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This entry occurs during time spent away from the city. I am here in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, where the stars are dazzling on a clear night and the air seems cleaner and more abundant. It takes a moment for my urban senses to adjust to these wide open spaces, even though this is where I grew up. It's where I went to school, attended my first college, worked, played, learned... and eventually departed. I know this idyll rural span of upstate. I know the woods and the streams and the back roads. I know the shortcuts and the names of the people who live in many of the houses I pass. I know this world as well as I have come to know the various cities I've also called home.

I left here for good shortly after graduation from college in Buffalo. No more summers at home. The semesters were gone. But I returned to Buffalo, and that beleaguered and wrongfully maligned city forever holds a tender spot in my heart. It is where this card-carrying member of "Generation X" grew into adulthood. It is where I determined what I ultimately wanted from my life. It's where I made friends that will last my lifetime. It's where I first fell in love. And it is where I have had real chicken wings (Buffalo wings, that is), and no place else where I've dabbled in wings has compared to Buffalo's own main claim to fame (er, besides the Bills). When I left Buffalo, it was with a sense of stealth, as if afraid to confront the city face-to-face in daylight to say farewell. An Amtrak train pulled into the Depew station stop at around 4:00 a.m. Friends gave their bittersweet goodbyes, and the train swept an old life for the new away into the night.

San Francisco came next. The first time I saw this lustrous city in person was from a distance. I was in an Amtrak shuttle van, crossing the Bay Bridge from Oakland into San Francisco. It was night, just after 9:00. And there it was - the array of new possibilities lit up like every window of its beckoning skyline. I felt trepidation and excitement - eager to learn about my new home. I lived there for just over three years, from May of '94 until early August of 1997. It was an adventure. That's how I look back on it now. No, not every single day was a thrill-ride. There was routine - work and rent and school. But the overall sense of being there - so far away from all I knew - and surviving to make a living and achieve a modicum of personal success was entirely fulfilling. Plus, my time there provided plenty of stories with which to regale (or bore) present-day friends. Yes, from the unemployment of summer '94 to living and working at a residential hotel in the Tenderloin, to life in a beautiful flat (with washer and dryer and a working fireplace!) on Post and Lyon, to hotel work at the wharf, all while attending film school, juggling relationships, suffering heartache but finding new corridors and possibilities, as well as enjoying a level of satisfaction and success, San Francisco became unforgettable. I miss it to this day, and I anticipate my inevitable return visit to the gem by the Bay. When I bade farewell to San Francisco, it was with regret, but I knew my destiny lay elsewhere. It just felt... over. Even though I was in the beginning stages of a relationship, my time with the city had ended, and I had to go. My core group of friends had moved on and moved apart. Film school was kaput and my short film was in the can. I had some money saved. I reluctantly packed up my boxes to mail to New York, sold my furniture, and hopped on a plane one evening and headed across the flyover states to begin again, this time in New York.

And that brings me to the city where I now reside. Though I thrive off the energy in New York, it often becomes draining. It is truly a place that does not sleep. Some place is always open - there is always something to do. It is a city guarding millions of stories and a just as many secrets and a offers an equal amount of possibilities. What you want can be found - it is just a matter of motivation, attainment, and achievement. New York moves. It hums. The background rhythm is a steady white noise. The subway system is one huge artery diverging to a thousand different pockets of life. The people are its heart. And it is close to my childhood home. It is a simple five to six hour trip from New York City to where I am now, upstate.

Last week before the rain came, the wind howled - a persistent and almost mesmerizing organic vaccuum sounding through the trees and fields, whipping around the houses and down the roads and highways. I knew the sound well.

It snowed earlier tonight. We received more than a dusting but less than an inch. I glanced out through the front windows of the house a few minutes ago. Trees with branches and arms empty standing stark against the moonlight glow, I gazed across pristine snowfall at the three visible houses across this dead-end road. They were all dark and slumbering - shrouded in shadow and cold outside but knowing there was the warmth of life within. It was a glimpse of natural beauty, as if staring up at Sea of Tranquility on the moon, or like the camera's eye of an entrancing Bergman movie capturing this unique moment in a slow motion sequence of breathtaking film frames.

The snow, the rain, the high winds, the expanses of woodlands and fields, that one car every ten minutes on the two lane main highway during the lonesome small hours, and even the great stretches of nighttime silence - these are the sights and sounds of comfort. The sights and sounds of home.