Columbia

I just wanted to add a brief note today, because tomorrow marks the start of classes, and the actual return to the work of formal learning. After the long wait, two and a half years after the last formally academic pursuit, I am finally about to resume that particular task. I have already been here for a bit more than two weeks, but the time has been largely passed as if I were a visitor, a tourist wowed and amazed by everything that I happened to encounter around me. Indeed, I daresay some of the locals are rather fazed by my quickness to resort to the telltale tourist tools of map and camera. But all this is, of course, part of the settling-in. As departing was a process, involving the long goodbye, so arrival too is a process, a process that, I think, will begin to end as classes start, and a schedule asserts itself. Now, then, is the time to start to live here properly, and to participate.

Took the chance, too, to visit a few more places over the weekend, popping down to Times Square again to explore Midtown. Walked past the New York Public Library (which was closed for the weekend), visited the opulent and far too expensive Grand Central Station, and then went on to the United Nations Headquarters. Being able to go into the complex and explore the public areas was mind-blowing. This was the place that I had read about in history classes; this is still a nexus of global power. And, for a moment, I could not believe that the glass-encased tower really was the UN Headquarters, that the concrete podium really housed such august chambers as the General Assembly and the Security Council, and that, come a weekday, the empty flagpoles will be aflutter with the flags of all the countries of the world.

We went on from there back to Rockefeller Centre, walking through the plaza and seeing the golden Prometheus. This is the place that will play host to the magnificent and renowned Christmas trees and skating rink come winter. And after that, made our way out of the expensive district to the Museum of Modern Art, using our Columbia IDs to get in for free. I had actually done a bit of research on the MoMA for URA - and anyway, who hasn't heard of the MoMA before? Nonetheless, seeing the nondescript facade, and the residential tower that rose above it, and knowing the story of how these structures came to be built together, was a moving experience. As was seeing, in person, original artworks from Salvador Dali (the melting clocks guy; the MoMA is currently hosting an intriguing exhibit of his paintings, photographs and films), Pablo Picasso, Duchamp, Monet and Hopper.

New York, I find, is filled with experiences like these. This place is so deeply infused in the collective imagination of the world that you encounter New York even before you set foot in it. As such, the borders of New York lie not along the Hudson, but in every city on the planet, and in our imaginations. Conceptually, at least, it is thus possible to start to live in New York long before you cross through Immigration. And the thing about New York is that it offers you the originals to these imagined and vicarious moments - and then lives up to all the hype. It really is as great, as enticing, as intriguing, as gritty, as risky, as people make it out to be. In fact, it may be even more so, because how can any caricature of a place really capture the full texture of its complexities and layers of significance?

And so, as we walk through the streets and avenues of Manhattan, I find myself utterly carried away by even the smallest details: the subway saxophonist, streetside food vendors, traffic signs, fire trucks. The various props that populated my imaginary New York, no less magical for being real. And sometimes, looking at other people (especially American non-New Yorkers) react to this place, I wonder at why they aren't utterly carried away as well. It is still true that very few people look for the same things as I do when we come to a new place. It may also be true that I should, as they do, pay more attention to building the critical social relations that will form the scaffolding for the college experience, and grasp the time now to do it, for the city will always be there, but this opportunity is transient. It may yet be true that they just express their fascination in a different way, a way that I am not yet adept at accessing or interpreting. But nonetheless, sometimes their blase reactions strike me as incomprehensible. This is New York, after all.

But these concerns are about to become secondary. Classes start in about ten hours' time. On the lawns of the campus tonight, students are encumbered with books. Some are actually reading them, while others are too caught up in catching up with friends after the summer holidays. Small groups sit on the steps leading up to Low Library; some perch on plinths that jut out over the stairs, enjoying the view and the cool evening air. And above the hubbub of chatting voices, carrying conversations that are soothing because they form an uncomprehended buzz, a Christian group of about fifty was singing to the accompaniment of one guitar, all sitting on the steps and gazing at Butler across the lawn, as if staring at something personal, but singing in unison. So this is collegiate life. It is starting to get underway; and I find that, on this penultimate evening of my arrival, I am ready to begin.