Three

Yesterday was my cousin’s daughter’s third birthday party. She’s so adorable — she has rosy cheeks, a big smile, and so much personality. Almost every present was Barbie-related.

I got to meet my (female) cousin’s new boyfriend; he was tall and strikingly handsome, with a shaved head, a goatee, an earring in each ear, a ring on his finger, a gold and silver watch on his wrist, and a gold cross around his neck. He was wearing a crisp white button-down shirt with the top button opened, tucked into a pair of black pants, fastened by an Armani belt with a silver buckle in the shape of the letters AXI. He spent much of the afternoon cooking. If he weren’t my cousin’s boyfriend, I would have sworn he was gay.

This small party had quite a cast of characters. Between my cousin’s throaty-voiced Italian friend, her friend’s darkly attractive, quiet Italian husband Carmine, her overly chatty other friend, and the other friend’s father, Tony, a gruff, retired window installer, I felt like I was on an episode of “The Sopranos.” If a casting director had been there, they all would have been hired.

I didn’t tell anyone what I was thinking, but I didn’t have to. Afterwards, we were back at my parents’ house, and my mom said to me, “Didn’t you sort of feel like you were on an episode of ‘The Sopranos’ this afternoon?”

I was watching my baby cousin run around the room, playing with her toys, yammering with everyone, and I couldn’t believe she was already three. It made me kind of sad. Then I thought, wait — she’s still so young. In ten years, which is a long ways away, she’ll still be only 13. She has a long, long childhood ahead.

When you’re a kid, time doesn’t seem to pass; you live in a vast expanse of timelessness. You’re a kid, you’ve always been a kid, you’ll always be a kid. On family trips, it’s your role to sit in the back seat of the car while other people do mysterious adult things up front. Your role is to go to school and encounter new ideas every day. There’s no need to think about the future, and in fact, the future isn’t even on your radar screen; because whenever it may come — if it comes at all — it’s still a long, long way off.

New York

Riding the D train back from Brooklyn to Manhattan at night, rushing over the East River as the Manhattan skyline looms closer and closer… a feeling of duality. I’m still in New York City, but I’m seeing the Manhattan skyline.

On Saturday afternoon I was at a friend’s apartment in an area of Brooklyn called Midwood. From the World Trade Center I took the N train five stops and the D train twelve more stops. Further and further into Brooklyn, farther and farther away from Manhattan. When I got off the train I turned off a shopping street and saw… houses. Houses in Brooklyn. Houses in New York City. I keep forgetting how vast this city is.

I was at the apartment of a friend from my old college a cappella group. He and his girlfriend made chili, and a bunch of us New York-area alumni from the group got together, maybe 10 of us. We had a great time. We did some vocal jamming, tried to sing one of our old songs, ate chili in this worn apartment on the third floor of a ratty old house… I felt like I was back in college.

The singing group is less than 10 years old, so we alums are all in our 20’s. I’m astonished at the talent some of these guys in the New York area have. Several are working in the music industry now, performing and managing and so forth. A couple of them do improv and comedy skits together, and they’re also working on a screenplay. I feel so small next to them, so boring; their work lives and their social lives seem so much more interesting than mine. Their lives seem simultaneously more focused and more carefree.

Three of us rode the D train back to Manhattan — the screenplay-writing improv duo and myself. We’ve known each other forever. We were all going different places, and they were discussing the quickest way to get to Midtown. “See, if I take the blah train to blah blah blah, and switch at blah, I’ll get there faster, because I’ll be at 42nd and 8th, while if I got off at blah blah blah…” They both live in Manhattan, and they were rattling off the station names without looking at a map, and I felt so out of it.

I don’t absorb the details of the outer world as easily as some other people do. I work in broader strokes, absorbing the gestalt of my surroundings. Or I observe, Zen-like, the shape of a building. Or I imagine what it feels like to be the person sitting across from me, imagining what she’s done that day. Or I try to figure out how to put a particular experience into words.

I get lost in my own inner world. People think I’m just spacing out. But I’m not. They think I’m oblivious to the details. But I’m not.

Like them, I’m trying to master my surroundings.

I’m just doing it differently.

Blogs of Note

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, I’ve added a lot more blogs to my list o’ links lately. There’s a danger in linking to too many people; the more blogs you link to, the less valuable each one seems. (Still, this list is pretty amazing). And if I read everything on my list every day, I’d get blog overload.

I think everyone on my list is worth visiting, and most of them you’ve probably checked out before, but here are a few that I want to point out for one reason or another:

Plainsong — This 19-year-old college student in Seattle has a brand spankin’-new blog, so you can get in on the ground floor. On top of that, he’s really cute. (Okay, so I’m a sucker for cute short guys.)

LeftSpin — Also a relatively new blogger, and also in Seattle (you two should meet up). He’s the same age as me (27), but he’s in the closet, and he has some interesting entries so far. I’ll be reading.

Virtual Exile — Chest. Um, on a more substantive note, he’s in the D.C. area and he’s a law-type guy like me. His online diary seems to have been around for a while, and his entries have lots of intelligence and heart.

Slutboy — Maybe you know about him already, but I didn’t until today. Wow. He can really write, and this entry blew me away.