Today was pretty much the same as yesterday and we finished setting up the store for the pop up tomorrow. I’m excited to see which designers sell and which don’t. I know which ones I would buy, but I feel like I definitely have different taste/values than the crowd in trendy, hippie, sometimes impractical Brooklyn.
On a mostly unrelated note (but is anything truly unrelated? A thought for your Thursday), I’ve kind of put my finger on why I love cities like New York and Bangkok and London so much.
I tried to go to sleep fifteen minutes ago and I had to close my shades. It was physically too bright for me to go to sleep–the light radiated through my eyelids. Everything is so lovely and electrifying that it actually keeps me from doing something boring like sleeping.
But mostly, it’s cities like this that remind me of why I’m so excited to be alive and have so much future ahead of me. The incessant bustle is a 24 hour reminder to me to go the extra mile, to do exciting things even if I’m tired, to be motivated and ambitious and hungry. It reminds me to keep outrunning my biggest fear: becoming suffocated, jaded, pessimistic and empty.
I can’t help but think that light is the most perfect metaphor in a world of imperfect metaphors. The opposite is darkness and death and oblivion–and two of the most feared things are darkness and death. And if people ever thought about it, I’m firmly convinced that oblivion would be too.
Anyway, I’m not really sure where I’m going with this but it’s an interesting thought train that I’m planning on pursuing further in the morning.
But to put it simply: I feel motivated like I haven’t been in years. I’m ambitious and hungry. I’m back to reading and writing and thinking about all sorts of tricky things. The credit is rather split up–a combination of some fortunate events, I suppose. New York. Independence at last. No burden on my shoulders. Some certainty about my next four years. And mostly this project, probably. And maybe the fact that I’m living on a steady diet of challa and brie (which I didn’t even realize was my dream in life until I discovered the combination on Monday).
Anyway pt. 2: that’s seriously not relevant but my day wasn’t very interesting so I thought I’d share with you the fact that I seem to be having the opposite of an existential crisis (not sure what that would be called) for once, in my dramatic, mystery-plagued adolescence.
Anyway pt. 3 (sorry I swear this is the last one!!): since I’m on a roll here I wanted to share another couple of thoughts–I think lots of young people seem reckless because at this age, death is often too abstract a concept to be feared. Also grammar was totally made up by humans and so were the shape of these letters but somehow as I type these in New York you’ll read them in your head hundreds of miles away exactly as I intended and that just absolutely amazes me and I really need to go to sleep now so I am seriously ending this post right now. Thanks for listening to my rambling and you should seriously be thankful that you’re not with me in person right now because I’m sure it’s at least twelve times more obnoxious.
I think I know what you’re talking about with darkness and oblivion versus light and the city. Most of the time when I am in the city it’s so wonderful– though tiring– to be surrounded by so many people with so much life and all of their stories. It’s kind of like being a part of something… Sometimes though cities feel overwhelming, like I’m lost, just one tiny dot in a huge universe. Which is true, but it’s still not a very comfortable feeling. I mostly felt that when we were in Beijing, for whatever reason. I just saw all those people who would quite probably never have their stories told and they would just pass into oblivion–like what you were talking about. And that terrified me. For myself and for them. I desperately felt the need and desire to be known and to have community then.
In cities like Memphis, though, it was entirely different. It might have been related to how people interacted with you on the streets. We would pass by random strangers who would just say “hi” or ask how we were doing. Not deep connections, for sure, but it didn’t feel like we were just these sole, lonely, alone little collections of tendons and bones and flesh all slogging our way through life.
So I agree about oblivion completely, but has being in a city ever done that to you? Making it feel like everyone’s just disconnected parts in a malfunctioning machine?
I definitely know what you’re talking about. But I feel as though cities put you in the best position to fight to get your story told–as opposed to, say, living rurally on a farm with fewer chances for connection. If I trip on a grate in New York, someone might tell their friend about it later, passing on that tiny sliver of my story. But if I trip in Labadie, no one will ever know. I suppose I also like the transparency of cities, because at least one person sees everything you do. So it’s much more difficult to live a lie.
Oh yeah, that’s a super great way of explaining it. And that’s cool to think about. Like I help pass along other peoples’ stories and they do that with me too. And even though sometimes it’s more comfortable to live a lie, and there is some extent of “lie” that we all have to live with just because we have finite minds, I think it’s better when we live as much in truth as we can, even if that truth is hard and heavy. So yeah cities are cool:)