road trip we speak in codes

One of those unfortunate things about growing up in New York City (with limited funds for travel) is the growth of this complex that renders everything else in the world as a smaller and less spectacular version of what already exists in the city. My favorite Thai place can top your Thai place. My busy tourist street can beat your busy tourist street. My Chinatown has more bootlegs than your Chinatown. I grew up in Richmond Hill, and for the longest time, I thought that all suburbia meant was having more than three detached houses in a row, and a 3x3 yard., and boy did I think it spacious!

Anyway, I am thinking about this because of my recent trip to Jersey these past couple of days to see some very fine people who are amused by my sheer awe that anybody can pass by cows in a meadow and not gawk. Furthermore, spoiled by the knowledge that despite being within close proximity to one another, Elmhurst and Astoria are two completely different neighborhoods, it's easy to see how NYC folks can get lost venturing outside of the city. Elsewhere, towns and cities are divided by exits not the stop you get off on the subway. In a serious downside, NYC folks (or maybe just me) have trouble distinguishing one town from another without the help of signs, and this muted sensory observational skill disrupts many attempts to note the charm in that woodland path one drives through on their way home.

But then I realized that while the scenary in itself has its charms, it is the people that give it the complete package. Which is why, driving back home (or Rachel's house I should say), with the driver's side window cracked half way open, I heard crickets driving into the highway for the very first time, and I couldn't help but think "What if Jiminy Cricket decided to hop along beside us, hitching for a ride?" and somebody said, "What if the cricket's cruising on the roof of the car for a free ride?" Tammy said to use the following in a poem: "I always thought that the sound of crickets was the sound of night". I just might take her up on it.

On missing someone, Rachel said to me (Can I share this? Is this too intimate?), "... it's kinda like when I don't see you for long period of time, it hurts, you know?" The surprise of it comes from hearing that statement for the first time in a positive note. A former boyfriend who's said more or less the same thing would often say it in a manner that "told me" how he felt; as if any response but guilt from me would be unacceptable. One learns, I guess.

Anyway, my mother asked me, upon her happy welcome of me back into her home (she misses me yay), asked me if I ever got lonely, and I thought about these past couple of days. I thought about giving Tammy my last peppermint candy and how people still like me even though my favorite foods are those grandmothers love. I thought about being terrified in the big beating heart inside the Philly museum. I thought about sitting in Rachel's car barefoot. I thought about tequila and how it's awesome. Somehow it led me back to my mother's question, and I told her that I get as lonely as any other human being, but I am less so because I am surrounded by amazing people who (I hope) love me and love the world they live in and the people that live in it enough to devote their lives to making the world as beautiful as it can be. I guess that's an oversimplication of their future goals and aspirations, but I'd like to think that what we are ultimately trying to achieve is to get underneath the tar and polluted waters of the daily grind, and find that it's just the surface that's scuffed but everything beneath is salvageable.

You must forgive the Lifetime moment I just created. It was an incidental accident. Really, I am just vomiting all over with glee, and I think I secretly enjoy being licked.