stuff I think about walking around Gotham
Surrounded by so many people, and yet so utterly dissociated from them, I started to wonder – Tuesday, walking downtown to get my horrible hair cut – about this metropolis of 8 million (or 11 million, depending on how you count).
How many people in this city are madly, mutually in love today?
How many people are mourning so much they don’t feel human anymore?
How many people have woken this morning from their last night of sleep?
How many people will give or get a good spanking today?
How many people are going to the party I’m going to in two weeks’ time?
How many people in this town read my blog and wish they could meet me?
How many would wish they could meet me if they did read my blog?
How many people are unknowingly within a week of meeting their future spouses?
How many people have imagined things about me today?
How many people in Gotham are into the kind of tgi I am into?
How many people are walking around town today casting passers-by in their fantasies?
How many straight, unmarried Englishmen are there in this town?
How many of them are into tgi?
How many of them admit it to themselves?
How many of them are not wankers?
How many people know as much as I do now about stained glass windows?
How many people want their world rocked by new love?
How many people have a secret identity?
How many people will think about me today?
How many people walking around town right now will eventually make their way into my life?
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:04 am
Thank you for that, Casey, a very thought provoking post. For me it captures the fact that we all move in seemingly random ways through this world, but you never know what connections are out there waiting to be built, what new friends are there waiting to be met, how interconnected we really all are even if we don’t know it.
cdm Reply:
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:47 am
True, Eliane. The unknown connection factor is especially loaded for me because I married a man who had no connections with my social network. Of course by the time we married, he did, but when we met, it was entirely out-of-the-blue, no friend-of-friend, no acquaintance-of-former-work-colleague, no adult-neighbor-of-childhood-classmate, nothing. We never found any overlap in our lives. We were the first node. And it started with an email.
I was remembering this morning how 14 years ago this weekend, I was going to a 4th of July party, and I couldn’t stop my face from smiling because I had this enormous and life-changing secret – Marky. We’d been corresponding almost a month, had talked on the phone, I’d seen my first photo of him, we’d written each other stories. The reality and import of the whole thing had become clear to me. All the boundaries had changed, boundaries of what life could bring, of love, of who I could be, of what goodness and happiness and real-deal-ness could be given to me.
God: Will I ever walk around town feeling that way again?