21

A Mid-August Afternoon in Central Park

We will mosey over somewhere between four and five. I don't really care when nor what we had been doing before that probably made us late for doing nothing. You might trip on an uneven strip of side-walk but make it out alive. I might laugh a little. We'll arrive just as the sun starts to age casting a burnt hue on the beige buildings peaking out from atop the vibrant green crests of the trees and we'll set out a blanket and drown in the sound of the mellifluous air teasing the the leaves. I will take a novel out of my bag that I never really intended to read. It will only be there for me to look up from and steal glances of the perspiration rolling down onto the grass, causing your long hair to stick to your forehead while you read or write or nap. I don't really care which. Perhaps we will get bored and turn onto our stomachs, our shoulders touching as we compete to make the other laugh by making fun of the New Yorkers who came there just to entertain us. You will obviously win as I roll onto my back with laughter and get grass stuck in my hair. You might pick off some of the debris or you might leave it, thinking it's cute. Having succeeded, you might turn over lazily onto your back and stare at the cloudless sky while I take my long-awaited place on your chest, lulled into a hazy nap by the sound of your steady breathe, my head rhythmically bobbing up and down, keeping in time with the life-sustaining beat. The grass will tickle my hand and wake me up. Thinking it an insect, I will frantically swat at nothing and accidentally disturb you. Then we will try to become resting statues once again but the comfortable position will be more difficult to attain. Awkward moments will pass as I impatiently find my spot again but then I find it and melt back into your chest. And we will secretly tear up with gratitude for this moment hoping the other doesn't notice... only to confess it a short time later over beers and food.

This will become my recurring daydream and I will be blissfully haunted by a moment so ordinary it becomes poetic.

20

It's 3:30 in the morning and I am listening to the sound of a steady breath dreaming to the soundtrack of deep thunder in Indiana. I want to write something, anything, ideally something mildly profound or meaningful but I am at a loss... but I really could care less. Sometimes, you are entirely lost within a moment, a moment you wish you could capture forever. You are meant to focus on something but you just keep getting lost in the distance, probably smiling awkwardly through a haze of daydreams. Sometimes it is the entire picture that you want- the place, the smells, the angle from which you are taking it all in, the temperature, the dampness of the air on your skin. But all I want from this moment is the sound and the feelings it evokes. I keep getting caught in these moments that aren't necessarily mine but I still have them. This thunderstorm... is hundreds of miles away and yet I am experiencing it first hand... and it's magical. I cannot remember the last time I was able to hear rain fall in the middle of the night since moving to the nineteenth floor of a high rise in New York City. I have never been so privileged to hear it accompanied by the sound of something so peaceful as someone sleeping so soundly that they even start to snore a little bit, as if trying to rival the storm outside their window. And right now, I cannot really remember a time that I felt this depth of gratitude for living right here, right now.

Yesterday, while waiting in John F Kennedy airport, I overheard someone express their fears about Facebook... about Google... about the entire internet age. I keep hearing about people who proudly state that they live off the grid simply because they deactivated their facebook accounts and do not obsessively check their phones. But without it, I would not have this moment and I would not be able to savor it and I would not be able to relish in it and I would not be able to put words to it. Perhaps I am just enamored with the beauty of a moment, intoxicated with an orchestra of innocuous sounds and ambient noises that came together and startled me into paying attention. Perhaps I am simply just enamored. But for this one moment, I heard the rain fall in Indiana in New York. I am connected to a moment so trivial that it amounts for 30% of an entire lifetime... and yet it feels so meaningful and extraordinary and a little surreal. Thousand of cables stretching across hundreds of miles connecting two people in two very different places is nothing short of magical. I live for nostalgia ... but I must concede this moment to the future.

So judge me, reader. Pass by my stupid smile and my glazed eyes and sneer or smile, whatever reaction you choose, but I can guarantee you that I will not take notice. I cannot. We dream for moments like these... we close our eyes and pray for them all the time. With every eye-lash, falling star, birthday candle and all those cliché avenues for wishing... we shut our eyes and wish for them. We see them in movies and we scoff at them because we secretly want them - desperately want them. These moments that mean nothing and these moments we forget because they are so commonplace somehow expand into something worth holding onto forever and the fact that it is so fleeting makes it all the more sweet, albeit bittersweet it seems. It reminds me exactly of those amazing and perfect nights, driving alone at one in the morning with the windows down, the spicy, sweet and yet still cool breeze blowing, the soft moan of the music coming through the speakers and the constellation of fireflies dancing across the sky of black forests. This is living within a moment... this is what they have all be talking about... and what we have all been waiting for... and it is everything one would expect it to be... everything one would want it to be.