But I can't explain why... why I do the same things you do, but it seems without meaning when I do it.
I see someone walking down the avenue with a bag from one of the artsy boutiques in town and think that person has so much more going on than me. I, too, shop at that sweet little boutique but I carry that bag like a pretender. I''m sure that that other person has excellent taste and a history with the store owner. I, on the other hand, pick and chose among the items that appeal to me rather than from a knowledge of the designer, the design, the story behind it...I build a very nice house around the stranger filled with antiques and artifacts and designer originals, art given personally by the artist, a happy little family with legacy china from the first generation to set foot in America straight off of the Mayflower.
I always feel like the loner. Sitting among a house full of women I have known for 40 years, I watch them talk and laugh and interact and envy their easy conversation, their quick smiles, the way they seem to relate to each other. I sit with my melon martini, listening to my best friend since first grade talk about her summer sailing trip around the carribean with her husband and the most fabulous teenage daughter I've ever met and feel that I have nothing of interest to share. Me and my husband? We rented movies and sat around the living room drinking coffee and watching in silence. Sail? We throw up when we see a boat coming towards us. Why we live in a beach town when even the sound of water makes us sick is beyond my comprehension. But this is no life.
At work I listen to people talk about family reunions, visiting with friends far away, taking road trips on the weekend (yep, car sick. no trips without a handful of dramamine and some nicely reinforced barf bags) and I can't relate. I have no story I'm not embarrassed to tell. Road trip? My sister and I spent 15 minutes lost in a parking lot last summer. We had two GPS systems with us, both of which announced "you have reached your destination", but we drove around and around the parking lot (to be fair, it was a really BIG parking lot outside of an outlet mall in Lancaster, PA) looking for the damn Cracker Barrel. We did not find it. In a PARKING LOT!!! It's a good thing we don't wander into a paper bag. We'd die in there looking for the way out!
My only child moved (from NJ) to New Orleans last year leaving my nest with a gaping hole. She had previously lived in Philadelphia for a number of years, but Philly is almost within spitting distance. Louisiana is a different story. So now I feel that everybody in NOLA has a life that, at some point during the day, will intersect with my daughter's life.
Lives touching lives...while i sit here at the actual jersey shore- dodging tourists on bicycles, walking in the surf with my poodle, drinking macchiatto at the Positively 4th street cafe with new friends, meet the artist of the week on asbury avenue and plan various holiday get togethers (already)with family and friends. This is no life. This is a pathetic attempt to fill the minutes with some kind of meaning.
Other people's homes are always of extreme interest to me. It's like being on an archeological dig inside a very small civilization.
Is there some kind of meaning to life, I wonder? My life only has whatever meaning I give it. How do others fall into living so easily? I'm still waiting for my life to begin. If it doesn't start soon, I'll be dying before I'm living. As it is, I'm just dying to live.
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