Oh gosh... I totally loved reading this, this morning. You are adorable :)

Dear Deb -

Make sure to keep that in mind when you step knee-deep into a puddle of slush a couple of months from now.

All the best,

New York

New York may apologize, but man, Jersey ain't sorry for shit.

Wow...That's good.

says a woman in love with her city....

Deb, you are brutal. I get excruciating New York envy every time I read your blog.

ugh, no s--t, Deanne... i can't wait to be in 'ol NYC again. with a strong umbrella, however. i need to live someplace that has 24-hour sushi, dig? lurve.

I am impressed but simultaneously compelled to ask two questions. First, what about the people? Nothing you referenced was particular to New York. At this time of year you could be describing any major city between D.C. and Boston. I think the soul of any city are the inhabitants and their attitude. You obviously love NYC, how do the people makes it different and special for you?

Second, and this is based on reading many of your other entries, how do you define the difference between infatuation and love? I have often thought that in the truest sense they were two sides of the same coin. Others have a much different interpretation with infatuation ridiculed as shallowness and love inexorably linked with commitment. Care to weigh in?

Oh snap. Moodkiller.

Just wanted to say that I'm stuck in Hawaii and that made me nostalgic for NY (Even though I've only been there once and that was a week ago.) Thank you Ms. Smitten.

Michael - I just want you to know I’m breaking my no commenting on comments stance for you. Your questions seem worth it.

1. Yesterday morning was all about my city as an abusive boyfriend. I was tempted to subtitle it 'but you don't know what it's like when it's just the two of us!' but understand that to be completely tasteless. Anyway, enough joking ... my fierce, fiesty love for nyc is a combination of the physical (the enigmatic ways neighborhoods come together, the layers of history in every building) and the interpersonal (I am currently reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities and am digging the way she discusses people-watching as essential to any healthy, functioning city, and practically a public service). That morning it was the physical pissing me off, on others, it's been the people. The city in the poem could be DC, but I've lived there, and it's not as busy/whirlwind as any two block walk is in NYC. NYC has far more life force, I think.

2. Infatuation passes, love perplexes me, but to suggest that they are mutually exclusive of each other is to devalue both. I have mixed feelings about commitment, more about that another time, so to only link it with love would be to sell it short when love is spectacular in and of itself. Essentially, though, you should be somewhere because you want to be, and not because you promised you’d stay.

I get crushes more often than more people change their toilet paper, and often on things with even less complexity, but in NYC, my infatuation comes in waves. Some days, like yesterday, everything is such a complicated mess, a gorgeous display of what-else-could-possibly go wrong, it makes me want it more. (Maybe like a mother looking at her son coming home with his brand new suit all torn up and muddy and just laughing at him?) Other days, its sunny out with a calm breeze, but I wait 22 minutes for a subway and I just don’t know why I have to make my life so difficult by living here. It must be love, though, because I can’t tear myself away.

Truely inspirational words. I love it.

That was lovely to read.

Okay, thats impressive. Definitly worth linking to again.