Exactly ten years ago today I moved from London to New York.  My memories of the first few days in Manhattan are unusually vivid and surprisingly sensual.  I remember opening my eyes very early on my first morning, a Sunday.  The sirens from the fire trucks on West 57^th Street might have woken me, but I don’t think so.  It was excitement, the delicious illusion that anything was possible and everything was achievable, a feeling that every immigrant has known.  I recall getting up and walking around the immediate neighborhood, surprised that the city that never sleeps likes to stay in bed on Sunday mornings.  I walked endlessly and everywhere for the sheer pleasure of it, picking a couple of new neighborhoods every weekend.  Subways, cabs, buses, trains and ferries would come later. Ten years on, I realize that my mental map of the city took shape in the long walks of those first few weeks. Like generations of new immigrants, I fell in love with New York.

Ten years on, the love affair has cooled.  Now I see the city’s flaws more than I see its charms and find myself comparing it unfavorably with other, older loves, especially London, the city in which I was born and raised.  Hoping to find New York’s substance, I try to look beneath the shiny lacquer that the city wakes up and re-applies every morning, but often uncover only things it wants to hide, things the world needs less of: greed, aggression, directionless energy, and vanity.  More and more Manhattan feels to me like a place for the young and the immature –  monochrome, uniform, and sometimes just plain bland.  The city imitated by so many (Shanghai and Hong Kong among others) has been surpassed by its progeny and feels old and tired in comparison.

No matter.  I’ve had ten very happy years in what is, for better or for worse, my adopted home, and I plan to have many more.  The early morning sunshine slanting through the east window in Grand Central still stops me in my tracks.  Who cares someone was stupid enough to allow an Apple store to open directly beneath it?  Well, I care, but what can you do?  New York loves money more than beauty, always has, and always will.