In search of... what?

First blog from the Big Apple.
A morning of feeling frustrated by the cold and deprived of coffee and I decided to head in from Queens where I've been staying these past few days (another story - perhaps not fit to publish on the internet) and find Culture Espresso which is apparently a Melbourne-style espresso coffee joint.

Upon entering, I was overjoyed to see the words 'flat' and 'white' strung together on the blackboard menu.
The joy turned to disappointment upon delivery of said flat white. Watery and with scalded milk; the resemblance it bore in appearance to a flat white made it all the more distasteful.

Consulting my trusty iPhone I searched the New York city map for something in the surrounding streets that might interest me and get me out of the cold and that is how I find myself here, right now in the New York Public Library.
Like everything else I've encountered in New York, it seems overgrown and confusing to navigate.
And of course the hardest thing is, I don't even know what I'm looking for. If I knew that there was a reading room or a particular book here that I wanted to find, then I would be able to concentrate my efforts on finding that particular thing. But until classes start on the 24th, I'm really just a lost soul, wandering the streets of New York or the halls of this library.

In a bar I went to on New Years Eve, I met a guy who asked me what it was I had come to New York to find. I was stumped by this one. I think that the focus of my studies had led me to consider 'going to New York' to be an activity to undertake, like a project.

But perhaps deep down I held a belief that this really was a magical city where I might find something I've always wanted, but couldn't dream of finding in the mundane environment of home; true love, outrageous success, the key to my eternal happiness.
I remember as my plane flew in over Long Beach to JFK airport, I was looking down at the streetlights which are orangey-yellow here, not the white I'm used to back home. The weaving path of jewelled streetlights sparkled and I thought to myself that maybe the streets here really are paved in gold.

Perhaps what I'm searching for is an answer to what I want to find in my life.
In an environment such as I'm in now, where everything is unfamiliar - every street corner, every logo and package in the supermarket, I will be forced to examine what's around me more carefully. I will have to think about what I really want and try to seek that out.
So wish me luck on this extraordinary game of seek.

And of course, I miss you too dear sister.
So much so that sometimes my chest feels like it will burst.