Hoodie with a kite flying, winter with the spring.

posted by Wellsmus @ 10:08 PM 0 comments

Good old...castle.

posted by Wellsmus @ 10:08 PM 0 comments

Only two rules on a Central Park Sunday, bring your bats and be happy!

posted by Wellsmus @ 10:07 PM 0 comments

Make your smile sweet to see

In two weeks I've been sick enough to warrant staying home from work, still sick enough to get comments from my boss about how bad I look, and now hardly sick at all. I'm not the only one who makes NYC look like a toxic enviornment, I met up with another Kansan who's been sick quite a bit as well. Colds, mostly, but in forms that include astonishingly sore throats, fevers, and coughing that wakes you up in the early morning. Is it being around all these people, the cold weather, or just stress? I don't know, but I always felt like I had my ducks in a row in the past, now everything changes when I'm in a city where even basic living has a competitive edge.

These past couple of weeks of being sick have convinced me that there are definite minuses to cubicles. The prescence of six foot walls make it seem okay to cough, then hack, then even spit the product in a coke can. This is, though, a bad idea, as your other three cubicle buddies wish that someone would fire you quickly. Even if you're of perfectly good health, you probably think that you can have some private phone calls, which you may...but they will never be private. I know well that the girl across from me tells her father that she wishes she made more money. She never wanted that to get out, I don't think. On a serious note, though, I have a window into the fascinating life of the former golf caddie, who's my age as well (our cubicle sector is pretty much grouped by age). It's seriously different from my life.

Seeing this Kansan was a treat as we went right across the Hudson to Hoboken, NJ. I never had an idea of Hoboken, because unlike NYC and its outer boroughs, there were no sitcom families in NJ. The Sorpranos are somewhere in Jersey, but I don't have a television or cable, so I'm not paying extra for HBO (one of the few unchanging themes in my life). Hoboken has something about it that says "live here, enjoy yourself!" Apparently the downtown has more restaurants per capita than anywhere else, and it's true, you'd have an easier time finding indan food than a hardware store. One of the aspects of Hoboken that I liked is the same thing I liked about Brooklyn, you get more air space. The buildings don't rush up to the sky giving you only a feeling of being really walled in. Oh, being walled in is a part of NYC, especially if it isn't Greenwich Village, people say. It's cool, that's something that I've said in the past. There's a huge difference, though, between driving or walking around Manhattan and being astonished and waking up to only a morsel of sun because the building across the way blocks it. Then leaving your building and being confronted by the wall of 5 story facades all the way to the end of a long block. And that's not to mention midtown.

There needs to be a New York exchange, a new one for people my age in my grey area of life. So what. I want to live on the outskirts of Orange County, commute 30 minutes 3 times a week to UNC while working somewhere, probably without much enthusiasm. Maybe I want to drive by all the pine trees, let those be the walls blocking my sun. At the same time, on the outskirts of Orange County there's someone waiting to be broken out and freed, in some way, by living here. His life could comprise anything from ultra corporate to used bookstore, but the importance is that so many people he read about did the same thing, sort of, and became successful here. Also, he has some visual memories of NYC, a collusion between 300 movies and 2 visits that makes certain aspects, like unemployment figures or a rather unwelcoming society, very hard to think about. So why shouldn't we switch? No trade backs, of course, but at least on the eight hour drive and the first week afterwards, both people will get what they want.

Spring is lovely here, but the yellow pollen wonderland of North Carolina I'm sure is even more wonderful. The sheer weight of the verdant landscape down there is so full of color that it'll even make children look up from their books on a long car ride. To make life good here, though, I went to the park two days in a row. A child came up to me today to hand me a ball. Apparently children, unlike their parents, nannies, and even dogs, haven't learned to fuzz out all the strangers around them. I also spent some time on the stoop, where I was joined by a Malaysian girl hired at the sushi restaurant next door. Pulling from my grab-bag of foreign languages, I said "Abakaba", to which she asked if I spoke Malay. Well, we all know the answer to that one. But now I have a reason to go next door for sushi. At least to keep someone talking who loves this country so much.

I had to put that title in, thanks to the Neutral Milk Hotel I've been listening to lately. Every title comes from a pop song.

posted by Wellsmus @ 8:37 PM 1 comments