In 2024, I stayed put. For the first time since 2019, I lived in a single city for the whole year. I allowed myself to settle into New York with no check-out date, no expiration. I spent my free time exploring this sprawling metro, learning to practice the forbearance-with-a-hint-of-irritation that New Yorkers have perfected.
But I also moved. New York’s inexhaustible background played set and setting to personal change. In 2024, I fell in love. I wrapped up my company. I met my best friend’s newborn. I lost a friend to suicide. Life unfolded a year’s worth of beauty and tragedy.
Here’s what I remember:
Highest moment
Waking up at Camp 4 in Yosemite Valley, Ariana at my side, a sunny day ahead.
Lowest moment
Focusing on the physical this year: the two miles of uphill hike-a-bike through mosquito-saturated bogland during Oliver’s and my ill-fated bikepacking trip in Michigan’s UP. This was no casual encounter with mosquitos, this was biblical. The baseline bite rate if you stood still was eight per second + one swallowed, which was a problem if, e.g., you thought you lost the trail and wanted to check your phone. The problem doubled if you then dropped your phone into the nine inches of muck sucking up your feet. The problem tripled when the mosquitos in question were some of the UP’s most elite: bites through your bike shorts, deep in your ear canal, past the slots on your helmet. It was a healthy reminder that somewhere, nature is waiting to eat you.
Favorite film
Yi Yi by Edward Yang. It’s now my all-time favorite film. To this day, when I think of the final scene, I tear up. This movie is perfect.
Favorite non-fiction book
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen. This a second-by-second breakdown of how the US would respond to a North Korean missile strike, how communication breakdowns and a couple strokes of bad luck destroy the planet within the hour. I couldn’t sleep after reading this. Happily, there seems to be a good deal of pushback against some of Jacobsen’s research (although this is Reddit, God only knows), suggesting that things are unlikely to break down so dramatically. Not much comfort to the folks in the first strike city, I guess.
Favorite fiction book
China Miéville takes a second victory lap this year, Embassytown. And even if that one didn’t win, it would have been Miéville anyway with Perdido Street Station. I don’t know if there’s a writer alive who can create such vivid and strange worlds. Embassytown is about language: its constraints, its misinterpretation among species, its drug-like power.
Favorite quote
There is something about this ceaseless buzz, and hurry, and bustle, that keeps a stranger in a state of unwholesome excitement all the time, and makes him restless and uneasy, and saps from him all capacity to enjoy anything or take a strong interest in any matter whatever — a something which impels him to try to do everything, and yet permits him to do nothing. He is a boy in a candy-shop — could choose quickly if there were but one kind of candy, but is hopelessly undetermined in the midst of a hundred kinds. A stranger feels unsatisfied, here, a good part of the time.
— Mark Twain on living in New York, accurately
Biggest regret
I wish I had used my time between Bracket and my new job to do something big: a bike trip in Central Asia, a walk through Chiapas, something. I did, happily, get some long mornings in Prospect Park.
Opposite of biggest regret: favorite bucket list checkbox
Finally made it to the 9/11 Museum. 9/11 has become a meme, as all things do, but there is something profound about walking around in the foundation of the towers as you follow the drama of a day that changed everything. There’s something organic about those towers - the bolts and girders of their foundation are like the buried bones of some leviathan pair.
Greatest food moment
The tres leches cupcake from Mia’s Bakery in Brooklyn stopped me in my tracks. Maybe not the best single thing I ate all year, but the most unexpected moment of joy.
Favorite new aesthetic
Kazakh men on camels posing in front of decommissioned Soyuz rockets :)
Favorite new skill
I learned how to make rings with Ariana this year! Our teacher Carolina brought an Argentinian Miss Frizzle energy to every single class, and it was a joy to focus on such a small, screen-less space for hours at a time. Plus, now I have some neat rings. I am begging you, stranger, to ask me where I got them
Favorite song
Hard to decide this year. Ultimately I choose “Mono No Aware” by Ruth Garbus, for two reasons:
This song calms my nerves like very few do
After a listen, I feel like I know Ruth personally
Favorite album
Shaboo Strikes Back, Don Leisure. If you wanted to feel like you’re in the passenger seat with a late-70s Mumbai detective who’s got a kill list, a full magazine, and a long night, this is your chance.
Favorite newly-explored neighborhood
Not sure if you can count these as one, but Arthur Avenue + Bronx Zoo. New York does have real Italians.
Favorite article of clothing
Day’s Store trucker hat. I started wearing hats this year. Hairline is just fine, thank you!
Favorite new artist
Lester Beall. The Poster House in New York has a great exhibit on his work right now. In the 30s, the Roosevelt administration wanted to convince farmers of the benefits of electricity. Utilities companies saw rural electrification as prohibitively expensive, so the feds had to persuade farmer co-ops to take federal loans to fund the expansion. How do you get skeptical farmers to put their money on the line for new technology? You invent a new American style of art:
Favorite moment of entertainment
Seeing the Avett Brothers come out after one of the final showings of May It Last. Entirely unexpected. It left me glowing.
Most awe-inspiring moment
Seeing Mont Blanc for the first time, thinking of all those pioneer mountaineers that summited with 19th-century gear.
Most important lesson
It’s self-negation to be too busy.
Most shocking moment
Watching EMTs pull an unconscious man off the Q at Canal Street. They tried to resuscitate him, but when they stood up quietly, I could tell it was over.
Favorite sentence
“Being a child is like nothing. It’s only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.” - from Embassytown
Favorite new podcast
The Rest is Classified. Goalhanger continues to crush it, this time with a Bond theme.
Most beautiful newly-encountered building
New York is chock full of Art Deco beauty, but the Guardian building in Detroit wins this year. I am such a sucker for art that extols the glory of a state’s economy.
Favorite underrated little corner of New York
Prospect Lefferts Gardens, my first home. I miss talking to my neighbors, I miss the greenery, I miss the warm house lights during my sunset walks with Voodoo. I miss the currant rolls from Allan’s Bakery. I even miss the insanely slow line at Labay Market.
I’m happy with this year. More to go.