Cosmic connections don’t exist. People aren’t linked psychically.
Two events sport something in common. Two events that, by themselves, are perfectly random occurrences but, being in temporal proximity to each other, give credence to the possibility that they are somehow linked. Correlated.
There are no such connections. Only extremely improbable coincidences. There is nothing to be read into them.
It doesn’t mean anything.
Technically seven, but six months sound better.
I know that for someone who technically lives in Pittsburgh, I haven’t written much about it. I am still heavily attached to New York, and that manifests itself in what I choose to write about. This preoccupation probably prevents me from appreciating Pittsburgh more: despite knowing that this town has a lot to offer for those who seek it, I can’t help but think about everything I left behind and the perks of living in a larger city that I don’t seem to find here. My affliction isn’t specific to Pittsburgh, either. I’m sure that it would hold true for any place I would have moved to after having lived in New York.
(Continued)
Thinking about the proximity of ra ra’s temporary domicile not only to my old office but also to the World Trade Center site got me started on the following thread:
The summer of 2001 found a handful of us Cooper EEs working in the financial district. Tauseef, ever the social person, scheduled a weekly lunch for whoever could make it.
One week, only he and I were able to meet up for lunch. Having exhausted most of the more attractive lunch options east of Broadway, we went to a nondescript restaurant on Broadway and grabbed our lunches to go. It was a beautiful day. I don’t think it was terribly warm, but it was all blue skies as far as the eye could see (which arguably isn’t very far when you’re in the land of skyscrapers).
We walked a block west on Fulton, crossed Trinity, walked up the steps to the Trade Center plaza, and ate our lunches by the fountain in the center of the complex. The grounds were abuzz with people flitting from one place to another; benches and spaces were occupied with office workers dining alfresco; and there was a stage set up to the west where a live band, in concert with Mother Nature, provided the ambience for the midday meal.
It was a good place to escape from the dark and narrow passages that are lower Manhattan’s roads, from the often-littered sidewalks teeming with activity, where blue jeans and suits commingle in an epitome of urban living. Although you remained in the shadow of two towering structures with commanding presence, an abundance of open space was available for everyone’s enjoyment, and it was as free as the air itself.
Tauseef and I ate our lunches, talking about everything and nothing, enjoying the magnificent setting.
I dwelled on that thought for awhile, trying to recall the pristine images of that day without tainting it with memories of that which was to come only two months later.
The first few times I commuted from my home in Jamaica Estates, I would take the F to Union Turnpike and then switch to an E and ride that all the way to the end of the line. I’d ride in the first car, which would end up being the closest to the turnstiles at the terminal. At my destination I would zigzag through the subterranean shopping complex and take an escalator that brought me to the Borders store at ground level and the exit out of 5 WTC. Then I’d walk the several blocks to the office on Maiden Lane. Sometimes on my way home I’d stop at the Krispy Kreme and pick up some good old-fashioned artery-clogging treats for later.
Then I realized that the Fulton-Bway-Nassau station was much closer, so I’d instead take the F to West 4th and transfer upstairs to the A/C.
I still remember the view from my 12th floor office window of the tops of those towers.
I can’t help but think of how lucky she is not to have any associations with that neighborhood, that living there doesn’t freak her out as much as it potentially could. The site resembles a typical construction site now, with the exception that this is a construction site that inspires pilgrimages from all over. She has no memories to superimpose on the scenes presented to her today; her brain will not instinctively fill in the missing details whenever she casts her gaze at the skyline.
New York may be a daunting place to her, but she’ll be fine. All the same, I can’t help but feel…protective of her? That was my adopted home for four years, after all. But she’ll be fine. I know this.
I went through a friend’s yearbook from our sophomore year of high school. I didn’t buy the book that year because, well, I didn’t care much for the school or many of the people in it. 365 days later, well, I was enamored of the place, for better or for worse, and I bought a yearbook that year because I desperately wanted to hold on to my friends that were leaving.
I browsed through the things my parents were keeping from my grade school days–class pictures, awards, homework assignments… Right after I graduated from eighth grade, I wanted nothing to do with my former classmates. But I got a chance to hang out with a few of them at a former friend’s 21st birthday, and it was all right. Maybe they weren’t so bad. I saw our faces through the years, and wondered how each of them have grown, matured in their own way.
