We only live forever in the lights we make
When we were young we used to say
That you only hear the music when your heart begins to break
Now we are the kids from yesterday.
All I want is a long, aimless drive on dark, nearly deserted streets, blasting my car stereo, so I can sing as loudly as I want until the music replaces the vague longing I feel for something I can't put my finger on with something else that feels a bit more complete. There are no dark, nearly deserted roads in New York City where I can drive 70 miles an hour, few streets that wouldn't require me to stop every few blocks for a red light.
I experienced a brief moment of the pure joy that comes with accelerating unimpeded to 55, 60, 65 miles per hour and beyond accompanied by music and my own out-of-shape voice tonight while driving back home from downtown Brooklyn along the BQE, and I just wanted it to go on forever. For a minute I got to relive countless moments with friends, boyfriends, my brother, moments where we drove and sang and talked together and felt free and alive, moments I thought were in infinite supply, but which turned out ultimately to be limited.
When I almost ran into a parked service truck on my exit ramp, I got an intense flashback of deja vu from when I did the exact same thing in the exact same place seven years ago, when I'd just moved to Brooklyn, when even the cold felt new and exciting, when the sense of endless possibility was ever-present. For a second, everything still felt possible. For just a second, I didn't mind that it was winter. I thought that maybe if I could keep driving, I could make that all stick, but the first traffic light brought the reality of city driving back, so I came home, and instead tried to bring my memories in with me.
I miss you, nearly pitch-black, two-lane back roads of rural Georgia. I miss you all, my shotgun co-pilots, who'd also shamelessly belt along to ridiculously emo songs or rock opera or hair metal or musical theater until we'd sung ourselves hoarse, then who'd accompany me home to lie on the floor and talk about whatever it was that was so important until the wee hours of the night. There was really almost nothing better than us, my car, and a long night ahead.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Friday, November 2, 2012
Dinner Drivel
(Note: I'm currently discovering old drafts I never published, and just pressing publish if they aren't entirely incomplete.)
Some people are really impressed by certain evidences of achievement--by masters degrees or doctorates, by the names of the schools that others attended, by their employment histories with high-profile companies. Others really enjoy sharing their achievements, sliding them into small talk--or even dominating entire conversations with their impressive scholastic and business accomplishments--as if this somehow affirms that you chose the right dinner partner indeed.
There are some people who really take note of these mentions, who are impressed by them, and who like to surround themselves with people who have perhaps been to Ivy-league schools, who have MBAs, who summer at their homes in the north and winter in their second homes in the south, and who drive their brand new cars in between the two, who know exactly how many square feet each of these homes have.
I personally don't give a shit.
Where you went to school and what company provides you with a desk and a paycheck and how many quality possessions you own--none of these things make me care any more or any less about you, because they don't really tell me anything about who you are. What I want to know are things like what do you really care about--what lights up your eyes and makes you raise your voice with passion? What have you done to make a difference, either in the larger world or in just one life? What makes you different from every other person in this restaurant, on the street, in the subway? I suppose for some, the answers to these questions are the things mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph. I find dinner conversations with this type of person insufferable. All I want to do is to tell them to shut up, to point out that because they were so busy talking about themselves, they haven't asked a single question of anyone else, as if they presume they have nothing to learn from anyone else.
I want to have dinner with the genuine people, the people you can skip quickly through the small talk and get into real conversations about the things that really keep us up at night, like what we're going to do to make a contribution to the world, like what kind of people we're going to be when we're older, like what kind of people we're going to share our lives with and how we're going maintain these relationships, because we know that none of us is perfect, and that everything has the potential to fall apart if we don't work hard at the important things.
Some people are really impressed by certain evidences of achievement--by masters degrees or doctorates, by the names of the schools that others attended, by their employment histories with high-profile companies. Others really enjoy sharing their achievements, sliding them into small talk--or even dominating entire conversations with their impressive scholastic and business accomplishments--as if this somehow affirms that you chose the right dinner partner indeed.
There are some people who really take note of these mentions, who are impressed by them, and who like to surround themselves with people who have perhaps been to Ivy-league schools, who have MBAs, who summer at their homes in the north and winter in their second homes in the south, and who drive their brand new cars in between the two, who know exactly how many square feet each of these homes have.
I personally don't give a shit.
Where you went to school and what company provides you with a desk and a paycheck and how many quality possessions you own--none of these things make me care any more or any less about you, because they don't really tell me anything about who you are. What I want to know are things like what do you really care about--what lights up your eyes and makes you raise your voice with passion? What have you done to make a difference, either in the larger world or in just one life? What makes you different from every other person in this restaurant, on the street, in the subway? I suppose for some, the answers to these questions are the things mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph. I find dinner conversations with this type of person insufferable. All I want to do is to tell them to shut up, to point out that because they were so busy talking about themselves, they haven't asked a single question of anyone else, as if they presume they have nothing to learn from anyone else.
I want to have dinner with the genuine people, the people you can skip quickly through the small talk and get into real conversations about the things that really keep us up at night, like what we're going to do to make a contribution to the world, like what kind of people we're going to be when we're older, like what kind of people we're going to share our lives with and how we're going maintain these relationships, because we know that none of us is perfect, and that everything has the potential to fall apart if we don't work hard at the important things.
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