I just heard on the radio the U2 song “Angel of Harlem” from Rattle and Hum and it made me miss New York. The opening lyrics of the song are “It was a cold and wet December day / When we touched the ground at JFK / Snow was melting on the ground…” and suddenly all I could think about was one of those amazing winter days in the City when the sun is bright, the sky is clear, the air is cold and refreshing, walking around the city streets and Central Park, and everything somehow seems perfect.
Today is close to that — one of those crisp days, the first where Autumn seems to have finally arrived, a chill hanging in the air, in the background, but it will be there again tomorrow morning. The cold has started to seep down from the North, and winter is coming. Between today, with its hint of winter and its bright sun, and the song reminding me of New York City, the rush of memory was intense and I feel, oddly, homesick. Oddly because I’m not one to get homesick; I don’t particularly think of anywhere as “home”. But maybe that is what New York has become for me.
As If It Matters 
September 19, 2004 at 11:23 pm
Are you never homesick for the afternoon thunderstorms of Malaysia, sweeping across the tin valley of Kaula Lumpur? If you pass a Korean restaurant, doesn’t the smell of simmering something bring back narrow streets with double wooden gates set in stone walls? If you see a rounded bowl of rice, aren’t you homesick? Your first encounter with McDonald’s, you were offended that they didn’t serve rice. “What kind of place is this, anyway?” you asked. Or is it because, as illustrated in the words of your father, “All over the world…or, at least, in New York…”
September 20, 2004 at 11:59 am
one evening at william and mary, when i was living in dawson in the bryan complex, i called in a sandwich order to paul’s, then went to tinee giant first. u2’s ‘all i want is you’ was playing in a friend’s room as i left, and i was struck by it ineffably, but sure it had a message in it.
at tinee giant, the song started on the radio as i bought my drink.
at paul’s, as i waited for my sandwich, the song started again.
i’ve never gotten over the experience.