Being Brave Against Trucks

The ground changes under our feet, daily.

Last week, it was all about me being brave.

And then a few people, beloved to me, have gotten hurt.  Jessica M was hit by a truck.  I was nearly hit by a car making a left turn at 30 miles an hour.  Stay out of the way of people and machines who seem determined to hit you. (And Times Square.  The girl from Michigan who came to her destiny.  And the man who was so angry he drove over 30 pedestrians.  And the one who blew up Manchester. And the stabbings in Portland.  And something today in Mississippi)

That should be lesson #1.  But I seem to keep needing to learn it, over and over again.

BE SAFE.

Owl Table

The Other Version of me is Jealous

Walking down 7th Ave, I was wondering & feeling a glimmer of that other girl, who actually envied my career in tech, even the bad days.

Theater is harder.

In so many ways.

Day to day, drama offstage, money money money. More so than in the private sector.

Love Boat and Other Suburbian Reruns

Reruns are easy to get lost in.

You can belong to the 1980's time, with everything except the youth and the commercials.  Lots of the actors look familiar.  Mostly because they haven't aged.

When "visiting" the house you grew up in, it's hard to tell the difference between now and then.

There are PLENTY of reasons to keep TV out of your grownup house.

You also thought that you'd be singing during every spare moment you had alone in the car.

But lately, in the suburban life, stuck in traffic on the way to a tech job, you are asleep at the wheel. Of Life.

You JUST put away the Xmas tree (just before March and Mardi Gras).  You JUST set up the "big" screen tv.  It took months and months of you worrying about how big and how to get it installed on the wall and finally you just walked in and bought the cheapest tvs that were bigger than your 19 inch color tv from 1980.  $70 each.  You were in and out in 20 minutes.

And you've almost stopped dancing.

Just in time for you to go back to the City.

Spontaneous Protests

It's good that we are practiced at flash mobs. All those pants less subway rides were mere practice for tonight, showing upninnBrooklyn, outside Cadman Plaza, protesting & then celebrating the overturning of the Muslim ban.

New Yorkers ride in the same subway cars as people from the rest of the world, who lives in a bubble? Maybe those who have no idea what it is to stand next to a stranger and understand.

Nostalgia for Naivete

When I first arrived in NYC in 1997, I thought I was only catching up to a friend of mine who had already bravely entered 4 years earlier, part of NYU.  She had a head start on bravery and balls, on going to parties and drinking and doing drugs. Everyone I thought was cool ended up going to AA before they graduated college.

I don't regret all the drugs I didn't take. I'm glad to be ignorant of that, of all the stuff we do to ourselves before we even embark on our life mission.

All those dark kids, those who felt comfortable at night, hanging out in doorways, enough money to go out drinking & with money left over for cigarettes.

How cute we all were, thinking that our drama was dangerous. That the plot and the in-jokes were a secret we kept from the audience.  Only after theater & art going (MOMA) and parties where everyone was trying to shock everyone else, and everyone was trying not to be shocked.

It was the best education.  A finishing school for my later return to the city, My Dinner With Andre. New Yorker Sundays, listening to Jonathan Schwartz while watching the Hudson River from the 8th floor.

It was so exciting, we were all so young, even the dirty air smelled like electricty.  Before things were torn down to make way for glass and steel stripped of history, of graffitti and the layers of paint.  We enjoyed the wealth of a space that everyone else had abandoned. Until it got sold. Collective Unconscious.  Surf Reality. (Nada Surf?) Nada Surf Reality.

And Ohio....

Gilmore Girl dejavu

In this last (final) 4 movies of the Gilmore Girls, we find Rory going crazy & aimless (here & there) because she does not have a "real job" because she is a writer.

Even the crappy website which has even courting her turns out to be an overhyped flop. She returns to her moms hotel room after a one night stand (2hr?) with a Wookie. Engaged bfriend in London.

And she doesn't want to admit to being "back" in Stars Hollow.

Sound familiar anyone?

*There's even a Thirtysomething group of kids just like her, who have returned from the outside world.