Alone: A Fine Boston Hour
At 10 PM on a Friday night, despite my grandest efforts to try my luck at eye contact in a vibey bar and drink overpriced cocktails, I ended up where I am best suited for a modern evening: nestled, crying, and drinking tea at the Boston Women’s Memorial, practicing my stature, making moody eyes at the moon, asking silent questions to Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley, and Lucy Stone. I am asking them for wisdom on how to remain healthy in a sick society. I am asking them for wisdom in a time where wisdom feels inaccessible. There’s a reason I ended up here. There’s a reason why the onlookers shoot me troubled gazes, uprooted by my socially unacceptable puddle of quiet, yet visible emotion. There’s a reason when I first got here two girls were using Abigail’s marble dress folds as a tripod to take timer-photos. There’s a reason why even the most overburdened of stars recover the linked past, future, present: the linked quests of all humanity, far and wide, close and dainty.
Take a look at the scene of my current dwelling and you will notice stained glass, strange fabrics, lots of Ancient Greek references, a stuffed owl, misplaced salsa, Victorian and pasty indications of a previous Grandma tenant, a wimpy attempt at organized art supplies, and, to give myself some credit, a cozy atmosphere. What you don’t see is the fact I haven’t socialized for fun with another person in over a week, and not for lack of trying. What you don’t see is the frustrating urge to enter my phone-scape through my facial features in order to clasp my attention onto whispers of other people’s lives; to infringe limited attention onto things I should long have let dissolve. What you don’t see is the ongoing reframing of my mental realm toward a fashionable relatability of other humans rather than an othering of myself. To my right sits a book my ex-boyfriend recommended a long time ago. I’m drinking “Well Rested Herbal Tea” which is confusing because is it suggesting I will be “well rested” once I’ve had the tea or is it requiring that I be “well rested” to consume it? Or maybe the tea is just well-rested and the world doesn’t revolve around me. I’m 23 sitting on my couch-bed with half-peeled-off space-inspired nails after a summer day in winter and I’ve still got my socks on somehow.
Since my first truly conscious moments, I have not encountered another human with complete and devout belief in the solidity of a global future. My generation grew up with the Parent Trap on VHS, GameBoys, MP3 players, and High School Musical with parents who grew up with landlines, Saturday Night Fever, and perms with parents who rationed during the war, the “jitterbug”, and The Beatles. My grandma still tries to feed me 8-year-old ketchup. My upbringing was a lacing of envying friends for getting new touchscreens and learning Microsoft Paint alongside grandparents who warmed up my school uniform on the radiator. All who have “grown up” within the last 40 years have matured with an unparalleled mixture of decade-woven, cultural approaches to meaning in life. To say the least, a colossal vastness has unfurled when it comes to self-evaluation in this untenable and ephemeral universe, to our environments, to our communities, and to ourselves. The opportunity to explore purpose globally, to eat any cuisine any night of the week, to mindlessly turn the dial in my room to a higher temperature, to be indecisive about my fashion, to call a company to maintain my items, to research any person’s history online are entrees in the modern feast of choices and privilege. Yet somehow, the spaciousness can feel suffocating. Somehow the variety leaves me like a wing with no bird. Somehow the broadness severs, like the moods of the domesticated silkworm. So very productive, so very cultivated, purpose becomes granulated if not handled.
And so I often find myself losing myself in the civilized distortion of the finale. In the crux of night accompanied by a city-impaled sky and a pliable stillness, I can almost feel the elm trees relax. My hunger guides me toward an unpacking of my future luggage, to let myself be settled in and limited by the confinements of the inactive moment. To not be so consumed by new flavors that I forget the nutrients, despite blandness, of my grandmother’s boiled country broccoli. To be honest regarding my empty, yet endless calories. To consider enough in the uneventful.
