Friday, May 28, 2010

Primitive Studies of a Day Off

Sincerest apologies for the brief hiatus. I have been fairly preoccupied with several hurdles including taking an entire week off from work, UGH it was sooo difficult. Regardless I thought my 3 loyal followers would understand as there was really not much to report. Starting a new job has been a simultaneously relaxing and taxing feat so far. My week off from work has been spent taking an anthropological look at the various species that make up Manhattan's non corporate world. I always wondered how certain parts of the city can be so teeming and populated during the 9 to 5 hours. Besides the very obvious free lancer and service industry employee which you can't typically distinguish from a homeless person, who are the rest of these people?? Yes, perhaps my years spent being a tool of corporate oppression made me a little jealous of their chosen lifestyle. The days of vacation whizzed by and was frenzied with the accumulated pastime that these tiny observations became. I dissected the trust fund kids, from the ladies who lunch, from the self made entrepreneur. I felt like the great anthropologist Napolean Chagnon, venturing into the Amazon to establish himself among the Yanamamo tribe... but with a lot more bull shitting.

My impression was that all of these people must have an entirely different perspective on the city. A vast part of why I love to live here originates from my struggle to be able to stay here and survive. I never take anything for granted from the umpteenth greasy Shake Shack burger to reading the AM in the morning. What if I were to remove that element and unplug myself from the matrix as this strange breed of New Yorker has chosen to do. Extract myself from the nameless rabble of thousands that pump through the veins of the subway tunnels every morning, bringing the city to life. Would I appreciate living here the same or would become desensitized? If my day to day decisions were not motivated by money, would the city become a blur of ennui and loneliness?

While tanning along the East River I was subtle in my observation of a middle aged woman who was very blatantly staring at me as I pretended to read . She startled me with how ill equipped she was for our mutually chosen activity. She had no towel, water or tanning lotion and her skin resembled a rumpled old suede bean bag. She seemed highly territorial of her chosen spot and she exhibited this threatened nature by barking random bits of conversation at a woman across the lawn. Damn, I was Sigourney Weaver chilling with the Gorillas in the mist and all was humorous until this old silver back began to wear thin on my nerves. I backed off and left quietly as not distress the natives. Without a dispensable income, I discovered that I wasn't really missing out on a whole lot. Although there are countless things to do on a limited budget including museums and parks, I found my days were betters spent plotting my next move and handling all the impending changes that my life is going through...again.

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