I listened to the noisemaker on my Super Millennium Snoopy from Macy’s play “Auld Lang Syne,” and I remembered bittersweet New Year’s Eves spent at Carrie’s in Crystal Lake, perhaps more sweet than bitter. I could see, very plainly in my mind’s eye, the virgin snow covering the barren trees of the forest behind her house. I could remember, as clearly as if it happened yesterday, the day a friend of mine and I were shopping at Macy’s and I asked her to buy that Snoopy for me.
“Kryptonite” by Three Doors Down reminds me of the daily commute on the F train–but the Pet Shop Boys’ album “Nightlife” reminds me of straphanging on the 4/5/6. Oh, I never perfected my Times-reading-while-straphanging skills (demonstrated by mastery of the trifolded broadsheet) because I had AvantGo.
I ask: is it too early in my life to be nostalgic like this? Or is this indicative of something else?
While I await the return of my pounding headache, I’ve got a couple of things on my mind.
I sit outside on a chilly metal folding chair on my balcony overlooking the rear parking lot, in full view of darkened houses and apartments, a thin layer of clouds obscuring the few stars that would otherwise be seen on a clear night. Inhale. Take in the refreshing smell of air relatively unpolluted by garbage, automobiles, and industry. Quiet, save for the occasional rush that marks a passing car on one of the streets nearby.
I look towards the sky. By doing so, I can push the images of man-made objects out of my mind’s eye, and only nature remains. I am taken back to the then-sparsely populated outer fringe of Aurora, Illinois, where a residential high school for the Land of Lincoln’s best and brightest sits, surrounded by cornfields that lay in wait for the developers’ bulldozers.
On many a night such as this one, I would escape the small population of adolescents, the beings that, with their insignificant worries and incessant noise-making, made me wish I were just a few years older. I would escape to a spot where I could tune it all out, where it was just me and the night sky. I would lie on the side of a hill and watch the stars, stars that are unfamiliar to a denizen of the city. There were no aural distractions. I was alone with my thoughts.
As I sit outside I remember how wonderful it felt to be able to escape like this. I remember, too, the feeling of sharing the experience with another, a single person, one capable of appreciating the emptiness just as I did. In those quiet times we shared, a great emotional link was formed. It seemed as if we had found the essence of life.
I miss that.
Earlier today, I left work early, miserable with a headache induced by spending another restless 90 minutes in the scanner bore. I caught a bus that travels along the East Busway, a two-lane road dedicated to bus traffic. Here, the lumbering vehicles can cruise at speeds up to 40 mph past scenic foliage that frame small pockets of urban here and there.
The experience tops the normal stop-and-go bus rides on surface streets. Such rides rank at the bottom of my good commutes list. After that comes riding local trains (here I’m thinking of the 6 train and the R train); then the bus rides on the busway.
But I absolutely loved my commute from Queens into Manhattan. I loved the stretches on the Queens Boulevard line between Queens Plaza (later 21st-Queensbridge) and Roosevelt Avenue, and Roosevelt and 71st-Continental Avenue. There, the trains rain express. Express runs, at least when the train is allowed to reach high speeds, are a thing to be savored. It allows for thoughts uninterrupted, the wheels maintain a steady cadence as it passes over seams in the tracks, and the lights that illuminate the tunnels whiz by your window, giving you the feeling of traveling faster than anyone has ever gone before. It is five minutes of pure speed, five minutes uncontaminated by unintelligible announcements over the public address system advising people to “stan clee da doe”…five minutes closer to home.
I miss that.
Hi. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it.
I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you all these months. Humans are so fickle, aren’t they? You used to be the only one for me, but I left you for another, one who was prettier and thinner.
I look at you, and I remember the good times. The times I brought you to FredFein’s to show you off, who was so easily impressed by you and your dazzling array of accessories. The Wednesday nights we spent in a darkened room sometimes watching the movie that was showing but really my gaze never left yours.
But I left you for another.
And now, I’m entrusting you to someone else. I hope they take good care of you, but more than that, I hope you will do them right by their side.
So long.
I am going to forsake the media on Wednesday. What possible purpose could watching the television serve for me? Its images are cold and barren. I have memories enough.
If I want to relive that day I have notesfile archives, saved email, IM transcripts, videotapes, and newspapers (one copy each of the Times, the Post, and the Daily News) from the 12th of September 2001.
If anything, my thoughts are with Matt, who is the only one I know that lost someone that day. How dare I think about what I experienced when what I experienced is so inconsequential in comparison.
