Many people speak transcendently of the feelings they experience when in nature. They talk of stress melting away, the recharging of one’s soul, and a profound sense of being part of something bigger than oneself. I have experienced these very things, particularly when standing on the shore in my home state of New Jersey; looking out over the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean as the sun gently lowers itself into the waves.  It’s beautiful, peaceful, and fills me with a sense of awe. It calms me, but it doesn’t excite me.

As spectacular as nature is, it is not what makes my heart beat faster, or my mind race with possibility. For that I need people, and people-made-things: conversations and writings and art, buildings and food, interpretations and opinions, a variety of cultures and connections. These are the things that hold my interest, light my imagination on fire, and fill me with more emotion than even the most magnificent sunset. Cities have an abundance of them, and so it is in a city I feel most at home. It is in a city that I swim most effortlessly. I am a city fish.