This morning on Commonwealth avenue I have yet to see a person without a phone in hand. I am counting over ten dogs pee in the same urban spot. Not one word has cycled this air, yet I feel so many thoughts and so much consciousness rattle on by. Each pedestrian scuttles along with an entire unspoken web of love and heartbreak. I sat by the Charles River during the middle of my run and vented by covering my eyes so as to not see the skyline and only the water patterns, convincing myself I could be receiving reassurance by any water body in the world I wished to teleport. This hiding reminded me of a dream I had when I was fifteen years old. In this dream I discovered an inward land which reflected my wonderings. I could visit this world only through unconventional doors: portals in lockers, under carpets, closets, and bookshelves. I got addicted to visiting, escaping the human evaluation of school and expectation to arrive in a realm where I was already enough. I felt beautiful there, amongst lone concerts of wilderness. At the end of my dream I entered the overused realm and discovered a strange hue of sickness, haze, and musty colors. I begged for the world to return to its wealthy, supportive state; a cracking and fissured city loomed in the distance, capsizing the seeming forever of before. The city collapsed and the dream collapsed around it.
This dream trespassed on my moment by the Charles River as people strolled by, planes shook overhead, dogs sniffed butts, President Trump signed another document, bombs were manufactured, glaciers melted, lovers twisted in sheets, hummingbirds torpor, toddlers search for pretty rocks on a dirt road somewhere far away. I still wonder what my dream was worried about, to capsize it for my taking. Did I not caretake the land and that’s why the ideal world could not subsist? Is the weeping city a reminder that romantics may be truly liberated only in the crypts of their own imagination? As I age I am starting to gather that maybe it’s less in figuring out the dream and more in the dream figuring out me.
I work as a host at a jazz and blues restaurant. Kinda magical-seeming on paper, but the rugged corner I hunch in all evening holds less enchantment than advertised. The eatery is adorned with patterned curtains and intentional imperfection to manufacture a genuine attitude. This is an establishment equipped with creative staff, bohemian labels and authentic decor, greatly displaying to customers an artistic respect that unfortunately does not exist behind the poetic curtains . Apparently some businessmen have concluded that respecting employees is not a worthy investment. I can’t seem to shake the thought that perhaps it helps an establishment if employees actually want to be there. Speaking of investments, I am constantly miraged by the peculiar priorities of civilization. What I mean by this is that stripmalls harbor new polyester styles by the hour, elderly people idle in homes for the unproductive, expired and unlistened to, extreme content and tech jobs are liked and celebrated as environmentalists are deemed “woo woo” and overexplain why relationship to the Earth matters, and we wonder why the population feels listless, addicted, overflowing yet starving. We’ve made an industry profiting off splintered worth, pointing fingers at individual minds for feeling insecure in a world reiterating that you are not enough and you don’t have enough. And what comes are piles that are easily swept by the wind. Desertification.
Returning from the tentacles of the above tangent and unintended cliff-hanger, I have found my fellow hosts to be pleasant and interesting to interact with. I have discovered unique lushness in our talks. From rock music, moonlight craving, naughty black cats, twerking and “spicy white men”, to hooters jobs to afford student prices, online dating, and Spanish practice, working behind the host stand has accommodated many conversational adventures. In a particular discourse I had last week with a bubbly coworker, we chatted about her usual player-boy dramas and soap-opera-resembling strategies to deal with modern friendships. This fellow host, Camila, is a joyfully forgetful sorority girl, and often I wonder what it must be like to think so cloud-like instead of managing a sooty brain. Last week I reminded her, in the most empowering of ways, that we are all to die one day. I think this put some perspective to our congested menial job. Camila and Annie, popular diva and unpopular poet, hurdling through space and time.
In summary, this essay had no intention but to flow, to ramble, to scheme. Certainly not to come to a summary, but I suppose all things are perishable. My never-ending thoughts will indeed come to a halt. I’ve been eating far too many Trader Joe’s samosas and have spilled substantially more drinks than I have made love. I saw a drunk girl in the Boston
uniform (leather jacket and jeans) hurl outside my unit a few hours ago. The soil beneath the sidewalk hums as I binge watch period pieces and throw tantrums about the big bang that I must keep secret. I have a particular pair of pink pants I wear when I hope to show compassion for myself as I yearn for shive light and rule-breaking. But this is only a phase. And the larger order of things is longer-lasting than my overflowing, wild-informed, restless heart at this fine, Boston hour.
The statues outside will tell you.
