I watched one of my favorite movies earlier today: ‘You’ve Got Mail’. And it made me profoundly sad at all the ways of life that are slipping away. From my generation anyway. How to write complete sentences, for example, and string them together in long, beautiful letters full of voice and life and person. A real person. Not the charade everyone seems to be trying to live these days. Who does this anymore? And when you realize the answer is ‘nobody’, don’t you think that sad?
I miss writing words. And so as I sit here at 1:28 am on a Sunday night typing into the void of internet pipes and tunnels that go everywhere and nowhere all the same, I’ve decided for myself to fix that in some small measure in my life. Just my life.
I don’t presume any longer to know what the world wants. I’m too old for that now.
I was walking down the street today with an old friend who is really a new friend in that I wasn’t much of a friend to her until ten years after we both left adolescence and reunited in the city. It is so funny how friendships work in the modern age. At any rate, as we strolled by the hotdog stands and ice cream trucks, I realized just how much I missed walking. Walking without having to say anything until you wanted to - those long, warm silences that surprise you at how comfortable they feel. It’s not everyone you can enjoy that with - even family sometimes - but it has to be one of the best feelings in the world. Right at the end of summer when the weather and sounds and leaves are just right in the afternoon light. I miss that very much in my life. It makes me smile.
I was at a friend-of-a-friend’s party this past weekend as well - it was a Saturday night. And it was nice - old faces I hadn’t seen in years nor had expected to see that night were there and friendly. We talked about everything from why nursing homes are the next big thing to my terrible mustache that I’ve grown very fond of for no reason at all that I can think of. There was peaty whiskey and cheap beer and those plasticky glass bottles of garish green soju being passed around. And I had the realization looking around that it is a wonderful feeling to realize you don’t need any of it to hold a conversation and enjoy your time there. To drink just because you like whatever it is you’re drinking. Maybe that’s the part of getting older that people love. It’s a terrible thing to have to rely on what’s in your hand to get you through the night.
I wish I could find my Shop Around The Corner. Something simple and honest and special to just a dozen people - that’s all I would need. Really. I work a farce almost every day, in a gaudy building on Park Avenue when all I want is a little corner shop with lots of wood and crown molding. I have no grand ambitions. I have no desire to conquer the world or be a titan of man. I want a life where I don’t have to kill to live.
But it is a movie after all. Maybe my Shop Around The Corner doesn’t exist.
I saw a man today with a pink balloon attached to a stroller, but it was one of those special balloons that cost a fortune and are designed to stay inflated for much longer than the occasion it was bought for. Why do people buy them, I asked myself. Is it an ego thing? How strange is that!
Well it’s 2 am now so I think I will end this here. But til tomorrow.