American Dream

Docks, Stars and Horseshoes

I sit on the docks looking out at the slowly setting sun.  I try and focus, just me and my music.  But around me are so many people trying to do the same thing: watch the sunset in peace.  Why can't I watch the sunset in peace?  My foot start tapping, my fingers drumming to the beat of an off beaten tune.    I do the thing everyone does when they watch a sunset, I think  I think hard.  I think softly.  I think far.  I think near.  Splashing the Hudson waters with my feet I think about where I was and where I am.  What defines me?  When am I truly happy?  For right now, I am truly happy on this dock, right here, right now, isn't that enough?



As the stars come out and the sky turns violent shades of red and purple, and the wind grows chilly.  This is my second favorite part of the day: the defined end (the defined beginning being the first).  Just like the day began, it ends with a bang as the sun crashes into the mountains.

The Things I Carry

I sit in a bar, glancing at my surroundings suspiciously over my Sam Adams.  I was way too eager for this place.  A tired building filled with tired people.  A old man sits across from me slumped over his beer, his face devoid of thought or any emotion.  I am intrigued, what is his story?

I have long had an affinity for the old, the weathered, the weary.  Where did they come from?
As a child I had an incessant need to go to flea markets, to me there was nothing sadder than people throwing away things they once loved.  There is nothing more joyous to me than loving something after others have passed over it.  There is something that digs deep into my soul when I see something that has so obviously just been loved for so long it is obvious in the pages.

When I was knee high to a grasshopper I remember being in a grocery store speaking with two women who had to have been around 70.  As my parents tell the story, I complemented one of them on her necklace, she told me about how she had had it since she was a child and how it was her lucky charm.  Then she took it off and put it on me, telling me so long as I knew I was loved by someone somewhere I would always have luck like she did.  Its hard to say how much one instant can change a persons life, but I have carried that ideal with me.

Always Where I need to be
I sit on the armrest of my couch not because I had to but because I was somehow too excited to sit in the couch.  I would check my watch every few minutes only to be disappointed.  I was the over eager  child who could never sleep on Christmas Eve.  This was the second gathering of my people.  The first was after I stepped off the plane from Italy.  I felt bathed in love from my parents and siblings.  I had my favorite dinner of Corn Beef and Potato's (Which all deserve to be capitalized because of how delicious it was).  It was like I had never left as I melted back into the chatter of the table.  I sipped on my cheap American beer and talked about the world with my family.

Now I  wait for my other family.  The girls and boys who adopted be 5 years ago as a quiet and intimidated, rather tall, freshman.  I started busying myself with cooking to take my mind off of imminent arrivals.  As I was starting on a desert I heard a knock which sent me sprinting across my apartment.  One by one and two by two my house started to fill with people and laughter.  Something never change.  We may not live in the same place but our hearts remain the same.

Adventures were recanted by all both old and new, everyone joining in on the games.  Some moments last just a second and some live on forever engraved into your memory.

Coffee Drip

I sit in a coffee shop glancing around, feeling heavily out of place.  My skirt is neat, my hair a curly mess, and my bag made is made of leather.  I caught one girl glaring at it as if I had murdered her best friend.  Sorry.

I have wondered all summer; what makes up America?  How do I define it?  Is it defined solely by my experiences? Or is it defined by the policies and politics?

Hippy girl shoots another glare at me and nudges the boy next to her.  I don't belong here.
I pull out my laptop and start doing work, I guess my Lenovo as offensive as my bag.    Is my money not the same?  I can't enjoy my day outside in the sun with Soy coffee?  Fine, hippy.   You stereotype me?  Your actions speak on behalf of all your people.  What I don't understand about extremists is that they claim that society pressures them to conform when they are the ones who usually broach their anthem of choice first, what ever it may be.  Any answer you give if not agreement, is incorrect.

Why can't we all get along?  I planned on sitting her with my soy latte and enjoying my day and not so much stepped in your path, but I am the offensive one.  I have broken the tranquility of the space with my presence.  The ceiling glares violent red down at my table.  I leave my latte unfinished, the taste having soured on me.  

I don't go back.

I find a new coffee place, like the bar in Ireland I stopped in, as soon as I walk in the chatter dies down to a lull.  I am a stranger in someone else's home.  This is not for me.  The old society women crinkle their noses at my graphic-t and threadbare bag.  The PTA moms so obviously gossiping about someone's faux pas at school stop to look at me.   The idle talk ramps back up to a dull hum throughout the little cafe.

I get served my coffee in a tea cup smaller than my palm...  My chair is stiff and uncomfortable, much like the room.  Oh this is not right.

I don't go back.

I step through the door with trepidation, always an adventure to be found in a coffee cup.  I have been here before with friends but not alone.  I spy  the patio through the glass door.  Its bathed in sun, a boy reading in the quiet corner while two women chat about life three tables over.   I see a sign for live music tonight.  I see three kids walk in with instruments.  Another group with books.

I order my coffee which is given to me steaming in a giant white cup.  I sip outside as old cars drive by and neighbors wave to each other.  People make way so strangers can join them at their tables.

Somethings take work.  Somethings take exploration.  And somethings just fall into place.  I just smiled to myself as the sun set over the trees.   Happy with just being in the moment.

Balloons

I stand on a bridge at 5 am looking up at the flushing sky, watching the balloons rise above the sky like richly colored fruit.  The bridge was silent except for the flushing of gas from the balloons. A quiet hush laid out over the far reaches of the Hudson Valley.  The silence was shattered by the rushing of heat into the balloons.

They hung in the sky like exotic fruit, each one with a mind of its own.

I watch at they drift away until they seem to be colored marbles places in the sky, like I could just pluck them out.

Silence like anything can be broken.  As the town slowly woke up, car doors slammed on the way to their destination.  Church bells called out their ever present reminder 'to repent and to remember ones dues to God'.

The air around me warms are the sun rises higher, and I morn the loss of the quiet comfort of knowing the whole world is sleeping around you.

Top Down

I cruised through the valley letting the wind blow through my hair just enjoying the sun on my hair.

My  back sticks to the leather not in an uncomfortable way just as another reminder of the summer sun.  I drive for no other reason but to drive.  There is no destination, no goal, no place I had to be.  Blasting top 40 at an inappropriate volume make me happy although I know its probably not polite.

I went to the drive in alone the night before, enjoying the chatter of families meandering around and teenagers throwing popcorn at each other.  A occasional chill air swept around me before settling back into heat and humidity.

As my car spins through the curves of the road I leave behind the hustle of a city and am slowly encompassed into trees and country homes.  If I spotted a store or place that caught my fancy I stopped to explore or see up close what had caught my eye.  I was never disappointed by my finds.

 I drove further and further down twisted streets and wandering hills until I couldn't even recognize the landscape.  At a point in the road I pulled off to look over a cliff face, Kelly Clarkson keeping me company as I watched the clouds roll by.

So what is it to live the American lifestyle?
What is my American Dream?

Regardless of what is was or is, this was good summer indeed.