A change has occured. A long awaited, overly anticipated change has finally occoured. And before I can put pictures on here I don't want to say too much. But baby's come home. And, no, it's not a human one. It's a strange little one, who, in the next 48 hours will be announced like he was a human one, with the kind of bells and whistles you can read on the internet. Because after building it up for so long, we really should revel in the actualization.
It's going to be a scary and strange day when you can approach someone on the street you've never interacted with before and say "hey, we met on the internet", and instantaneously have a relationship of some form. The Internet: taking the middle man out of human connection.
So what I need is about 3-7 more hours in the day. I'm not even asking for 10. Just a couple more. Even doing things like this only take away from the meager amount of sleep time I'm alloted each night. I'd really like to remember what it feels like to just hang around a little bit. And not try "hanging around" for the sacrifice of something you really have to be doing. Who's with me?
I think sometimes you should only move to this city if you really need to. Enough people are from here and I know they wouldn't like my saying this, but sometimes I am overwhelmed at how fucking busy everyone always is. And people are so good at pushing through their own lives that they simply refuse to recognize the existence of the people around them.
How, HOW can you not notice the half-homeless man on the train who is so drunk he is drooling Old E down his shirt and bleeding from his hands? How can you not notice that he is alone, and can't take care of himself? And at one point he was six years old and only wanted to color in Mickey Mouse coloring books and drink Pepsi. People are so busy making appointments in their Blackberrys and playing games on their sidekicks or PS22-Pockets or whatever they're called and staring up at the advertisements about the semi-famous TV actor who donated his eyes when he died ("give the gift of sight--this guy did!") that they have little to no interest in taking in the fact that they are surrounded by people-who also matter-some of whom are not doing so well.
It frightens me. Sometimes it's like people in this city aren't living much at all. But they're moving so fast. What kind of community is this? If this is the city where everything happens shouldn't we have a little more regard or concern for what is happening around us? Shouldn't we at least admit that the world is happening?
I know I'm not from here, I haven't been here long, and I am very sensitive about things in general. But sometimes I worry that this city is meant to strip you of your sensitivity, and I think it's a really fundamental value for people existing around one another.
At least in college you could worry profusely about how slutty you were going to be when you dressed up for the Aerobics Instructors VS Cowboys party (never slutty) and who was getting the most shots in the drinking rooms, and how much you hated "that-one-over-played-dance-song-of-the-moment" even though you danced to it anyway, and who was making out with whom in which ex-girlfriend's vicinity. And that was fine, because at least you were accepting the terms of your environment.
It feels like terms here too often revolve around shutting things out, being impatient, and working relentlessly toward something more, though you are mostly working relentlessly to just stay afloat.
Maybe I'm way off base. Probably. But sometimes the things I see just overwhelm me.
Five in the morning also overwhelms me. Because then it means you have spent your sleeping hours as "hanging around" ones.
The new baby is barking in his sleep. I hope he's dreaming about chasing giant rabbits through a field of rainbows and cattails.
What I would also like is this: To be able to go into my itunes "radio" library, and click on a category of stations called "sleepy time". And then I can choose between a variety of men and women who will speak to me in soothing voices and play very soft songs (or sounds of babbling brooks) and lull me into sleep. Like a giant Mother Goose (or Daddy Goose) putting me in a giant cradle with a quilt blankee. Maybe the radio section should just be called "Giant Cradle". America? Anyone? Can we make this happen?
