August 28th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
(Uncategorized)
After a long heat wave it rained today, 65 degrees and misty outside, and I was surprised I had to actually wear a sweater. Normally I hate gloomy weather like that but it was such a sudden and rare shift that it made me really happy and nostalgic for San Francisco – in a good way, not in an “I wish I was there and not here” way, but just a little nudge of a reminder that there is no greater place than home. I know I was just there two weeks ago, but it was so hectic I didn’t have time to soak in the city fully before I was back on the plane. I miss taking the N Judah down Irving Street and Green Apple Books and driving down Portola to the Castro and eating food I can’t afford in North Beach and I miss our crappy, trash-filled beach by the Pacific Ocean.
I made an impromptu 70s KOIT playlist at work and listened to it on repeat, and then it really felt like home: an overcast sky outside and REO Speedwagon in my headphones. I wanted to take BART down to Powell and go to Boudin’s and read a book in Union Square until the wind made it too uncomfortable, and then watch an indie movie at the Landmark where Jo used to let me in for free.
This is a crappy picture John took of me with my camera’s black and white setting during one of our downtown adventures back in high school (or was it college?) that kind of sums up where I’d like to be.
And in case you’re curious, here’s the playlist I came up with:
REO Speedwagon – Keep On Loving You
Firefall – You Are the Woman That I’ve Always Dreamed Of
Hall & Oates – Your Kiss is On My List
Stealer’s Wheel – Stuck in the Middle With You
Dobie Gray – Drift Away
England Dan & John Ford Coley – I’d Really Love to See You Tonight
Peaches & Herb – Reunited
Hall & Oates – Every Time You Go Away
Loggins and Messina – Danny’s Song
REO Speedwagon – Can’t Fight This Feeling
Comments
August 6th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
(Uncategorized)
Jordan’s comment last night made me wince first, and think second.
He was talking again about the group of friends we had had for almost a decade now, and tossing out that casual dream again of one day all of us working together.
“I’ll be the doctor,” he started. “Gus will be the legal counsel, John will be the social worker, Elisa and Lorraine will work in the lab, Maria will decorate it, Evelyn will be in charge of finances. And you can…answer the phones!”
I was offended for a couple of reasons, the more obvious ones being that he had implied (intentionally or not) that I was suited for little more than a receptionist role, and also, this was the second time in the last two years he had made this remark. (I remember the first time because it had offended me then, too — it was the same scenario, except he told me I would be a tutor.) And of course, mostly I was offended because out of all our high school friends, I was the only one who hadn’t decided on a career path straight out of college and taken careful step after step to achieve that One Career Goal. This had been the source of years of insecurity for me and pretty much was the main reason I didn’t enjoy college. I think it’s safe to say that I’m mostly over that insecurity now thanks to having a much better idea of where I want to go in life and being around so many more free-thinking people with wandering paths here in New York — but the comment felt like he had reached into the past, grabbed the insecurity, and jammed it down my throat again.
But it wasn’t the career thing that bothered me the most. And yes, I chewed him out for it – maybe I could have taken an underhanded comment like that without a response back in high school, but I don’t take that sort of crap anymore – but I started wondering why it had ticked me off so much. And I figured it out, I think.
I thought about what if I had made that comment to someone else. Sure, if they weren’t currently on a One Career Path and I didn’t know what kinds of things they wanted to do in life, I would just throw them in some random position at the hypothetical company. And if they were to be upset, I’d be a little taken aback – after all, it’s just a silly idea.
But I had always considered him a good friend of mine. Shouldn’t he know what I want to do in life? Shouldn’t he know what I’m in graduate school for and what my job is? Shouldn’t he know what my previous jobs have been? Couldn’t he have picked any of those things above “answering phones”?
And of course, he was probably just joking about it all and I was just letting the insecurity get the better of me. He did say that he was just being mean, anyhow. But I started thinking – I don’t know if any of my friends back home know what I do. I’ve always been asked, “What do you do again?” and “What’s your program all about again?” I have to remind people over and over again that I work a full time job and that’s why I’m not back in San Francisco for the summer.
I guess this is all to be expected, and these are small details. People grow older, they work in different fields, their everyday lives are peppered with different coworkers, different environments, different people. You can’t keep tabs on everyone every moment of the day. Not everyone cares or has the time to hear about my nutty lunchtime work conversations, my latest cooking conquests, my cockeyed theories on God and space/time relativity, my grad school paper topics, my squabbles with the website owner who doesn’t know anything about the laws of usability. What’s important, I guess, is that there’s still a sense of trust there, and a history, and the knowledge that they still have your back after all these years.
Right?
But these details, these facts that run like steady veins through the course of our daily routines, they amalgamate and shift our personalities, our worldviews, our goals in this crazy little life. Eventually, we’ll be completely different people than who we are now. And I still have to beat myself sometimes to step out of the assumption that some of my more casual friends from way back when are not at all the people I remember them to be anymore. People change, mature, get more complex, and the less we talk to each other, the more details we miss.
I love my home in San Francisco and I love the friends that I have back in California. But as I spend more and more years here in New York and there’s less convenience for us to talk, how will we start to see each other? Will we be boiled down to a series of descriptive phrases, to be pulled out like a computer program identifying its target and pulling appropriate responses? “Brianna Lee: artsy, silly, likes pie. Treat as joke punching bag.” Is this the inevitable evolution of friendships as we spread out, find spouses, form our own families? I hear so many stories about the loneliness that comes with starting a family of one’s own, kiddie playdates as the only superficial substitute for genuine connection with a friend. Yes, we’ll all keep in touch, but will we really know each other as people?
Maybe it’s a matter of effort. Gordon and I physically see each other maybe once a year if we’re lucky, and yet we have IM conversations every day about current events, technology, opinions on this and that. I guess there’s a finite number of people you can have that kind of a connection with, but as the years go by, that number just seems to shrink and shrink.
Maybe I need to start blogging more about the life I’m living here now, just to give a better idea of the shape this life is slowly becoming (to the 3 people who still read this, anyway). It’s a paltry substitute for actual interactive communication, but perhaps it’s something? And my writing could use the exercise…
But this is where we are now. We see each other once, maybe twice a year, and at those times we pick up right where we left off. We drink, we philosophize, we sing songs on car rides. And despite everything it’s nice, having decade-long friends who have seen the course of your life as it’s gone through its ups and downs and arounds – even if they don’t see the track marks that make up that road.
Comments