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How does one amount to one's failures? How does one begin to fathom the insuperable loss of principled defeat? It is a sick vibration to the core, and the entire ideology rattles in its cursed shock. The greatest dilemma has come to pass: to choose a life of desire, unhampered by any morality, or to choose to respect one's principles, watching an object of desire pass slowly by, waving its beckoning finger in a most welcoming respect. If you are like me, if you sacrifice all your world to attain what it is you want, then watch this slowly moving night pay its sovereign toll of tormenting starlight at my acceptance of defeat.
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I've concluded that Singapore Airline is the best airline that exists. My flight consisted of watching four fairly mediocre movies, but with total control of its playback. I also played Pong and Kirby's Dreamland. Brilliant.
Nevertheless, I arrived in Korea and am looking ravenously for phone numbers to call. If you are in Seoul then surely, we should be destined to meet! | | |
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now that my finals are over, i find myself with an obtrusive amount of free time...
expect many more gratuitous updating (for the sake of updating)
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Because of the curvaceous schemata of Manhattan, there are teenagers and college students snowboarding down avenues. They bundle up in their insulating jackets and sled, more than board, down the downward streets. As I observed this, I thought that if one were to sled down that at a running start, one could, if one had enough momentum, sled down two streets. The thought excited me but I realized that my plan could potentially kill me in two ways:
1. If I do not synchronize the stoplights correctly, or if I were to fall off in the middle of the street, I may be flattened by passing cars.
2. While I am sledding down, I can slide off my sled and spin into a pole and get permanently disabled.
Deciding against the audacious act, I walked on. On this same walking journey, I witnessed an unusual number of interracial couples. I found it fascinating that even with this city's liberal sexuality, interracial couples still follow a ubiquitous stereotype. The fe/male has either the same social-economic background or the same manner of upbringing. This assumption is based on the interracial couples I've seen so far, but it is only when the cultural identity of the female is shifted to fit or match the cultural identity of the male (or vice versa), that there is such a colorblind collision that may lead to romantic development. Such elusive things as morality and background familiarity play more significant roles than shared tastes in media. Obviously, as with all relationships, the most important determinant is the frequency of proximity.
In spite of my stoic analysis of relationship development, I felt at ease when witnessing these interracial couples. In those times, when they are so isolated in their emotive beings, it appears that even the highest social bulwarks are scaled with ease. They know not the judging eyes of convention, and in these rather Christmas times, it is good to see a common relation among all men and women alike: that of some powerful attraction that I dare not describe at the risk of turning this entry into a sentimental pile of Mott's apple sauce.
In Manhattan, because of the intense commercial competition, one may enjoy the feature of free samples. I put free samples in bold because it is a phenomenal rarity for anything to be free in Manhattan. One may enjoy a full meal if one goes to the right places. Why, the other day my friend and I enjoyed a motley dinner of Chinese, Italian, and Mexican samples. The best places to go are high-end stores of any kind (Bed, Bath, and Beyond gives free gourmet apple cider) and food courts of any kind.
There is a nice consistency of Christmas reminders in Manhattan. Why, nearly every avenue has some bit of Christmas, whether it be glittery Christmas lights or decorated Christmas trees. Even in the subway, Santa Claus men walk about asking for money in exchange for grappling children. But even in the thick of Christmas spirit, the New Yorker is still the New Yorker, and these New Yorker Santa Claus men didn't bother to stuff their bellies or put on white beards. They wore the suit loosely with a tipped hat, and walked around with their Brooklyn accents.
Well, that's it for this installment of "A MAD-hattan Christmas". I am here for a little more than a week, so I should exhaust this city of its holiday eccentricities before I am gone.
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Ah, Manhattan as it is approaching Christmas is pleasant. Pleasant relative to its normal, abusive and uncaring being. I walk down the street and get shoved maybe only four instead six times. There has been a record number of apologetic responses, which most New Yorkers never do. They are cognitively altered to believe that all the world is at fault if it is not shaped like Manhattan. The Christmas music in every store, little children in Santa Claus hats, and the intermittent snowfall almost has me believing that maybe the Christmas spirit exists in every heart, even the rude electronic store-keeps of Times Square and the knock-off salesmen of Chinatown. Perhaps under their wicked attitudes, they feel a certain relativity to all humanity, and that their rough personalities are but the caring semblance of "tough love". If that be the case, my love to you in return! You may try to steal my money, but I know that in an unforeseeably deep place, you wish to help me realize that I do not need those things that you are selling. What zealous self-sacrifice! Alas, what good men these are...
I recently got freelance photography work at a fancy restaurant called "Tavern on the Green", and I've made my record failure in any sense of direction by getting lost inside the building. I have never been so helplessly confused as I have been navigating the cubic street system of New York City. In my defense, that restaurant is quite large and has mirrors for walls, which reasonably threw off my navigation. But I thank the waiter in the sky blue tuxedo for leading me out and into the right direction. Prior to this, my worst case of being lost was inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have been here for nearly a year and I still have trouble getting to Chinatown and back without losing my way.
I feel the darkness of New York City enter my mind... I feel myself getting meaner and generally angrier. I tried to analyze these emotions, but I then I only realized that I am angry and frustrated over nothing, which, in turn, enervated me even more. My final impression of this city may come off as premature, but it is my assessment nonetheless:
New York City cannot sleep because every inhabitant is afraid that s/he will fall behind the accomplishments, material gains, or stature of his every neighbor.
Back to Christmas in Manhattan. There are merchants selling pine trees on the sidewalks of the Upper East Side, and because they don't have anywhere to store the trees at night, some sorry bastard has to sit out in the cold until morning. It is nice to walk by those trees, for they give me the warm nostalgia of the peacefully perfect Christmases I've seen in movies. High-end department stores are setting up elaborate displays of Christmas myths and stories, along with hiring Santa Claus men and prissy boy bands to sing music that they didn't write. As I was walking home from my French lessons, Macys had hired a boy band rock opera group, which, though it sounds cool, was disgraceful to all those who have the blessing of hearing. I felt that I wanted to dash up to the roof of the building so that I can jump off, ending my life by crashing into the speaker system. I would be a marvelous martyr.
The homeless folk are now singing Christmas tunes instead of only begging for money and cursing at us when we don't give them anything. The underground violin and sax players stop their usually depressed music and take up various tunes of not wanting much for Christmas, which, to me, was ironically amusing in that sinister kind of way.
Now I will go to sleep to the lovely tune of sirens and people vomiting on the sidewalk. But fear not friends, this is only episode one of my recordings of this city during Christmastime.
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