Round My Hometown, Memories Are Fresh

Hello, my goodness. I didn't know I was here. Do you know my name? Can't go wrong when you try. Always got to try, no matter how long that shit take. Whatever stops you from dreaming. Whatever tries to stop you from living. Flip it. Welcome home. Cause right now what I got to do is I gotta amp myself up, as well as you. So, yeah, so what it took me like, maybe two years and shit? But I'm feeling prepared, you know what I'm saying? And I'm feeling a little more ready for the world. And less lost. As I once was. So come on, what you waiting on? Feel me, feel me, feel me.

I come back to that, the opener to Alicia Keys' first album, often, for some reason. It's good for grounding. It reads stupid, but it means something, and the way she delivers it said something to me ten years ago when I first heard it and still does today.

It's funny how things are home sometimes. I left work after 8 again today, headed to Hell's Kitchen, listening to Avril Lavigne's second album like a damn teenybopper. Back when that album came out, I was a teenybopper. I loved it then, I love it now. It speaks to me.

It was just starting to snow, and it became one of those New York moments. Clarity was offered up to me like a smack in the head. The city was telling me something, and I was ready to listen. I was happy. Things are going well for me. It was time.


On the way home I took one of those New York clarity walks that I love so much. I walked across town, and the snow was falling hard by now. It didn't feel cold, it felt refreshing. I felt myself coming alive again. December and January were rough months, as they often are. I need more sun than they allow. I need to be outside more, but it's too dark and too cold. But it's a new month in a new year and things are looking up.

I listened to Adele's album "19" as I walked through the snow for 45 minutes or so. This album was home too, but a recent home, and one that I'd made in New York. The last song on the album is called Hometown Glory, and that song sang New York to me. I rode the 6 train from 59th Street and got off in Harlem, where it was snowing harder and where there wasn't enough foot traffic to kill the snow. It sparkled like glitter as I walked, crunching underfoot. Adele sang, violins played. I stopped to cross Second Avenue and the cabs drove past, the snow fell. It was a moment that couldn't be captured in a photograph, and it felt good.

Round my hometown / Memories are fresh / Round my hometown / Ooh the people I've met / Are the wonders of my world / Are the wonders of my world / Are the wonders of this world / Are the wonders of my world