This year, I spent a long time reflecting on Christmas holidays of my childhood. It seems as though in the past, the celebration was more all-encompassing. I sat in my living room and gazed at a beautifully decorated evergreen tree and realized, at four years old, our freshly cut fir was relatively five times my height. The glass of eggnog poured by my mother filled a mug so large, I could barely grasp it within my meager grip and and when eagerly sipping this sweet novelty, it successfully covered my entire face. We toasted marshmallows in our home fireplace and I timidly offered a long, thin stick as a barrier between myself and my carefully secured treat, which was lapped by the flames of a fire twice my size.
I tried to picture a room, scaled to accommodate my adult proportions, filled with beautifully wrapped boxes that were large enough to stand in, trees tall enough to play beneath the boughs, and unlimited challenges presented in obstacles around every corner. Massive cookies in jars just higher than reach are decorated with festive icing and sprinkles and present the omnipresent incentive to build stairs to the countertop. The prize, I should note, by equal scale today, would be a cookie the size of a dinner plate.
Whispered rumors of Santa Clause and his flying reindeer kept me awake during this winter month, but in retrospect I have trouble understanding how I was able to sleep for the remaining eleven. The entire world poses as a playground to a child, because in addition to toys and fantasy and make-believe, every day objects are simply so large in comparison that it is hard to not acknowledge this real life fun house.
I do my best to carry the whimsy of a child in my every day life. It would be a shame to overlook this forgotten magic, or to abandon the belief that all the world was made for our entertainment. The trick to adulthood is to maintain this optimism when the conditions are not as ideal. When restaurants do not offer, in addition to a meal, a small prize and perhaps a jungle gym or slide to climb while waiting for the food.
There are special secrets for adults, too. It is an every day scavenge to find them, and the treasure is perhaps even more fulfilling on account of the arousing and challenging pursuit.
See you soon, NYC!
But I am really proud of this broad……
Last day in NYC till twenty ten.
Homeward bound and in the highest spirits!
With the help of Hanna Barbera and Aldous Huxley, creators of The Jetsons and A Brave New World, respectively, ideals of the future are manufactured and instilled in our minds and loom in impending doom, as always, just around the corner. Permanently affixed as mere premonitions, these concepts are too enveloped in their placement as “the future” to be recognized by society as they approach our lives and appear in our surroundings with increasing omnipresence. Barbera and Huxley may have been incredible story tellers, however more notably should be viewed in their role as shamans of the future. They envisioned a world and painted it for us in 24-bit color and equally variegated literature. They taught us to anticipate a space age filled with highly advanced technological gadgets, populated by a pharmaceutically complacent and sedated humanity.
While speculating over these predictions, I use the universal digital library of information popularly known as Google to research such concepts further. Upon viewing the results for the search terms “The Jetsons,” I find myself in the dull and seemingly prehistoric present day, fantasizing about robotic devices and clever technological inventions. I set my laptop computer aside when interrupted by a call on my iPhone, but return at once upon completion of my conversation with a friend in California, ignorant of the irony in my eagerness to continue researching “the future”.
When I read A Brave New World, I imagined an existence as far from the present as it is from reality. Not dissimilar to the books I read about the future and programs I watched supporting its allure, I was entirely void of cognizance in a world which simultaneously fulfilled its prophecies.
My dismal mood is accredited to these revelations. Aside from the fact that in many ways, modern technology has highly surpassed such predictions of the future, I am more so affected by my contemplation of the Soma pill used to sedate and resolve discontentment.
Modern medicine has managed to scratch the branded s-o-m-a from the infamous pills and restructure both their appearance and appeal. They are successfully camouflaged and hide in their masquerade behind mirrors of medicine cabinets, nestled in the pockets of troubled teens, or beneath the bottomless drawers of their equally plagued predecessors. No, I am not against pharmaceutical drugs or psychosomatic medicines. I am, however, highly against their abuse.
We can determine the termination of our involvement with The Jetsons by a simple touch of a button, or evade this Brave New World through the closing of a book. We think nothing more of these fantastic ideas in our daily lives when taking pills to slightly soften the reality of the day, or alternatively, to avoid it altogether.
I have lost my two greatest friends to abuse of prescription pharmaceutical pills. Science has progressed from fiction to fact and it is with this realization that I anxiously await the sequel to these foreboding and consummate predictions.
We have created a society we cannot endure with sobriety. I am left to wonder how all of this might one day be reversed. If only there were some sort of pill …
Sharing separate articles of a two-piece ensemble, I pose with a best friend on the eve of her departure for an engagement and new life with fiance in Argentina. She wears her favorite platforms, I wear her patchwork Pradas, and we celebrate a momentous, if temporary, visit among friends. With increasing progression, I watch as my closest disperse across the globe. It seems the farther they go and the further they evolve, the harder (and for this exception I permit such a colloquial expression), it tugs at my heartstrings.
I feel a paper map is in order, one that I’ll adorn with stars as new places transform from anonymous bullets to tender homes. I’ll seek comfort in this constellation and delight in the formation of patterns, no matter how dispersed, we will collectively form across a sprawling and infinite sky.
Congratulations Miss, soon to be Mrs, Hayden Lewis!
My friend Phil exhibited his artwork tonight at the Andrew Edlin Gallery, and never before have I been so happy to arrive at such a crowded venue. As a result of an alarmingly enormous turnout, the gallery was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with a line out the door and a body heat induced temperature fogging the icy windows.
It was the coldest day yet in New York City, and as no shock to any that know me, I was inappropriately clothed in a third of the required and sensible amount of attire.
I have been forgoing coats for the sake of an outfit for as long as I can remember. In the sixth grade, I actually had a principal call my mother to offer her charitable donation of a warm jacket. This call was received much to my mother’s embarrassment, as my closet was filled with countless adequate and untouched forms of armor for the cold.
Tonight was no exception, however no matter the chill to my bare legs, at least I was able to incorporate a matching hat….
New York Winter, I approach you with open arms, bare legs, and an invitation for a true challenge.
