Excuse me, but do you know about New York City in the summer?

Do yo know about the exuberance? The motivation to spend hours in a park? Do you know about how the buildings tower over pockets of green, peering down, jealous?

Have you breathed in the air shared with nine million people, all wearing very little clothing? Bumping elbows on sidewalks, sharing sweat and furtive glances around the corner; dirty, odd-numbered side streets where burly men throw parcels on to trucks lead to wide open, heat-seared avenues of migrating men in suits, of blaring taxi horns.

The whole city sweats - the smell of that stagnant water in the gutter, or of the sudden moist greenery of Central Park where you go to lie in the grass, to get impossibly grass-stained dirty in a fit of cuddling and wrestling with a friend.

Don't you want to yell and laugh? Grab a stranger's hand and spin around? This is what will happen: the crowd (and yes, there will be a crowd, for where are people but outside on the sidewalks?) will push back to create a circle for you and they will watch, some with glowing eyes, some warily, but when they skulk off they will remember your movement, your effortless and graceless abandon, and they will dance someday too.

New York City in the summer! I let slip to a boss the phrase "slacker summer" not once, but twice. I didn't hide the look on my face when I was asked about my five-day weekend, but let flow facial expressions, grins like laughter at the feelings from letting myself ride, enjoy the sun, enjoy a date or three in new york city, unencumbered, in the summer.

Why hide it? I challenge the liars. You don't want to be indoors anymore than you want to excise a piece of your heart. You don't want to be working, and if you say you do, then I challenge you to run around the block and then head to Madison Square Park; sit on the grass for thirty minutes and then I'll show up with a blended fruit smoothie or some sort, or a beer in a paper bag. Tell me now where you'd like to be!

I was at Coney Island for the Mermaid Parade and, dehydrated, undercaffeinated, and slightly boggled by the hour-long bike ride there, and the sudden infusion of piercing, bleached sunlight, lost my place as I found myself listening to a voice in my head narrating thoughts I didn't know I had; it did take me a moment to realize that the voices came from a loudspeaker, cabled to the announcers speaking the afternoon from their vantage point on the grandstand, but it felt like they were holding my hand through the oddest of dreams.

Later that afternoon, I hopped on my bike and rode somewhere else.

I do, I love it, I feel better than I have in a while. Chalk it up to several things if you want to - and that's okay - but I'm just going to say that I am thrilled by this love affair with New York City. It may take me longer to fall in love with the sighs and resignation of autumn (The Tartar Steppe) or the dream clarity of winter (Winter's Tale), but maybe I need to try harder. Maybe I even will.