Moving back to New York

So we beat on,
boats against the current,
born back ceaselessly into the past.
F.Scott Fitzgerald

Perhaps this is a misinterpretation of what F. Scott says in The Great Gatsby, (have been thinking a lot about this book because I have only just finally read it!) but it is too true, every day we keep at things in life, keep trying to "get ahead", yet there is almost always some need for the past which definitely sometimes thwarts our daily choices. I wonder whether the past held me back too often while we were living in Brussels, at least the first few years anyway. I couldn't have read this book at a better time because once again I do find myself thinking about the past, about my Brussels past and how it has vanished into thin air, with the exception that I have many friends still there who I think of often. Memory is remarkable, mine is so vivid at the moment, even of material things like the inside of our home in Brussels, they are so clear in my mind that I feel as though I could walk straight back into it and my whole life there. I wonder how long that will linger. Nonetheless, here we are not in Brussels, and so I'm trying to learn a lesson I suppose, trying to embrace my recent past and drag it along with me just enough so that I don't forget all the great things I've learned from friends and all the wonderful places we've had the chance to venture to.

So, we are living the present and enjoying life in New York, meeting more people, (funny enough two of my friends are from Europe, one Irish and the other surprisingly is Belgian, life is funny!) Scarsdale, for those of you who know it not, is a medium sized village of Westchester just 30 minutes by train from Manhattan. It is actually not so bad a place, especially because of it's x-pat community. I think we would have gone through major culture shock if we had moved straight into a striclty american town, nothing against America, it's great, there is sometimes simply not enough diversity in small towns, and for me I think it's something I just don't want to live without. It would be like having a cook book in your kitchen with only one kind of cooking. I suppose you could savour the same thing over and over again and be thankful for it, but if you can have your pick why not be able to cook up all sorts of things?

More later. That's not a threat I hope.