September 28, 2009

Seasons of Love.

Fall, thanks for showing up. This summer was a total wash what with all the rain, and to be honest with you, I don’t miss sweating in front of the fan in my little apartment at all.

That being said, I hope you’re going to be kinder to me than you’ve been in the past. Remember those wind storms you make that always seem to blow up my skirt in the middle crossing Broadway exposing me cruelly to cab drivers and leaving me red faced? Yeah. I’m talking to you. And those wet leaves I’m continually slipping on in my black patent leather flats, and never once (not once!) has a passerby stopped to help me up. Repeatedly I’m spilling my caramel apple cider from Starbucks (a must in fall!) all over my hand on the way to the subway while juggling the Times and my cell phone (I think I still have some scars).

But the biggest complaint perhaps, is that you always leave me alone. When you show up and the air turns chilly it seems like all my single friends who were happy enough to be single when the summer was hot and humid, all suddenly feel the need to couple up because of you. Is it the idea of sitting in front of the fire with someone (ie: heat from the radiator. Who has a fireplace in Manhattan?) that is so appealing? No, it’s you and your brisk air and romantic-looking colored leaves that makes people want to stay in bed with someone else all day long until summer shows up again.

Sigh.

So maybe this time you can help me out? As much as I love those long walks through Central Park admiring your ability to change the leaves of the trees that nice burnt orange, it’d be nice if I could possibly walk along side someone. Too much to ask? I know, what with me spilling things all over myself and falling down so much it’s almost surely an impossibility. Even for you.

But face it, you owe me. In November I already have to lose a whole hour of my day, and upon leaving the office at 6PM it feels more like 10PM and that’s basically all your fault. And let us not forget that terrible holiday Halloween that you insist on bringing along with you every year. God what a nightmare. And I’m still not over that time when I was ten and had to spend the whole night walking around in your frigid air (20 degrees in October?! I mean really?) dressed as a bumble bee and getting nothing but a stint in the dentist's chair and four cavities in return.

Moving on though, I really am happy you’re here. Life just wouldn’t be the same without apple picking, kids dressed as insects asking for ridiculous amounts of sugar-laden treats and cable knit sweaters. Autumn, you’re the best and my favorite of all the seasons. All I’m asking is let’s just try a little harder this time before winter gets here, for my sake, to blow in (along with that embarrassing breeze in the street), a nice guy for me to share you with.

Because let’s face it, I need all the help I can get.

September 22, 2009

women v. men = nobody's happy.

I’m not sure what Maureen is really talking about here, but I think we can all take the basic point of women being less happy than men as interesting, even if not entirely true. Can there really be such a way to test the masses and come to some sort of conclusion based on all of these millions and millions of different lives all with their millions and millions of different heartaches and confusions and problems and anxieties and regrets, and gauge who is happier?

An interesting point that she does make (and by point I mean observation) is that women feel more than men. She might (gasp) be on to something here. The more men I meet of my generation, the more I’m convinced that they don’t want to be bothered with caring about anything outside of themselves. Okay, so this might be a blanket statement (and I just might be meeting all the wrong men - of course!) and there are a lot of women out there who don’t give a damn a la Rhett Butler, but from what I can see there’s a lot more of them in the Scarlet O’Hara roll standing at the open door of men’s lives waiting for them to get a clue and invite them in.

When did feeling become so taboo? I figure that in a place as crazy as the world we live in today (even crazier, New York), there wouldn’t be much point if we didn’t let ourselves be affected by any of it. Maybe it’s easy for some to wake up in the morning and shave their face (slow and steady) and not think or feel much about their life when they’re looking back at themselves in the mirror.

If Maureen is right (hang on while I go and check the temperature in the general vicinity of hell...) and us females are fated to a life of being over-worked and burdened by all that we’ve got to accomplish (and put up with), I’d rather have that and embrace all the difficulties and hardships of life (nothing worthwhile ever comes easy) and at least feel unhappy when I get up in the morning and look at back at myself in the mirror when I’m brushing my teeth, than not feel anything at all.

September 16, 2009

RT Romance is dead.

I’ve made 51 tweets since joining the land of Tweeters a few weeks ago, and I have to admit it’s left me feeling somewhat empty. I think it’s quite possible that we’ve become a generation so wrapped up in our own selves, that in many ways we’ve forgotten to experience what we’re seeing as it happens and feel all there is to be felt.

The more I see of Twitter and our push toward putting all of our lives on the internet, I wonder if fun moments at bars with friends really matter if they’re not captured on a digital camera and then immediately posted as a Twitpic. Can we really taste how great that pork sandwich is from Ko if we’re so worried about typing in to the hundreds of strangers following us, just how much the line was worth the wait?

