i can now say:

having lived here for just about three weeks, these are the things i now know with relative certainty:

the entire apartment slopes. just a little. it wouldn't really matter but for the fact that the frying pan has a tendency, while cooking my eggs, to slide right off the stove. 

on sunday mornings the church bells peel out a version of danny boy that digs in in such a way as to both haunt and energize. 

there is a point at which smith street runs into fourth place on one side and fifth street on the other. this is important information for anyone coming to visit me. 

there are more coffee shops here than i can count. all locally owned--most small outfits of neighboring restaurants. cafe pedlar, smith canteen, black and gold. 

one of my neighbors suffers from something i've hypothesized as bronchitis or emphysema or a nagging and peculiar sort of cough. i am constantly in fear for the state of his lungs. 

my windows look out on nothing but green. trees that sway and kiss. the street is narrow and decidedly lush. 

i have no dishwasher, no microwave, and get almost no cell service. i am irrationally delighted by each of these things. 

the beer garden across the way is in fact open at one in the morning, middle of the week, should you need to know. 

i wake to birds. and my pace has slowed. 

it is another world here. it is new york, but not. after eight years of manhattan living i have been transported. and the gratitude with which i wake each morning--the absolute wonder that fills me each time i get off the subway and walk down second place borders on unnerving. 

why did i not do this sooner, i think? 

because i wasn't ready. because i wouldn't have known. because i wouldn't have appreciated it for all that it was had i not lived the last eight years just as they were.