Eastern Promise

It's damned hard for me to avoid getting nostalgic, a feeling that's only compounded when I revisit the east coast, as it is, after all, where I grew up and spent the greatest percentage of my life. Nostalgia allows you to revel in the changes that have and have not taken place and has the effect of making me simultaneously feel both old and young. I have heard it described as to be of a place, an identifier, a citizen, a denizen or any number of such related terms, when you can say that you can remember when. How it used to be back in the day.

And yet the interesting thing is that this is still not what I would call home. Everything about it is familiar and, yes, memories abound, but it isn't the place I feel the most myself. Or, to place it in better distinction, where I find I am the best version of myself. I am lazier, perhaps because of the comfort of these memories tangible and mental, knowing I can enshroud myself within them rather than doing or creating anything new. There is nothing wrong with this from time-to-time, and so I do enjoy a homecoming, but extended periods I find troubling and conducive to restlessness. It's not that I mind being at rest, but that I don't want to be at rest here.

This isn't precisely what I had in mind when I got going writing here, but so it goes, does it not Mr. Vonnegut? And it is not all for naught as it allows me to be contemplative and analytical about the world and my very small place in it. Again, the danger is how long you delve there. Walking down 10th Avenue the other evening, I had a spectacular view of The High Line, part of ambitious efforts these last few years to make the city of New York more pedestrian friendly and, in that one word popular to sum it up: livable.

It made for a pretty sight (and site) lit up to my left and, as I managed to reach 10th Avenue just past its start and exit it not far before its end, I could operate under the temporary illusion that it went on forever. For a time, I wasn't in New York at all, which made sense because rarely had I ever made my way to those precise cross streets. I thought how nice it is to have one's little pocket carved out within this gigantic space shared with others. To be so much a part and yet so separate. Which reminded me of what I consider the loneliness of cities. No matter who you are, there are those periods of downtime, or when you might find yourself traveling alone, and when you do, you can be struck by the group activity surrounding you, or by the astonishing number of people existing as individuals. I can never decide if it is conspiratorial or just creepy when cities grow quiet. For the first time I verbalized that New Yorkers aren't rude they're just, in general, not concerned with your existing around them. How could they be, when so much is going on? If one did, one might never move, paralyzed by observation and endless ocular assault.

This is the path I sometimes see the whole world headed: overstimulated by a glut of access to an immense tome of information. Someone or some ones will surely figure the way to navigate this great mass efficiently and effectively, but even for those my age, who grew into the new technological age, it can be difficult to remember what it is to be somewhere physically and mentally in the same moment. In a sense technology has become part of our environment. You could delineate this to say that happened with the earliest tools and innovations and you would have a point, but I speak instead of perhaps watching a sporting event on one's phone while being in attendance at another sporting event. And further and broader, the idea summarized as being off the grid.

But the point is that the east coast is where I'm from. And whether or not I define it as home, it certainly has helped to define what I have become. And I like this place. So thanks east coast, for always inviting me back.

I'm Not a Blogger...

I just post a lot. That's got to be one of my all-time favorite go-tos on the quick parody front. Sometimes my brain is so tuned into pop culture it frightens me but then I will read an excerpt of someone like Chuck Klosterman or any of the many accomplished blogger/journalists that write for popular sites these days and realize I keep it at a much safer distance than some. Whenever I read them I have to wonder how many people get all of the included references. Sometimes it makes me feel a little bit uninformed (a cover word for dumb) and others I could care less.

It's a pretty cold bastard lately and the shortening of days isn't helping. That and a bum foot have made me quite lazy indeed, the irony being that lack of activity seems to make my achey old man's body feel worse. Standard writing rules tell you not to use "being that." Moving a sentence back, I suppose this isn't as by the numbers as irony goes, but it's better than a lot of the things people seem to offer up for irony, where the only true irony is their suggesiont that it is irony at all. This is where I am supposed to provide an example.

Many say that to err is human, and I do not disagree, but to complain seems to be even more human. I wonder if this is an original component of the human condition or if it is resulting and somewhat predicated upon what our lives have become. I am not the first to entertain the idea, as I find it implicit in the concept that money cannot buy happiness as well as in the consistent theme that has emerged in much modern writing, fiction and non, that so many of us are so privileged and yet unsatisfied and ADD. This goes beyond simple cash flow.

I have to step back to Klosterman quickly because I think that if you read that sentence it comes across as a dig. It's not. I haven't read much of Klosterman, but some of the snippets I have are, well, really good. If there is something I don't like about Klosterman, it's mostly myself. See, he's clever and well-written (I'd say spoken, but I've never heard him speak), and on some level, though it's less now than it might have been at one time, I'm a little jealous of that. It's this little inherent rivalry thing that a lot of human beings feel that I wish I didn't. I've seen people do it to me and the reason I can recognize it is because I know I've entertained if not acted upon it myself. The good thing is that when other people attack others out of simple jealousy it reminds me not to do that. Of course, if they point out their knowledge of such jealousy and cite it as the reason for their dislike, it can end up endearing me to them. Because, I don't know about you, but I like when people have flaws. It makes them human. Remember that bit about to err? As a rule, you kind of wait for those perfect people to trip up. Maybe you are not in that universal you. If so, good for you. I have a tendency to say "maybe" a lot. The counter, to an extent, of those perfect folks you loathe are the ones who, for some other inexplicable reason, you completely love the shit out of and perhaps aspire to attain the sort of effortless perfection they project. Speaking of, I may be doing just that here, projecting, exhibiting a small segment of human condition that applies to me and a minority, rather than the human condition. Do you ever get it all in one?

So then it is that I like the analysis I have seen tiny parts of from Klosterman, and yet sad how much popular culture shapes us, and simultaneously intrigued by the way it unites us and uh, this is also simultaneous, separates us from those who do not have those same memories. It's inter-generational. And I envy the people who have led these pure, or what I consider pure, existences away from television and dumb shit (by some arbitrary definition for "dumb shit"). Sometimes I can see why David Foster Wallace had trouble sticking around, you know? And I'm not a quarter as smart. Anyway, if you read this far, congratulations? Next time, less seriousness, more jokes or joke attempts.

I am glad I am listening to music because, based on body language, I hate the people sitting near me. Thankfully two of them just got up and have been replaced by two girls eating macarons. And you know what they say, "two macarons make it right." I think this positions me well to go home and watch last night's Gossip Girl.

Cheers bitches.