Leaving is My Thing

This is my last post from New York. As anyone who speaks to me knows, I've always hated New York. But it isn't actually New York I hate, it's just standing still. As my friend Becca pointed out to me this past Tuesday when I said goodbye to her, everyone has a thing that characterizes them. Mine is that I leave. I leave places. I swoop in somewhere, stay for a bit, get restless and then leave. Today is the day I leave again. This time I am actually leaving something behind in New York. The people that I have met here this time around are unforgettable. I have met so many more people than I have in over 4 years prior. They are incredible and I will miss them, but I can't ever go against my nature. Death, Taxes, and Craig leaving.

So long New York. Hopefully I won't see you soon. Hopefully I will see the people I met here sooner than I see New York!

Calcification of Life

It's odd how we become numb sometimes. It makes you feel like a sociopath; the fact that at some points in your life, nothing can make you care. Not only can nothing make you happy, but nothing can make you sad or angry either. Sometimes it may last for a week, sometimes a month, and sometimes a couple seconds or a minute, but each time it does, it makes you pine for depression or rage. So often we forget that there is always something worse than depression, and that is not feeling anything at all.

Retrograde calcification of your feelings is almost worse than strictly numbness in the present. It makes you feel like a waste of life sometimes even though logically you know better. To think that looking back on your fondest of memories in a period of numbness and feeling that same numbness rather than the nostalgia you were looking for. It is enough to make you think that you never felt anything at all.

On the other hand, this kind of calcification of the heart makes everything that much more intense when the feelings come rushing back to the surface.

Drowning in a Canoe

eMedicinehealth.com tips for drowning prevention and tips for self-care for drowning. I am not making this up.


Drowning tips for self-care

Self-care for saving a drowning victim at home: Use a long stick to reach the victim, if no stick is available, bring a canoe alongside the victim and tow the victim to shore. Whose house has a shore?! And where did the canoe come from?! And how do you perform self-care on another drowning victim other than. . .yourself?!

To prevent drowning: if in doubt, stay out of the water. WOW! why didn't I think of that? IF i absolutely need water to survive though, what can I do to prevent drowning?

Cover or empty all large containers of water to prevent a small child from falling in. I usually like to keep my shark tank open and available for my 3-year old nephew. Phew, disaster averted!

Best Website ever. I came across this while actually curious as to what happens to a drowning victim and inadvertently ran into hilarity.

Different Strokes

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal"
~Albert Camus

I've never been a very big proponent of being normal. To be fair, though, normalcy is generally overrated by the normal and underrated by the abnormal. A certain amount of normalcy must be present in social interactions simply to put people at ease and be comfortable. The problem with this for abnormal people like me is that it takes a large amount of effort to appear normal with people who don't know me well. Most people generally don't understand this energy and why it takes effort to meet someone for the first time or even hang out with someone I just met. Sometimes I actually have to remind myself to get over it and go hang out with someone that I want to see but am nervous about its awkwardness.

I simultaneously wish I would get over it and that others could see the energy that some have to expend simply to not appear strange.

Universal Language

There is always a delicate balance between letting go of history for progress and keeping traditions that ground you. I've been to countries, specifically China, that were forced to destroy their history and traditions in favor of progress by the order of Mao Zedong. The only good by-product of the atrocity of the cultural revolution is that it achieved its desired effect. China has advanced; rapidly, in many ways because of it.

Keeping in mind that I have seen the devastation of something as brutal as the remnants of the Cultural Revolution, I have actually been thinking lately of the efficacy and the benefits of a universal language. I keep on coming to the same conclusion.

While there would be a ridiculous amount of tradition and diversity lost in the world as a result, I just keep on seeing the benefits of a universal language outweighing the costs. When the benefits are such intangibles as better understanding by infinite magnitudes, efficiencies beyond your wildest dreams, or tangible things such as costs and lack of translation needs, I can't quite think of many drawbacks that really trounce these kinds of benefits.

The only drawback that I really put stock in is that it would make the world marginally less interesting.

Metamorphosis

Welcome to your life. There's no turning back.

There's always looking forward. Too often we let our past dictate who we become.

Our lives are not a confluence of the events that we have already performed. Our story is interactive.

Too often we forget that we have a choice. Too often we treat our lives like a freight train; on a single track trucking toward inevitability.

Now is the time to decide that today is not just another day.

Now is the moment to do something you are afraid of.

Now is the second to change your routine.

Choose to have a choice. Partake in your destiny. Act in your play.

Coffee Beeswax

I'm sitting in a coffee shop with half a bagel and a full cup of coffee. I'm sitting at the bar facing the front window looking out at a gorgeous sun-filled day and the sun is glaring back in at me. The coffee is steaming right underneath my chin and it is so fresh that there is still a plethora of oxidizing bubbles surfing on the surface.

I look down into my coffee and see to my surprise, myself looking back at me. The sun is just right and the angle is just so. I see a thousand versions of myself in the reflection of each and every bubble. A honeycomb of me that moves in unison. With the black of the coffee as a background and my black sweater's collar creeping into the field, I feel like I'm in a music video of the 1980's but one thousand times over. It's like a series of parallel universes in which I am performing the beginning scene of Bohemian Rhapsody. Or at the very least, a Peter Gabriel video.

And of course, being who I am, I feel the need to start making funny faces in the reflections.

Now the bubbles have migrated to the sides of the cup. You'd think that would ruin it, but it only makes it better. Now there is a huge reflection of myself in the pool of coffee in the middle surrounded by a multitude of bubbles hugging the lip of the mug still reflecting a thousand versions of myself. Of course at this point, I start singing the beginning of Bohemian Rhapsody into my coffee cup. The people here must think I'm insane...and they'd be right!