It all goes back to the tree falling in the woods riddle. Does it make a sound? Does it (or anything) matter if no one is around to hear?

I can’t help but think that we’re no longer capable of feeling in real-time. Rather, we are so caught up in our own self-importance that we don’t even know how to function without hiding behind our screens. Case in point: what can you really say when you meet someone at a bar who doesn’t take the opportunity to talk to you beyond a casual hello, but then later, (some way, somehow without a name or number), tracks you down on Match.com based on your picture alone and sends the message – “Was that you at the bar on Sunday night? Want to go out sometime?”

Seriously? (*Note this wasn’t me).

What are we doing running so scared from what is right in front of us? Maybe we’re too wrapped up in having a good time, thinking that anything new is ultimately better without stopping to recognize just how much it’s changing our lives - new ways to watch our favorite shows or listen to music or read our books or interact with friends or even, come to it, how we love.

I’m not sure where I fit in, in this forest of ever-growing technology forever distancing us from anything real. But I have to think that the uneasy feeling that comes along with how much everything is changing only proves that none of us can see the forest for the trees, as it were. Whatever that means.

All I want, I guess, is for people to open their eyes and recognize that no matter where we’re standing it’s not the absence of sound that should be considered, but rather the absence of awareness of the sound that makes all the difference.

September 9, 2009

school supplies.

Classes started everywhere in Manhattan today. The small school across the street from my apartment had a crowd of kids and parents in front of it by 8:30 as I was gulping down the last of my coffee.

All bright pink backpacks and fresh white sneakers and the faint scent of number two pencils hung in the air.

As I walked out the front door and passed them, digging for my subway card and reminding myself to drop my credit card payment off in the mail - I felt very envious.

If only you really knew how great it is to be just your age, I wanted to tell them.

If only you knew what a major disappointment life is after recess and art class and after-school snacks end, you’d all be running into that building arms flailing in delight, instead of desperately holding on to your parent’s legs.

September 8, 2009

I know pronounce you...oh wait, can I get back to you on this?

I had a lot of time to think on the bus ride back into the city from Boston on Labor Day. Honestly there’s not much else to do when you don’t have computer and are running on about two hours of sleep and therefore simply don’t have the strength to focus on the book you brought along. After a long wedding weekend of watching another high school friend get married, I wondered why it was that I didn’t feel like either of us were really old enough to be doing a thing as grown up as get married.

When you’re 18 and in high school and look at people who are 26, you think hell, they’re so old, they should be married and buying houses and thinking of having children. You think that by the time you’re 26 you’ll have everything a lot more figure out. Or at least, I did. But times flies (woosh!) when you’re not paying attention and those years in between just disappear and there you are suddenly sitting in a banquet room of a hotel in the city you went to college in (wasn’t that just yesterday, too?) watching this person you’ve known since the ninth grade make a promise to God and the world and everyone in the room that they will never leave the person standing in front of them for the entire duration of their lives.

Oh. I can’t make a commitment as to where I’m going to get lunch.

So that’s when, speeding at eighty miles per hour towards the real world that awaited me, I started to feel the early onset of The Fear. Not only can barely I afford the rent on my (albeit overpriced) studio apartment let alone a wedding, I was also the only one of my high school friends at this wedding not either already married or in a committed relationship. Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course. But, as alone-happy as I readily claim to be, even the most rigid of single people can’t help but wonder if there’s something maybe really wrong with them at a wedding surrounded by happy couples. Do I need to get a part time job? Leave New York and start saving money for my future? Sign up for online dating?!

The Fear was rising up quickly in my throat as I began to wonder if perhaps all the choices I’m making in an attempt to figure out what I want are what are ultimately leaving me to feel like I’ve yet to really grow up. Do you take Manhattan to be your home, for richer or for poorer, in rent hikes and transit strikes, in job loss and salary cuts, with perpetual un-dateable men for as long as you both shall live?

My thoughts were interrupted as I watched the woman sitting in front of me stand up abruptly and walk to the front of the bus and try to get the attention of the bus driver. I wondered what she was gesturing wildly about, and thought for a split second that maybe she’d been thinking some things over this entire bus ride too, and unlike me had come to some major revelations as to how she was going to live the rest of her life and wanted to immediately exit the bus and begin again. Let me out! I thought she might say. I know what I want! I’ve figured out what I’ve been doing wrong!

Instead, I sat unmoving as the man in the front seat saw what I couldn’t, and with lightening speed he procured a black plastic shopping bag to the woman just in time for her to violently throw up.

Okay, so maybe I was wrong. But I took comfort that perhaps it was The Fear rising in her throat too, and I’m not the only one who doesn’t have it all figured out just yet. We have more time, I wanted to tell her, but instead closed my eyes just as the Manhattan skyline came into view. What’s another eight years anyway?