Bringing Forth Fruit: A Prelude

Me, in all sincerity, to a friend several years ago: "I could live anywhere but New York City." 


Look at this sentence. Now back to the blog title. Now back to the sentence. Now back to the title. 


God's irony is cruel sometimes.


I say this half in jest. Truly, despite visiting New York multiple times during college, my vagabond shoes did not long to stay. Wicked on Broadway, Placido Domingo at the Met, Chinese New Year in Chinatown--all of these had failed to seduce me into an urban liaison with Sinatra's metropolis. It was not big cities in and of them selves. I decided after two months in Paris I could live there forever, its arrondissements distilling all its charm and history into manageable size, so as to be accessible even to the naive foreigner. London--not quite as charming, but still pervaded by a class and sense of heritage that only comes from a nation one thousand years old. And it has Ben's Cookies, the finest cookies anywhere in the entire world, hands down. New York, on the other hand, had not yet secured my affections. 


Nevertheless, when graduate school applications rolled around, I applied to Columbia University, lured by its English faculty and its proximity to Princeton (once a Tiger, always a Tiger...). I ranked it solidly among the six solicited schools to which I would be thrilled to be accepted, as opposed to several decent, yet less desirable "safety" schools. Yet in my mind I had not yet made the connection that Columbia=New York, and me=not New York. 


This connection revealed itself in all its brutality, though, when I was accepted into Columbia's Ph.D. program. Suddenly I was forced to confront the fact that I could be spending the next six years of my life in the one city I had rejected as utterly uninhabitable. This was at the forefront of my mind on the campus visiting day, when the department flew me in (from Oxford!) in order to woo me with congenial students, incredibly impressive professors, and tasty Mediterranean food representative of the area's cosmopolitanism (served in a professor's fabulous studio apartment). 


I was pleasantly surprised, then, to discover that Columbia's campus was in fact a campus, though not nearly so sprawling and idyllic as Princeton (famously dubbed "the pleasantest country club in America" by F. Scott Fitzgerald '17 in This Side of Paradise). And Columbia is sandwiched in between not one, but two parks, Riverside and Morningside. Plus, it is close to Central Park, only about six blocks southeast; there were trees in New York after all! Morningside Heights, then, is not Times Square; it is distinctly different from midtown or downtown Manhattan. I thus accepted Columbia's offer contentedly, hopeful--if not altogether confident--that I would somehow be able to eke out a comfortable existence in my least favorite city. 


After living here for six months, remnants of my old attitude remain. I don't know if I will ever truly love or miss the City, or if I will ever forget the sight of a beautiful night landscape rendered fully visible solely by the light of the stars and moon. Such an experience does not and cannot exist in New York City. Indeed, so inconceivable is such existence amid the urban light and vertical architectural cacophony that I did not realize until I returned to Minnesota that I had not seen the moon at all in almost five months. Still, every once in a while I am reminded of the London of William Wordsworth's Prelude, that "monstrous ant-hill on the plain / Of a too busy world…[an] endless stream of men, and moving things," wherein all people are “melted and reduced / To one identity.”

Yet these months have shown me aspects of the city that I did not anticipate. As in Paris, where I prided myself on my intimate knowledge of the city's markets, I took great comfort in discovering the best and cheapest places for groceries in the Upper West Side. And as in London, my runs have provided a detailed mental map of the paths through the City's many public parks. 

Moreover, God has shown me--once again--that I am exactly where He always planned me to be. I have written elsewhere of my theme verse for Princeton, Philippians 1:6, painted in red, trimming the walls of my dorm room senior year: "Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." Looking daily at this verse reminded me that my present and future are not part of some amorphous, seemingly errant Odyssey; they are but the continuation of a plan that God has been working since before I was aware of Him, before He even knit me together in my mother's womb. 
This path, then, has led me to New York, the Big Apple. Here is where I will spend, roughly, the next six years of my life, where I will enter, presumably, academic maturity, where all the skills I have fostered and gifts I have received, hopefully, will blossom into...what? Thistles, vainglorious self-aggrandizement bleeding those that would hinder its progress? Brambles, unconscious self-absorption producing nothing for the betterment of the world?


I sincerely hope, I hope with all my heart, not. I would blossom into fruit, into the most luscious, succulent grapes the academic world, indeed any world, has ever seen; grapes that provide sustenance to my friends, colleagues, students, and teachers, bursting with the sweetness of literature and all the Christlikeness of the engrafted vine. I was overcome while reading the Princeton Alumni Weekly today with a deep sense of obligation. No, not of obligation, of recognition, a recognition of the privileges I have received and the opportunities to which I am parcel. The providence evidenced in these opportunities creates great gratitude, and with this gratitude comes a desire to inspire change and please God even more than Jodi Picoult '87 does her readers, or Anthony Marx *86 *90 does the patrons of the New York Public Library. 


I realize this dream reeks of all the naive idealism of youth, privilege, and late night insomnia. Nevertheless, I would not give it up. Rather, I would press it close to my chest, and keep it forefront in my mind. My greatest fear is finding that after six years my time in the Big Apple has been wasted. I would have it otherwise, that six years will see the bringing forth of much fruit, fruit by which the tree--the Tree--is known.