5 posts tagged “people”

GRACE: You know, Will has a theory about relationships. One person is the gardener who tends, and the other person is the flower who gets tended to.

which one are you?

"Albert Camus once wrote, "Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken." But I wonder if there's no breaking then there's no healing, and if there's no healing then there's no learning. And if there's no learning then there's no struggle. But the struggle is a part of life. So must all hearts be broken?"

- One Tree Hill (who knew?)

"because he was too busy falling in love."

there's an old blog entry somewhere here entitled "do you believe in fate?" a response to which was "abso-fucking-lutely."

i'm not sure if i'm a proponent of this, of fate. i do believe in fate in the sense that it needs to be supplemented with individual or collective initiative. but getting back to the actual title of this entry. my sister and i ran into AC, an ex coworker of mine and mutual friend of ours. while the above quoted words are not verbatim, they still represent what we'd discussed about one of their friends.

remember Weber's iron cage? well, we live in a society today in which everything - and i mean almost everything - is enclosed in an iron cage. spontaneity is null and void because we have to clock in at work on time or finish a research proposal. meeting with loved ones or prospective ones is a crap shoot in the sense that schedules must coincide. wanna go to the movies? hold on, i'm not free until friday, but that's only after i'm finished with my readings for monday.

in betty friedan's oft-referenced book, the feminine mystique, one particular portion stuck out to me:

I think people are so bored, they organize the children, and then try to hook everyone else on it. And the poor kids have no time left just to lie on their beds and daydream.

You gotta get 'em when their lights are on. Which light?

it's at a ripe age - childhood - in which the inculcation of work is impressed upon us. i had a lot of fun and great great friendships in middle school. but it's to the best of my knowledge right now that how much fun i had - constructing memories, visiting friends' houses, and secret handshakes - had an inverse relationship with my grades. and consequently, an inverse relationship with my relationship with my parents. and then we have my years as an undergrad. while i did learn to balance my time better, again, i had to cancel outings or going out to the movies (like tonight) because i had shit to do. it got to the point where i'd received an irate phone call from an old friend who took my absence in our old circle of friends personally.

back to the factor of relationships or what have you. meeting someone and having fun is great and all during the summer. and that's because time permits us to do so. but it's when the fall begins - when we have to move out and return to our very lives - that we really are just too busy to see each other. and it shouldn't be this way - this either-or proposition. that we have to make myriad concessions to evade and deter the evaporation of what could have been, right? miranda from sex and the city said, in reference to relationships:

Charlotte: Sometimes you just know, it's like, magic, it's fate.
Miranda: It's not fate, his light is on, that's all.
Charlotte: What light?
Miranda: Men are like cabs, when their available their light goes on. They awake one day and decide their ready to settle down, have babies, whatever, and they turn their light on. Next woman they pickup, boom, that' the one they'll marry. It's not fate, it's dumb luck.
Charlotte: I'm sorry, I refuse to believe that love is at random.
Miranda: Please, it's all about timing. You gotta get em, when their lights on.
Carrie: All the men I meet are flashing yellows.
Miranda: Or off duty. They can drive around for years picking up women and not be available.
Carrie: Then, they really shouldn't be allowed to get behind the wheel.

and as we adapt our minds to achieve the shoulds in life: getting that 4.0, graduating summa cum laude, getting into grad school, *maybe* getting that phd, starting a job that coincides with a survival budget, climbing the ladder to "success," how many people, how many memories, how many giggles at the dinner table do we let slip past the rungs of the iron cage?

so maybe, these days, it's not so much fate as it is timing. and to quote sex and the city again, is timing everything?

It may not be of surprise to you that the most colorful social transactions are made in the public bathroom - namely, while at work.

My peeve with work bathrooms reared its head today when I walked in and one of the older secretaries was standing by the mirror. Is it just me, or do others tense up when sitting in a stall while someone else is in the confined space powdering their nose/washing their hands/tweezing their eyebrows/contemplating their existence?

Then I think about the things I've had the misfortune of hearing/feeling while sitting literally a foot and a half from another with a sheet of metal separating me from them. And then while you're both peeing in unison, you slow down a bit or hurry your pace because you don't want both stall doors to open simultaneously and have that awkward confrontation with a supervisor from the Loan department who probably doesn't know your name. Do you say 'hi'? Do you smile? Do you discuss the weather or suspense reports while washing your hands?

Then there's the scenario of when you walk into the bathroom and someone is already in the stall adjacent to your destination. At the behest of avoiding confrontation, you linger a bit more, hoping that, because they had precedence in the bathroom, they'll be done washing their hands by the time you flush the toilet.

There's nothing more disconcerting than sitting in the first stall, peeing and seeing the senior executive's shoes to your right, while she's taking a dump. You hurriedly push all bodily fluids out to avoid 1) another awkward confrontation 2) breathing the air of uncertainty in the form of excrements 3) hearing more politically incorrect noises.

Then there's the soundtrack of the public bathroom. Foot-tapping, wet farts, the small pattering of shit, moans & groans, humming, sniffing, the disposal of this afternoon's panini, etc. How do people have a conversation in separate stalls while peeing/changing their tampons? That's something I can't comprehend. Social theory I can comprehend, this I cannot.

And what about the discussion of what you hear after you leave the bathroom? Those are par for the course - synopses of indirect exchanges.

The librarian in the next stall was farting up a storm.
The public safety officer was having explosive diarrhea.
The senior associate director has been sitting on the john since noon, and it's about time to close up.
She hums while she pees!

