There’s always that one little corner of your apartment that will make you smile when you look at it and no matter how ugly the rest of your furniture is, it will always make you feel like home. Sometimes it’s the little things that count.
Greek Mothers
‘When you’re Greek, you make decisions not by asking “what would Jesus do?” but rather “what will my mother use to kill me if she found out about this?”’
A friend of mine said this to me today after I told her that the only reason I’m still at my desk and haven’t quit my job and made a run for the hills was because my mother would murder me.
The Greek mother stereotype of overfeeding, smothering and guilt-tripping her kids is often exaggerated. But not by very much. For instance, every weekend I go back home, my own mother prepares a zillion meals, and watches my plate like a hawk. ‘You’re only having 3 potatoes. What’s the matter with you?’ The answer ‘I don’t want any more’ is not satisfactory; there needs to be a reason. ‘Why don’t you want any more? Are you sick?’ And of course there’s the standard ‘Where are you going? Who are you going with? Are you going to be late? Wear a jacket. Don’t walk around barefoot. You’ll catch pneumonia.’ My own mother once called me at 3 am when I was out (at age 26, mind you) to tell me that she couldn’t sleep so could I please come home?
So yeah, Greek mothers have wormed their way into our heads, shooed the perfectly acceptable conscience out of the way, redecorated, and made themselves comfortable. And a lot of times, the voice of a Greek mother is better at keeping you from making shitty decisions than the voice of your conscience. Perhaps because it’s like 8 decibels louder. But what happens when that voice becomes so overpowering that your own voice gets lost in the racket? When making major life decisions goes from ‘what do I want?’ to ‘what would my mother be happy with?’
That’s where the lines get rather blurred, the voices blend, and you’re left wondering whether this decision you just made was really yours. The danger, however, comes when you eventually stop trying, give up control of the wheel and just blame every outcome of your life on your parents, a situation which is all too easy to end up in. There’s a moment where the line must be drawn, and your voice has to come out louder and clearer than that of your mother’s. And believe me, for a Greek kid, sometimes that’s the hardest shit you’ll ever have to do.
‘Next video should be shot on the moon. With hookers’
I wish I could instagram how heavenly this smells.
happy 71st, Mr Zimmerman
It felt a little weird being back in New York. On my first day of walking around, exploring, trying to retrace my steps, the initial dread I experienced upon moving there all came flooding back. I was a little intimidated, a little nervous, a little scared. Gradually, my steps grew bolder and I ventured into my old neighborhood. Sitting in the park, listening to the hustle and bustle, and the cheery jazz band off to the side, I remembered how I had spent most of my days there, meeting new people and having some of the longest, deepest conversations of my life. I didn’t do very much on my visit. Just being there was enough. I had missed it; the fumes, the smell of piss and all the concrete. It was New York and it was MY New York and it made me ache terribly.
The most important debate of all
Blackberry vs iPhone. Obviously.
I recently made The Big Switch and realized just how much I miss my clunky old Blackberry this morning when I overslept because my alarm didn’t go off because the iPhone had gone and died. See, the Blackberry NEVER died. It would beep loudly to warn me of a low battery, and its blinking red light would blink a pale, sickly, yellow, but it kept on fighting until there was just no more juice, at which point it would just lose signal. It wouldn’t die, however. It would still blink and it would still stay strong enough to wake you up in the morning. The iPhone, quite simply, doesn’t give a shit whether or not you wake up in the morning. Just like it doesn’t give a shit if you miss an important email or text, because there’s no incessant blinking red light to warn you of recent activity. Nor does it particularly care if you send out a text that reads like yoi sre a duslrxic chulfd.
But then there is Instagram and Angry Birds and Cut the Rope and Google Maps where the little blue dot actually moves along with you and you can talk to Siri and amuse yourself whenever you’re feeling lonely so meh, fair enough.
Rain Delay
I have a slight obsession with the Washington Square Park piano man and was sorely disappointed not to have caught him this last visit.
The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.
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By that definition, we should all be working for Mr. Zuckerberg. And by working I mean stalking old classmates to see how fat they’ve become.
Where Children Sleep
Chills.
