a random walk
We live in a city of 8 million. There are about 1.5 million in our borough of Manhattan alone and each year 44 million come to visit. Of those, 35 million are domestic and 7.3 are international travelers. All of this seems a little funny to me, lately, because we pay a premium to live in one of the most expensive. dense and culturally diverse cities in the World and we are always looking for an opportunity to leave it. We have been bored.
We "nah" our way out of funky Brooklyn music excursions suggested by the latest TimeOut and have walked the artist markets of the East Village and Inwood one too many a time. All of the events that used to inspire spontaneous jaunts to never-visited venues when I was single now seem kind of hollow and pretentious. I'm realizing too that maybe half the fun of going was just the sheer primal drive to find a mate - most likely.
But now the bar has been raised because I am we.
So we drive away, as often as we can, for sweet, floral, grassy air. We aim for B-list tourist towns like Saugerties and Litchfield just to see what lunch will taste like there. But then we drive aimlessly down dirt roads, past farms and empty lots looking for 200 pristine cars or a giant iron cube in an empty green field or a flock of 300 starlings circling and landing on young cedar, bending it into a hairpin with their weight. When we drive I think we might stumble upon all these things. I hope. Something totally unexpected but beautiful, I guess.
Today we came back from another of our trips. Yesterday we rambled our way along curbless roads near the Connecticut shore. As all the shallow-ceilinged, brick red, salt-box houses passed by my passenger window, I wondered about the average height of their occupants. I saw dozens of tag sale signs and secretly wished to go to all of them. I started conversations with fish vendors and vegetable stand tenders because they were nice and I wanted to try to be unlike myself...a little more willing to talk about the weather. We stayed in a smoky motel room and then, in the morning, ate breakfast as strangers in a small-town diner. Most of the patrons were 70 years old or older and we ate quietly, eavesdropping on their conversations. They transitioned from family news to stories about the animals sleeping on their car engines. Their interest in listening and talking was so perfectly in phase. It reminded me of my grandparents and how people of their generation do this - know how talk about the weather artfully, with warmth. That is something I think was lost over 2 generations.
The diner conversations made me miss them. In a way all of these trips have made me miss my family more than I ever have before. I realize that I am running around looking for some strange inspiration in a field that I think I will glimpse unexpectedly. But it's more that the prospect of starting my own family is laid before me (I just got engaged) and I know I will root somewhere. I miss them maybe because I want them to witness it and also because I understand now what they did for me.
We "nah" our way out of funky Brooklyn music excursions suggested by the latest TimeOut and have walked the artist markets of the East Village and Inwood one too many a time. All of the events that used to inspire spontaneous jaunts to never-visited venues when I was single now seem kind of hollow and pretentious. I'm realizing too that maybe half the fun of going was just the sheer primal drive to find a mate - most likely.
But now the bar has been raised because I am we.
So we drive away, as often as we can, for sweet, floral, grassy air. We aim for B-list tourist towns like Saugerties and Litchfield just to see what lunch will taste like there. But then we drive aimlessly down dirt roads, past farms and empty lots looking for 200 pristine cars or a giant iron cube in an empty green field or a flock of 300 starlings circling and landing on young cedar, bending it into a hairpin with their weight. When we drive I think we might stumble upon all these things. I hope. Something totally unexpected but beautiful, I guess.
Today we came back from another of our trips. Yesterday we rambled our way along curbless roads near the Connecticut shore. As all the shallow-ceilinged, brick red, salt-box houses passed by my passenger window, I wondered about the average height of their occupants. I saw dozens of tag sale signs and secretly wished to go to all of them. I started conversations with fish vendors and vegetable stand tenders because they were nice and I wanted to try to be unlike myself...a little more willing to talk about the weather. We stayed in a smoky motel room and then, in the morning, ate breakfast as strangers in a small-town diner. Most of the patrons were 70 years old or older and we ate quietly, eavesdropping on their conversations. They transitioned from family news to stories about the animals sleeping on their car engines. Their interest in listening and talking was so perfectly in phase. It reminded me of my grandparents and how people of their generation do this - know how talk about the weather artfully, with warmth. That is something I think was lost over 2 generations.
The diner conversations made me miss them. In a way all of these trips have made me miss my family more than I ever have before. I realize that I am running around looking for some strange inspiration in a field that I think I will glimpse unexpectedly. But it's more that the prospect of starting my own family is laid before me (I just got engaged) and I know I will root somewhere. I miss them maybe because I want them to witness it and also because I understand now what they did for me.
posted by AETYL at 8:57 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home