All of the sudden, just when I think I hate the city for its grittiness and the subways that sometimes smell like piss and the huge rats and the people who don't look at you and how when they announce the stops on the older trains it sounds like "fortshecondstrt" and you don't know if that's your stop or not but you get off anyway and water drips down on your head from the ceiling and some woman is wearing too much perfume, all of the sudden then I'm outside in Manhattan, my own real-life Lite Brite, and I remember why I left grad school and came here; I remember things I used to dream about doing, things I can do here. Make a wish on a skyscraper and keep it there, always looming above with the promise of being fulfilled.