i disagree, ryan. i don't think the only things worth doing are those that create stories or tell stories. i think some of the most routine things are precious and i think that some things are worth keeping to ourselves.

when i went to new york, i didn't do much. i sat in the park for half a day and ate ice cream. another afternoon, i went to the market and cleaned the house. i took really long naps. it was the most perfect time, and when i came back everyone asked me how it was and what i did and i had nothing to tell them. i didn't want to talk about it, because aside from listing my schedule of non-events what was there to tell?

you and i are lucky because we've had grand adventures, but there are some people who never even leave the city where they grew up. this doesn't make their lives less meaningful than ours. there may be beauty in their everyday lives that we would never notice and they would never tell, because it doesn't warrant a narrative.

i think because we've had such good times we put pressure upon ourselves to create and recreate this magic all the time. i think expecting such grandeur is setting ourselves up for failure. i think demanding that everything revolve around documenting and detailing is potentially missing the experience.

when i grow up, i want to be a lady of leisure. i want to be an advocate for the mundane. i want to teach the world to see that there is pleasure to be taken every day in the littlest things and it is okay to keep every little bit of it all to yourself.

and thus wrote christine on 5/20/2002. +

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it really has been strange, a mostly wonderful strange, having my whole world shifted. i've been thinking recently about how my daily routines change from place to place and from time to time, depending on the schedules and habits and interests of the friends i'm spending my free time with. i'm still passionate about the same projects that filled my days when i lived in plymouth, but my routines have changed somewhat to merge with the lives of my old friends, these new roomates. and so i try to clamor out of bed when my friend josh puts on his morning coffee before work., and i try to watch the tv shows that make andrew laugh.

i can be adaptive like that, i guess. but i've also brought some of my own routines, developed after years of living with my family (evening walks, carefully-prepared dinners, widespread yogurt and tea consumption, web-surfing 'til dawn) to the daily structure of our apartment life. and everything has gone swimmingly. the weather always goes swimmingly. i would like to go swimming. los angeles is a trip.

last tuesday, after you and i left the movie theatre, and meandered through streets, and found a cafe that wasn't empty, and sat down somwhere with cups of something, and i made dumb jokes (as usual), and you teased me (always), and i zoned out, and we stood up, and you left to go pack for a weekend trip to the east coast, i found myself wandering around westwood village alone for an hour or two. i watched colors, ordered pizza and waited, stared in window after store window, and looked on as people passed throughout the brightly-lit shopping area. and i spent much of that time thinking about something i had said to you, that my life isn't producing as many stories as i would like, as i've somehow grown accustomed to. it's withdrawal, really; my month of travelling on the road kept me so stuffed full of new experience, talkable exciting hilarious experience, that my new domestic life seems to pale in comparison. but it shouldn't. i'm just moving at a different speed, consuming more media and information than every before (a little too much), ready to find myself a job and become a productive citizen of california. woo-hoo.

i think i decided somewhere along the line that the only doings worth doing are those that create stories or tell stories. have i said that before? probably. i'm not sure why i believe it, but i do. as if the fundamental defining ability and necessity of the human experience is story-telling, culture made external so it will outlast our finite lives.

for today, at least, i've decided not to sit around waiting for myself. i'm already busy. and i think you and i should get together soon to do something incredible or ridiculous, something worth telling about.

and thus wrote ryan on 5/7/2002. +

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