No, it will be just me and my computer. Me, trying to find something to say.
For the first time in a long while, I was conscious of feeling numb. At the same time I just wanted to slump over in my chair, no longer able to keep myself upright, my energies drained from keeping it all inside. Emotions that have no real definite source, emotions that have no description. The only thing you’re aware of is that it’s there, and it’s strong.
Blank stare. Sotto voce. Single-objective clarity of focus. New York-style determination in movement. These are the tools by which I keep the lion at bay, retain control.
I think Rudy’s words still hold true: it seems like only yesterday, but also an eternity.
I think it was in a class on behavioral psychology that I learned that smells evoke such powerful memories in us because our olfactory nerves have a direct path to our brain. It was either that, or there’s probably some more complex explanation involving EPSPs and IPSPs.
I love the cool, crisp air of an autumn day. Or a breeze off of Lake Michigan. I…guess I would even list the rotting stench of garbage on a Manhattan street on a 90 degree day as also provoking strong memories.
What about sights? It’s easier to preserve visual stimuli than olfactory stimuli. Have you ever seen something that just brought back such tangible thoughts and feelings?
For the first year or so after graduating from IMSA, my photo album did just that. But now I’ve browsed through it so much that its power has diminished.
I try to take pictures that will retain its ability to evoke emotion with the passage of time. I also try to take pictures that will do so regardless of the observer–images that work from a common language other than that of personal experience. Like the greatest poems, I want to be able to strike a chord with people.
I digress, though. I happened upon an online photo album belonging to a fellow IMSA grad and, intrigued, I flipped through it, mostly looking for people I knew. And I found a picture of a friend of mine: we were close back in the day, but time and distance has a way of loosening even the strongest bonds, and I haven’t seen nor spoken to her in what seems like a lifetime.
As I scanned the image, examining her face, sensing the patterns of recognition fire, all of a sudden I could feel her presence. She was there, physically, with me. I felt her warm embrace. I remember that she was the only one who ever felt right. It’s that sensation that you get when you hug another. You can tell how emotionally close you are to that person by how physically close you allow each other to embrace. Some feel cold and aloof, with a noticeable intervening breeze; that is the hug of mere acquaintance. Friends are a little closer, a little tighter. The hug lingers.
But then there is the sensation of a key fitting the correct lock. It’s a perfect match. All the pieces fall into place. It is no longer just an embrace. It is a perfect melding of two individuals to form a single, unique entity, one that is greater than the sum of its parts.
It doesn’t happen instantly. Like your favorite teddy bear or stuffed animal of choice, the mold must be correctly shaped. And that takes time. You know that enough time has passed when it becomes more than just a source of comfort, but a very real part of you, an essential part needed to complete the whole.
That was the way she felt. Not just physically right, but also…essential.
The following was said by a friend of mine, but it might as well have come out of my own mouth:
…I’d say that, by and large, pretty much everything in my life is going according to plan, save for this delay in grad school, but nothing bad about that…
…and that I’ve worked to get the things I’ve wanted over the last few years and I’m rather content with where I am right now. The one thing that’s missing is, of course, the obvious. So I told myself I should do something to remedy my female-partner-deprived life over these next few months when I have some free time…
…but then I realized this isn’t a set of hot deals on computer components or a diploma…I can’t “work” on this.
And hell if I know where to even look in my current vicinity. Sadly I tell myself that I must wait, I cannot force anything out of nothing.
It just got me thinking. I told him that in some way, it’s a self-defeating attitude to have. You can wait and wait and wait; fate might work out your way, but it might not. Certainly if you were hoping to find someone where meeting them might come more naturally, such as during our four years of college, that had a slim chance of coming true; Cooper doesn’t exactly boast a wide and varied female population. But there was the possibility of the future. You were young enough to feel that you had your whole life ahead of you.
Now, though, when you make your way out into the world, the opportunities to meet people with little effort exerted become slimmer and slimmer. It’s up to you to create the opportunities. If you don’t do something about it, you might find yourself suddenly transported back to an eighth grade school dance, where you found yourself without a dancing partner as everyone started pairing off around you.
But it’s not time to worry just yet. There’s a trend towards getting married later in life, so there’s still hope–although I have a feeling that that doesn’t hold true back in the Midwest. And when you go off to grad school, there’s the chance that someone might just be impressed enough by your age and status as a grad student that she might say yes when you ask her out. From that point, though, it’s up to you to make something of it.
