Dissolved in Nebraska, New York

I stared up at the five-story brick house on Bank Street. In the heart of Greenwich, houses like this blend into the environment like trees in a forest—not because everything looks the same but because everything belongs. And everything belongs because the material from which everything is made has the same source. In this case, everything was hard and rough and manmade. But still so inspiring.

I tried to imagine whether it was nostalgia for the past or stimulation from the present that could stir Willa Cather to write My Antonia—her beautiful tale about the wild and unbroken Nebraska plains—in this cityscape, within the confining walls of this very house. Was it because she missed her old country? Or was it because the city, with all its stimulants, aroused her artistry?

Then I decided it was because she was happy here, as I am happy here. At the beginning of My Antonia, the narrator, Jim Burden, says, “At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.” But Jim Burden didn’t say this in the middle of writing an American masterpiece, or while living in one of the major cultural centers of the world. He said this while lying on the warm Nebraska earth, with little bugs crawling around him, dirt crumbling between his fingers and air as fresh as a new harvest flowing through his lungs.

But Nebraska is not much different from New York City in that respect. I imagine Willa Cather felt that same happiness here—after all, she chose to move to New York City to write her novel. And I admit the reason I think that is because I feel the same happiness Jim felt in the country here where I am surrounded by pavement and skyscrapers. I am happy here in this city because I feel like I have dissolved into something complete and great. I have become a part of this vibrant, stunning, magnanimous place that is as organic and thriving as a Nebraska cornfield.

To be dissolved into something complete and great does not require a particular type of landscape or a particular disposition or a particular situation. It doesn’t mean you won’t have snakes and bugs and droughts and crowds and smog and commutes in life. Most importantly, it does not imply a dissipation of self or identity or purpose. It simply means belonging. And as Jim puts it, “When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”

I belong in New York. My transition into this life brought not even a ripple of shock. My absorption into this place was gentle and soothing, and except for the feeling of having come home, I barely even noticed it. Likewise, I imagine Willa Cather felt the same way when she was here and my guess is that is why she moved here, to 5 Bank Street. She belonged in Greenwich because she could be with her kinds of people—people who were all very different, but who all belonged because they were made of the same brilliant substance.

And that kind of belonging, that happiness, is incredibly inspiring.