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12.26.01 - 5:02 p.m. ive noticed that people that have known children in their lives, even many years ago, still sway slightly when they're standing and concentrating on something. As if there is a child still on their hip, growing bored or sleeping or twirling hair in their fingers. I wonder if other things in life are as automatic and tribal as swaying when youre holding a child. Its nice. Its like clockwork, only human. Its always nice to see the link that binds people. Fallible people that you dont care for, your grandmother or other people that have hurt you in the past all sway when they hold babies. They would have swayed you too if time had worked out that way. And as it turns out, people who start out small and move to big cities still carry the same small town insecurities around in their back pocket and if you watch long enough you can find it, and it makes you want to cut their hair and give them practical glasses and tell them that you understand, and that its okay that they are still the same people that they were then. It seems that moving to a metropolis where you have to be a certain way in order to function would change you in some ways, it seems it would make you quicker and sharper, and less prone to dillydallying and to fear. It seems that you would shine a little, that the light would get brighter in a room when you came home, that everyone could tell things were different now that you were around. But as it turns out, you are still worried that you wont be invited to the right parties, that the hip kids wont want you around, that youll forget how to act. i wonder if i've bowed out of that game. Im scared of the hip kids. All i really want to do is paint and redecorate my room and wear pj's. I want to listen to myself and my close friends and write and go iceskating. I dont want the huge world around me at all times. I want a certain sense of vacancy that im allowed to fill in my own time and in my own way. I want a vacancy that only i and god know about, and i want the possibility/option of filling that vacancy to be the thing that i wake up in the morning for. I think a big city would go ahead and fill it for you bc its too hard to be a little empty in a place where you are one of a billion. You have to be solid all around, a full metal ball rolling and rolling so that you dont hold up the traffic. I wonder if you have to have something that i dont to move to a big city. Something like a willingness to put in the time, or to play along. A willingess to empty yourself out and let yourself be filled up on a daily basis by your surroundings, by other people. Granted, i believe in anonymity. In fact, i live by it. I treasure the facelessness of myself in a new place and maybe there is something in that. Maybe there is a peice of the city in me anyway and afterall. Maybe i could live in new york for awhile and shuffle around all day in a crowd of suits and tennis shoes and no one will know me, and ill go back to an apartment that never knows quiet and wake up and do it again. I think i would like it for awhile, and maybe i would like it forever. I like the sounds of trains, and cars and people yelling. i like the idea that im not the only person awake, and im lulled by the idea of a city that never goes to sleep. Im nervous when i cant hear anything, anyone. I dont particularly treasure the quiet. But im not willing to be brash or always on my guard. Im not willing to talk back to old people and stop smiling at people, and wondering about people that are smiling at me. I dont like the idea of always watching your back. It seems too basic and inhuman. Since septmber 11th i keep hearing new yorkers talk about how nice people are now...how they look each other in the eye and hold doors for one another, and its sad that its such an abnormailty. Simple human kindnesses that are only displayed after a tragic blow to human kind. Im getting mushy and abstract. Im full of lasagna and wanting to make mixed tapes and get in pj's and take my bra off. � 
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