How getting shat on made me smile.

In retrospect I probably (definitely) didn't think this whole move thing out completely, or rationally for that matter. With that said, I couldn't be happier with how this city has embraced me; albeit harsh at times, the past few days have been nothing but smiles.

As I put my signature on my first apartment application today, and walked into Washington Square Park to smoke a cigarette and try to force out some creativity on the steps of NYU, I had my first, actual, NYC moment of clarity.

With pen in hand, headphones echoing Reasonable Doubt into my ears, and a little sense of skewed accomplishment, the city said hello... in the form of pigeon shit.

As it hit my head and then promptly splashed onto my jeans I couldn't help but laugh. I sat and enjoyed the feeling of complete humility for a good thirty-or-so seconds before I checked the damage left atop my dome. I expected a goopy mess of gray mush mixed with two-day-unwashed hair, but to my surprise there was nothing to be found. "Impossible," I thought to myself, I felt it hit my head first. To my amazement the small shit had hit exactly where the top of my headphones rested, and somehow was hard enough so that with a small piece of paper I was able to scoop the rest of it off my jeans, and that was that. It was almost as if it didn't even happen, the bird was gone by the time I looked up to see my assailant, and nothing was above me but a bright blue sky, and a lady smiling back at me who undoubtedly witnessed the entire thing.

When I got back to my temporary dwelling my kind host told me that getting shit on by a bird is good luck and that I should really be thankful. I'm not sure what it meant, but at the end of the day I can honestly say that it was exactly what needed to happen. I also learned a great lesson; Don't sit on a row of benches directly under a power line in a park, especially when everyone else sitting opposite of you looks like they know something you don't.