After a week in Brooklyn, we were in for another move. We packed up and sat for two hours in the train, all the way to the northern end of the Bronx, to meet our new host: Kyle.

Although Kyle had never had any formal Couchsurfing guest — so this was more or less a new experience to him — he nevertheless was more qualified to be a host than many I have encountered. Opening up his door with a broad smile, he welcomed us in his apartment, made the presentations with his cats Luna and Yuuki, showed us how to get our airbed settled, and left in a hurry for his night-time work after giving us advice and recommendations — and keys to his place. He had in fact woken up early to see us, cutting on his sleep time to welcome us.

He seemed to do that a lot. At first puzzled by his apparent negligence of his own sleep, we ended up taking it as normal, even logical, to see him come back from work at 9 am, and then be up at 3 pm, fresher and livelier than us, to enjoy what time he could wrestle from the claws of Life.

That is what struck me the most in him: that feeling and knowledge, deep and untold in his soul, that we had to make the most of every hour, of every minute, because there is simply so much to experience and discover on this planet that a lifetime could not possibly suffice. Even less a lifetime spent like a binary, mindless robot working, sleeping, and repeating.

I had been inhabitated by the very same feeling, by the same rage to live, an age ago, when I had decided to drop the boredom of daily routine to set off in the unknown for the first time. And as the unknown slowly became known, almost usual, and as living on the road, as being at home anywhere and everywhere became a habit, I had forgotten it.

With his hectic, full-on schedule, Kyle unfortunately did not have so much time to spare for us, but he did manage to to take us on a local tour of lower Manhattan on our last evening. We had read a lot about the fact that New Yorkers were able to tell everything about people simply from the neighborhoods where they spent their time, and after Kyle guided us through the places he loved, explaining us the inner life of the City and pointing out the subtle differences that made the culture of New York, we were at last able to grasp its meaning.

Being a foodie, he always had a good recommendation in mind for us — we wanted to take advantage of the famously incredible quality of the international restaurants of the Big Apple before diving into Latin America. He seemed to have dined in every restaurant that had even been remotely heard of, and to conclude our stay, invited us to an excellent Japanese, complete with its waiters greeting customers with “Irasshaimase!” and impeccably dressed chefs deftly using their knives behind a counter.

   

Yuuki, a young cat whom Kyle had adopted a few months earlier, displayed the same energy. Seemingly intent on having our attention as much as possible, she kept running across the apartment as though the furniture was only a parkour playground, and nudged us as soon as we were sitting, eating, standing, or anything. She was more than happy to have guests to entertain, or to entertain her rather, and more than joyous to have our airbed to play on all night long. Her exuberance was as contagious as Kyle’s.

I cannot but smile at the memory of that apartment full of life — and of desire to live.