to NYC to become a doctor, and I did. I cried, I got married, I gained and I lost. I bruised and I learned. I made friends that have lasted seasons and friends that will last lifetimes. I have loved and I have been loved. Honestly, what more could I ask for?

medieval.juliana

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