Every single day of my life, I wish we could do it all again, together.
I hate the scaffolding and I hate that it snowed the other night and we didn’t know until the next morning when it was almost gone. Somewhere in my phone is a little video of Sophie the cat, and she’s watching the snow fall outside our living room window. The soundtrack is the soft little electronic tune from the Playstation 4 menu screen, but in that moment it feels like a moment crystallized to be kept forever, a flashback played before the credits roll.
February *is* the worst month. And scaffolding is only good for when you need to walk a dog during a rain storm. And Joan Didion somehow just didn’t *get* New York until she was older, and yet we all (me too) read “Goodbye to All That” as though it’s some be-all end-all statement on the city... I think I read somewhere that she really fled because she’d had her heart totally ripped to shreds, and it was in that mood that she wrote the Goodbye piece. So, when she came back, decades later, it was to a different New York altogether because she wasn’t all mindfucked over some dude (feels like he was from the south?) anymore... Anyway, I’m terrified of commitment/terminal anything and I loved this essay. Thanks!
This reminds of a conversation I had in therapy long ago, when I stated I wanted everything to reach a perfect level and then stay that way and my therapist said, well, that's death, living things grow and change, why do you think you need to die to be perfect? I've been thinking about this ever since.
"Terminal" versions of things, particularly "terminal love," is a really fascinating way to think about life. It's a great little way to encapsulate the finality of certain things, even though like you wrote we have no idea if that'll hold; in fact, it usually doesn't.
"I always think that each next day is the day when I’m finally going to arrive at my life, but I’m there already, in the long between, rebuilding the ship from spare parts, living under scaffolding."
Love this essay and thanks for the February (worst month) gift!
Every single day of my life, I wish we could do it all again, together.
I hate the scaffolding and I hate that it snowed the other night and we didn’t know until the next morning when it was almost gone. Somewhere in my phone is a little video of Sophie the cat, and she’s watching the snow fall outside our living room window. The soundtrack is the soft little electronic tune from the Playstation 4 menu screen, but in that moment it feels like a moment crystallized to be kept forever, a flashback played before the credits roll.
I loved this one.
February *is* the worst month. And scaffolding is only good for when you need to walk a dog during a rain storm. And Joan Didion somehow just didn’t *get* New York until she was older, and yet we all (me too) read “Goodbye to All That” as though it’s some be-all end-all statement on the city... I think I read somewhere that she really fled because she’d had her heart totally ripped to shreds, and it was in that mood that she wrote the Goodbye piece. So, when she came back, decades later, it was to a different New York altogether because she wasn’t all mindfucked over some dude (feels like he was from the south?) anymore... Anyway, I’m terrified of commitment/terminal anything and I loved this essay. Thanks!
This reminds of a conversation I had in therapy long ago, when I stated I wanted everything to reach a perfect level and then stay that way and my therapist said, well, that's death, living things grow and change, why do you think you need to die to be perfect? I've been thinking about this ever since.
"Terminal" versions of things, particularly "terminal love," is a really fascinating way to think about life. It's a great little way to encapsulate the finality of certain things, even though like you wrote we have no idea if that'll hold; in fact, it usually doesn't.
"I always think that each next day is the day when I’m finally going to arrive at my life, but I’m there already, in the long between, rebuilding the ship from spare parts, living under scaffolding."
Love this essay and thanks for the February (worst month) gift!
Really liked this one.
Thank you for eliciting some ephemeral upper west side nostalgia... this post in particular despite (or because of?) its misery