Where Would You Rather Be?

"Some folks like to get away

Take a holiday from the neighborhood

Hop a flight to Miami Beach

Or to Hollywood

But I'm taking a Greyhound

On the Hudson River Line

I'm in a New York state of mind"

-Billy Joel

Jolted this morning by a mailer directed to our address at Wyldswood. The Republican gubernatorial candidate, with his goofy grin and the Wee Guv looking on imploringly over his shoulder, warns that if the other guy wins, Florida may "become more like California or New York."

Really? One should be so lucky.

California is the fourth largest economy in the world, and accounts for 14% of the entire country's GDP. It gave us the internet, the aerospace industry, the USC Trojans. Okay, not all ringing successes, but you get the point. I've been reading the Golden State's obituary since I was able to read, and yet the place continues to draw creative talent and investment from all over the world.

One might point out that, for all those draws, I left in 1986 and never went back. Fair enough. But where one lives as an adult (or as a child for that matter) is rarely a matter of choice. Would my father have chosen Tustin or Corpus Christi or Moline, or to spend the last several decades of his life in the Dallas suburbs, if left with unfettered discretion? Almost certainly not. His work determined where we lived growing up, and in retirement his wife's family and her need to take care of an ailing parent drug them back to Texas, where he lamented not being able to return to Chicagoland and the place of his heart until that heart quit beating.

I find myself in a similar predicament. Drawn to Florida by a Jimmy Buffett fantasy, like so many before and since, I chose a profession that relies on the relationships one builds over decades with neighbors and business leaders. The practice of law, at least at the retail level where I've always lived, is simply not portable. Part of that is my own fault--I've so assiduously worked to keep the flame alive in Florida, to keep the work flowing that pays for all this (along with Peg's robust contribution to the pot), that I haven't really had time to cultivate business up in western New York or the City.

The result? We spend as much time as we can in the place that suits us better than any other, while I leverage that commercial pilot's license to create the illusion of bilocation between here and there (which is which today? I can keep you guessing for a bit).

New York has its frustrations. The court system is a ramshackle Rube Goldberg device compared with Florida. Its revenuers are both relentless and byzantine in their bureaucracy. It gets cold sometimes.

But I'll never feel better, never felt better in all the years leading up to all this, than walking along Houston Street holding Peg's hand on a perfect fall afternoon in the greatest city on earth. Or walking to my window with my coffee in the morning and being greeted with this.

As a friend sometimes punctuates these sorts of observations, "nomesane"?

Byron Donalds doesn't.