Me, I don’t worry, or at least I don’t worry yet.
I’ll tell you what I do think about, though. There’s a wall that I’ve built up–I can blame it on living in New York, but if you like, I’ll attribute it to other things–such that I’ve forgotten about love and its manifestations. Every so often, though, I’ll be reminded of something good about it; I’ll think of a moment that sums up the rewards of having someone that you care deeply about.
The most vivid image I have in my mind is of a time that I visited an old high school friend of mine, perhaps nine months ago. She was kind enough to host me in her dorm room (if I’m not mistaken, I’m still on her list-of-people-it’s-OK-to-give-keys-to), and though she was extremely busy with work and stayed up nights to finish it, she did come back to her room early in the morning to rest for a few hours.
I woke up one morning to find her in bed, asleep. The sun had risen and was gradually brightening up the small room, casting its golden rays over her as she slept. Bathed in that light, she was the apotheosis of an image of peace. I could not help but gaze upon her, feeling the need to watch over her, protect her. Alas, she was not mine to protect.
It’s the little things like that that remind me of what it was like to be intimately close with someone. And I miss that feeling.
Does religion have no place even in a pluralist society?
This country is based upon plurality–plurality of beliefs, of ideas, of heritages, of opinions. And yet, somehow, we manage to form a consensus regarding certain important topics. Humans have inherent inalienable rights. Pretty much everyone agrees on that.
Anything beyond that, and you get hotly debated issues wherein no progress is made toward consensus but you do get inflamed tensions, righteousness, and anger. Laws are enacted by our representative government that hopefully reflect the correct decision, or at the very least, the majority opinion; minority groups disagreeing with such laws tend to be vocal enough to seem that they speak for a majority; laws get overturned; and the cycle continues. People continue to argue to no end.
(I heard a joke about the Soviet concept of perestroika that went something like this: A visitor to the Soviet Union asked a man what perestroika was. The man took out two pails and some potatoes and started exchanging them back and forth between the pails. “Do you see anything changing?” asked the man. “No,” said the visitor. “Correct, but you hear the noise it makes.”)
Spinning our wheels…spinning our wheels.
This is, of course, a feature and not a bug in Democracy v2.1. We encourage many opinions, and we encourage the freedom to voice those opinions. With technology aiding the mass media, we are aware of the prevailing winds almost instantly. But when you’re trapped in the midst of the argument, it’s not unusual to feel as if something’s broken.
When there are a number of interests to be served, is not the correct action one of compromise? To be sure, each law on the books represents some sort of compromise–otherwise it would never have been ratified. That’s what happens when democracy is working.
But laws have been passed that lead me to believe that compromises were not sought. In some cases, it even seems that common sense has gone right out the window. This can’t be traced to any one person, since it takes many people to ratify a bill into law. I like to think that all of them couldn’t have had a simultaneous brain fart that made them lose their senses.
All this has served to shed some light on my own personal views, to which I realize I haven’t given much thought, but they exist nonetheless.
I get lopsided commentary on current events from the friends around me, who share some but not all of my political views and opinions. And it’s hard, because often times they will make a remark on some subject or issue and while I can understand where they’re coming from, I hear the multitude of voices echoing that remark as ridiculing my own beliefs.
I like to believe that some intelligent thought processes have informed my values and opinions. I also know that intelligent thought process have informed my friends’ values. I can’t subscribe to relativism, moral or otherwise, because that would ultimately deem my own values to be hypocritical. So what’s a guy to do?
Sometimes, it seems that my claim to follow Catholic teachings sets me apart from others. I become an anachronism, an unenlightened relic from another time. And because I let such teachings inform my point of view, I am unable to defend my opinions in even casual settings because not all the participants subscribe to the same axioms.
The odd part is that I think that everyone is motivated from the same core belief structure, that we all have an inherent idea of what is good and what is bad. Whether one takes the religious dogma route, or one free of such trappings, it seems that our conclusions ought to be the same. But then we get mired in the details, and all pretense to civility goes out the window.
If we would take some time to just see it from the other person’s point of view, if we could just suppress that reflex to instantly label the other person’s opinion as worthless, I think we would finally be able to get past this stage of merely spinning our wheels. ‘Cos, if you haven’t noticed, we’re kicking up a lot of mud and we’re just getting dirtier.