Design Time: Senior #1

Page design by Julie Huggins.

This is one of my favorite pages from the newest edition of 3 to 4 Ounces. I think it’s pretty clean cut and your eyes flow down the page; plus, I really like the blue color. (I came to find out after it was released this is pretty much his favorite color, so I think I did well.) With a full spread, I might have been able to make the page more visually interesting, but really I wanted to focus on the guy and his answers, not how fancy the page design is.

But I guess that is a sign of good page design, that is can be intricate and detailed and the viewer just takes it all in. Maybe I’ll reach that one day.

Spiders

I’m watching a spider crawl around the roof of a golf cart. Its web, broken from some force more violent than my own, floats from the edge; a single, silky string trying desperately to connect from one point to another.

Over time, the spider disappears. It has moved on somewhere that I cannot see, somewhere that I cannot follow. It goes on ahead, trying to find its way back to the broken web. Trying to fix the damage and make its home once more.

Spiders are solitary creatures. Like many insects, everything they do benefits them in some way. There is no family of spiders, hidden away from my eye. There is no friendly mother figure who keeps pigs from dying. They live on their own, using the world around them to the benefit of themselves. Kind of like me. Not to say that I am a solitary creature out of desire, or anything. I’m not. I don’t want to be. But I am a solitary creature out of force. For the most part, I am alone. Trapped, my web broken and not going anywhere, not connecting to any other place.

I can try and fix it. And I do. Day, after day, after day, I slave away on my web, pulling it into new directions, trying to find points to push onto so I can survive. But something comes. Something larger than myself. Some force that keeps my web from being whole.

I feel ridiculous talking about a spider like this. But I can’t help but wonder, as I look at the roof of this dingy old golf cart that’s been in the driveway for such a short time (and yet it feels like forever), whether or not the spider succeeds. Whether or not he finds his web or makes a new one, and leaves this same old stale place he’s been.

Or maybe he won’t. I see him again, some kind of bug in his mouth.

Maybe this is exactly where he wants to be. Maybe, this little golf cart that represents my starting point is really where he wanted to be all along.

Feeling Nostalgic for Imagined Places

I miss New York City.

I don’t mean to miss the city, I really don’t. While I was there, for the entire month that I lived there and the few days I visited again, I didn’t like it. I felt stifled, lonely, surrounded by something I couldn’t quite name; there was an all imposing force that weighed me down and kept my chest heavy and my heart hurting.

Some might even go so far as to say I hated it there: I cried to my mom on the phone a few times, regretted hastily moving in to a place from Craigslist (I am also surprised I am still alive, believe me), and spent most of my time outside my internship feeling sorry for myself. And when I went back to visit in December, the feelings of loneliness still remained. I was there for three days and I wanted to get out.

But now, almost a year past the end of my internship, I lay awake at night consumed by the idea of the city. The lights, the variety, the history, the name. I want to say, I live in New York and I eat at trendy, overpriced restaurants. Or, I see movies filming on the streets daily, and it sucks because those huge film crews block my path to work. I want to ride the subway again and again (which isn’t surprising, because one of the things I actually really loved about New York is the subway, and no public transportation system I have ever encountered can compare). I imagine the crowds of people and find myself wanting that, even though while I was there, I didn’t like the crowds or the multitudes or the way I could be jostled around. I picture the little park I sat in before work and feel a fire in my heart telling me to go back, to head back to the city and make my mark. I think about the museums and the music that is everywhere (I once saw someone playing a bucket on Brooklyn Bridge and he sounded great) and the feeling of life and purpose that radiates off everything. I catch a photo from Humans of New York and I think, yes. This is my city. I am meant to live in New York.

The New York that I yearn for, though, is simply an idea – an imagined reality. There are small elements of the real New York caught up in my dreams, but the city is so much more than a handful of happy memories. It’s dirty and rough and costs money. It’s beautiful, too, but there are so many layers to New York that I just gloss over. I want to forget, and so I do. I apply for jobs there and look at pictures of the skyline over Central Park and tell my friends about the great bagels and how when I was in New York I did this or that. All while forgetting the little bits of truth scattered about those memories, all while ignoring the nagging feeling that maybe this place isn’t the best idea. When I miss New York, or some other city I have visited once in my life, what I really missing? The place, or the idea of the place created by distorted memories and beautiful photos and movies and imagined lives?

Which got me thinking about the strangeness of nostalgia. How it hits at the most random of times for almost everything that impacted your life in some way. I feel nostalgic for college, for my friends, for places I’ve been and ideas I’ve had. Right now, I am constantly imaging multitudes of futures while hoping for something better than what I have. I want the chance to get out of this stasis and move on with my life. New York impacted me in ways I can’t express; it marked a certain level of independence, or risk taking, of adventure. All opposites of what I am doing now.

So in a way, I guess, my nostalgia for New York stems from my current complacence. From feeling inadequate about my life. I romanticize my experiences, allowing my mind to run away with nostalgia for some imaginary city that is nothing like the real thing. After all, I don’t think New York is the perfect temperature, great smelling, and cheap place that I keep imagining it to be.

Regardless, I miss New York City. And I kind of hate myself for it.