red plastic cups

Sometimes I find myself longing for sparkling good times that belong to the other side of the spectrum. It was a club I couldn't crack into for a long time. In college, I did. In my giddiness, I soaked up the parties, all parties, all parties with stale beer stained air, laced with over-applied cologne and smoke from amateurishly lit cigarettes. Strobe lights whirled and gave me a headache, I whirled with them, sometimes strangers whirled with me. The moments were heady as promised. Then something happened, the fun became the same. Whenever Kanye's Stronger played for a second time, or said strangers moved on to my porcelain-skined friend, or the sticky floor had finally claimed the better part of my shoe, it was time to go home. But the more novelty slipped from me, the later I stayed. Like an addict, I needed larger doses to sustain the same high.

The next day, friends with much more sense would ask what they missed, their eyes widen and crinkle at all the right moments. As I finish with a satisfying period (a kiss, a fumble, a line that went one too far), they answer with a laugh and a head shake. With each shake, I was pushed into the sparkling world I had desperately tried to crash.

One night we were the last ones whirling on the sticky floor. 3 a.m., in an overworked, floaty white skirt, I had finally reached the end. Stronger had already been played four times, or was it five? In the haze of a lone, purple light, we plummeted toward the other end of the arc. The couple in the corner started to leave, her hand in his. Two guys sluggishly went around the room, stacking used red plastic cups, pouring dull, yellowish liquid out. I looked around. The red cups were everywhere and identical. There were so many of them. What was the point? I exhaled. I could no longer smell the beer nor the cologne. The air had infused and merged with the air in my nostrils. I desperately wanted a drink to quench a thirst (of what, I wasn't sure), but I could not pick out my own red plastic cup. They all looked the same.

**

falling fall

Two years ago I wrote about seeing leaves falling from a window, followed by a recognition of fall. And today there was a deja vu moment when I saw the same colors and motions through a window, while a cutting breeze shot through an open door, and I suddenly re-realized fall, circa 2011, New York, where grass and trees are seldom around, let alone seen.

For me, fall is so much more complicated than simple summer, which consists only of lush greens and constant chaos. Fall, on the other hand, has varying paces, temperatures, and colors, a blanket of melancholic calm that is both welcome and deflating…

For our ancestors who reaped, fall was probably much simpler, both rewarding and inviting of work. We the privileged, (circa 2011, New York) must deal with an existential crisis borne because we reap nothing at all. Occupiers have sprang up in this appropriate season, perhaps feeling an agitation to match nature, who has produced rich, multi-colored beauty, while we circle on bleak, grey concrete, fighting against fall falling upon us, fighting to deserve its scarlets and golds.

**