My sister and I have made a game of this, much to the dismay of others. At the beginning of our trip in Canada, she'd obliged in faking intense labor while sitting in the bathroom because a thirteen year old girl we knew was sitting two stalls away. Unfortunately, in an instance of what can only be described as a case of karma, said sister and I scurried through a small town in Quebec looking for a bathroom because she really did need to unload - food poisoning. And while I was nervously waiting for her outside of her stall, she didn't fake those sounds of labor and cried out "oh, nasty!" which was met by a room full of raised eyebrows and my uncontrolled laughter.

So is it too much to ask that I have the entire bathroom to myself while I take care of business?

Union square grass

so i like to people watch, that's a given. not necessarily watch to pass judgment, but to observe for its own sake. so upon hearing RG's congested voice on the phone, i told her to take it easy so i decided to have lunch and wait for DM to get off work in Union Square Park - which is probably my third home. and as always, there's never a dull moment when people watching. i climbed over the small fence and onto the grass enclosure that allowed me to sit and dangle my legs on the ledge beside the street where people walk past heading to the subway, barnes & noble, the hospital, etc etc.

so this enclosure i speak of is one of my favorite nooks, it's shady with the aid of squirrel-populated trees and the ground is rampant with peanut shells. it's also a spot for extensive PDA (public displays of affection). figures. so while i'm alternating between reading the Confederacy of Dunces and listening to John Legend, the Fugees, Wyclef, et al., i make several observations, some that come up to me directly. needless to say, there were just bodies, haphazardly strewn across the green landscape.

i'm heading towards Whole Foods first from the bus stop to pick up food. as i'm crossing the street, i cross paths with the woman who drew blood from me a little over a year ago (pre-surgical testing). she looks remarkably the same, not a day (year?) older. i turn around to make sure it's her; it is. she is wearing her lab coat heading back to Beth Israel, presumably returning from lunch. i wonder if she still has her cat, Leo.

there are couples all around me relaxing in the shade and eating tiramisu. just 2 and a half hours before i'll have some with DM. the gay couple next to me is so cute; they're sitting indian style across from eachother and eating salad and sushi. they literally don't keep their hands off each other - and i don't mean this in a dirty/sexual/raging hormones respect - one guy always has his hand on the other's knee, caressing him and vice versa. and they kiss each other intermittently, and it's cute because it's a display of endearment, despite them not looking at others. whether or not they're completely aware of it, they're on display because passersby are given an exhibit of the people sitting in this enclosure. and each time they kiss, they are met with stares of pedestrians, who slow down a bit to stare them down with leering glances. some have a disgusted and contorted look on their faces with raised eyebrows. two men slow down and look at each other in disgust upon seeing these two kissing and make an equally disgusted noise. one guy passes by and yells, "nasty." another man honks his horn and yells something at them. but these transgressions don't seem to phase or even capture their attention. and i'm literally 2 or so feet away from them, but i'm just enjoying the weather and my music.

the man sitting next to me lights a cigarette and is talking to a lady friend. his voice is hoarse, probably symptomatic of the smoking. they talk about their days spent and he reports that he spent hours yesterday sleeping on the bench on the other side of the park and no one bothered him. though, he claimed, had he been awake, he would've made an easy ten dollars. (?) he makes a call on his cell phone to the copy center and asks if his stuff is ready. the cigarette smoke succeeds in making me change my seat.

a boyfriend helps scoop his girlfriend atop the ledge. she is wearing a black top, jeans, and heels. seriously, now. heels to a park with grass? they proceed to eat lunch together and laugh and talk and what have you. pretty soon, they are laying on the grass, caressing each other and exchanging kisses. about an hour or so later, he disembarks the ledge and grabs his lady by the waist and helps her down. i think to myself i want that, that picturesque lunch under the tree with a mailbox attached at the top.

a man comes up to me and smiles says something incoherent to me while i'm speaking to JLC on my cell phone. i smile back at him and he walks away looking at me.

a cab bumps into the black infiniti car directly in front of him in traffic. all eyes briefly turn to look at the sight, even the two guys who are too busy kissing to pay attention to the world. the man in the infiniti comes out of his car and upon seeing his car unscathed, motions an "it's alright" to the cabbie, gets back into his expensive car and drives off. whew.

an asian dude with dreadlocks screeches his bike directly in front of me, snaps a picture of me with his camera, and quickly rides off into the street. my eyes still see the flash from the shutter when they close. i probably looked like a deer caught in the headlights in the picture. i wonder what he wanted a picture of me for...

two lesbians are lying in the grass together, legs completely intertwined and caressing each other's arms. one girl adjusts her pants a bit, so as to not expose her ass crack to the overlooking public.

a man walks by with a huge grin on his face. he is wearing a business outfit - not even a suit - that looks objectively horrific. the blazer is a golden-beige color with the shoulders too too broad for him with brown pants that expose his ankles. this was topped off with beige patterned alligator loafers. yeah. and he walks by with a giant grin on his face.

a woman approaches me while i'm listening to wyclef and mouths something indecipherable to me. i pull out my earphones and she asks if i live around here and where to find 14th and 4th. she is middle-aged, blonde and evidently not from here, sporting a thick and equally blonde mustache. i tell her where to go, and off she goes.

a couple climb atop the ledge 2 feet from my left. he climbs up and doesn't help her. she struggles as she makes two attempts at boosting herself up. sure enough, she makes it, albeit clumsily. they share a bottle of water.

some indian dude climbs up and sits directly behind me and talks on his cell phone. oops, it's time for me to take the bus uptown. i hop down the ledge seamlessly and grab my bag and head off.