If A Tape Recorder Existed in My Head

I have nothing to say right now. But I did when I was traveling the other week, so here goes nothing. For lack of anything new sitting inside my head and because it's raining like hell and what else am I going to do right now? The airport ramblings of a girl who spends too much time in airports...This is going to be entirely random and clearly stream of consciousness. I had a cloudy travel head. That much will be clear...

Why do I always feel compelled to write on airplanes? I haven't been writing that much over the last three years and I can tell. I feel sort of captive inside my own head, and I'm not good at it anymore. I have got to get better about this.
Unless they're on business, most people seem to travel with other people. Especially from vacation places. Which means that I am one of not very many on this flight without a co-flier. I generally like it that way, but it would be nice to have a shoulder to fall asleep on for some of these airplane hours I keep logging.
Why do I love drinking tomato juice in the air? I am wearing a white shirt on a bumpy plane and I went with tomato juice. It's not like I'm incident free, either. More times than not, I spill the stuff all over the place. I just can't stay away.
And why does anyone order those snacks that you have to pay for up here? This is a three hour flight. That bag of cashews cost you $5.00. You really couldn't wait? Maybe that's where the tomato juice comes in. It's salty and kind of thick, so my stomach thinks I've eaten. Ha! Duped again, American Airlines! I don't need your stupidly expensive cashews. Gotcha!
So, when you live in the Caribbean, you venture into everyone else's everyday for vacation. Colorado bound now, and I'll even make my way to Lincoln, Nebraska this time. As if you could get any more normal.
Would you see a rainbow if you flew over it?
Off to the land of every day, where I will be thrilled by everything from seeing peaches in the grocery store to the number of country music radio stations. Where I get to drive more than 6 miles, which is as far away anything on St. John is from anything else on St. John. If I want something to eat and it's not already in the fridge, I can just drive to a store at ANY TIME. Even after 8:30pm! The world of suburbia is so convenient that they've lost track of how immediate and easy everything is. I will not be taking that for granted.
From here, I can play the game where you name what a cloud looks like, but I can do it in 3D. The one we're flying past looks like a dolphin swimming through coral heads. But I bet it doesn't look that way from the ground.
Three rock stars on a stage of smoke machines and dry ice mist. The rock stars sort of look like gummy bears. But whatever.
Clouds are awesome.
There are a million tiny ones, all the same shape. An aerial army of marshmallow peeps.
Hello, Miami. Why anyone would want to bludgeon to death a white beach with a city's worth of high-rises is beyond me.
Oops, there I go. Something you have to be careful about in life, and maybe in transient life even more, is arrogance about the way you live and how you see the world. We believe ourselves to be quite the enlightened lot, we leaders of unconventional lives. With full passports and full photo albums, we have seen a lot of places. We have met a lot of people. We have been on uncomfortable adventures and been tested on how well we can roll the with the proverbial punches. And I can't imagine wanting to go to a hotel-ridden beach any more than the people in those hotels can fathom wanting to stay in a sardine-tin hostel in Picadilly, sharing bunk beds with 5 German strangers who snore and smell a little pickled.
Travelers often assume that everyone envies their lifestyle. Which is because travelers are told by just about everyone how enviable their lifestyle is. But, it's not always, and you can't think that those people actually want your life. They don't. Stop seeing yourself through such a soft lens. My 9-5 friends know which bed they'll be sleeping in a year from now. They are not afraid of buying nice things, because they probably will not have to pack those nice things into boxes and leave them in storage for long and undefined amounts of time. They come home to their warm homes and warm families every night. They have gardens and Christmas and big dogs. All of these things they have, and I do not.
So far, the man with two straw hats is the best airport dude I've seen, followed closely by zebra blouse and super shiny galaxy full of rhinestones belt lady. Ooh! Matching terrible Hawaiian shirts; one pink and one blue. They are going somewhere to drink pink frozen things with paper umbrellas floating, leaking into them.
People who have to run through airports are always so awkward about it. Trying to keep their cool. Panicked faces and a quick-footed hop trot, but those hands stay firmly at their sides. Utter refusal to let the whole body participate in the freak out, for fear that they might look freaked out. Worried? Who's worried? Nah, man, I'm cool. Who's worried?
Why don't they make light up shoes for adults? They should.
Burly, gnarly dude with a tiny pink roller suitcase. No child in sight. What?
If I wore high heels on a travel day, I would die. I mean that.
Why don't men wear brimmed hats anymore? It's a shame. They're really hot.
Leggings really are accepted as pants in the states. Yes! The more my clothes are like pajamas, the happier I am.
I envy that little kids can saunter through an airport with their beloved stuffed animals in their arms and it's not weird and no one stares. I have to keep mine in my backpack.
Everyone is either dressed for their tropical vacation destination or they are wearing largely lettered shirts telling the world where they have just been. Right now, it seems as if a lot of people heart Miami. Oh, that one says, "I was in Miami, bitch." Why?
Men have to be very careful. Khakis, if too light in color, can easily be confused with white pants, which are far less acceptable. Even though it's not even Labor Day yet.
Ooh! An airport yoga-er. Amazing. Either assuming that no one is watching or hoping that everyone is.
The serious looking security people are wearing helmets on Segways. I do not take them seriously.
She does not know that her fashion-forward shorts look very, very much like a diaper. Someone she loved should probably tell her that.
"It's a satchel!"
How are Segways effective? I find it hard to believe that they could move any more quickly than a fairly able human could run. And shouldn't security people be in shape, anyway? What else is going to be invented so that no one anywhere ever has to move ever again?
So many sensible shoes on all of these airport employees.
What would people watchers say about me, I wonder? "Oh, she's a bit mousy. She would be prettier without the glasses." (Yeah, but then I would look like the dumb lost girl because I wouldn't be able to see the gate numbers. Is that better?) "And why is she wearing orange shoes? I don't get that." (Hey, lay off. I like my orange shoes.)
I like people who drape their sweaters around their shoulders and secure them with clean, preppy sweater-sleeve knots. I could never pull something like that off. So prim.
A man wearing a pirate hat!
Ooh, the wheels on that woman's roller suitcase light up. Cool. Maybe that is the grown up version of the shoes.

Annnnd it ends there. Maybe that's where the Dramamine kicked in and I fell asleep. In case no one knew, Dramamine is better than Nyquil. For real.


I have nothing of my own to say now. Time to drink some wine and be glad that at least something got put on this ridiculous blog.

Fitting In

A life without tourists. Without sunscreen bottles or ill-conceived islandy outfits. No seagulls. No acid spiders. My clothes will not mold, and I won't feel with my skin every whim of the sky. Looking out the window will show me a 14,000 foot mountain capped in snow. If the sun is shining just the right way, that mountain will glow pink and I will wonder why I ever left Colorado.
Then I'll remember that the view I left that mountain for was just as beautiful.
You don't see too many rainbows in the Rockies, but there a whole season full of them here. The islands got the sweet side of that gene pool, huh? Hibiscus blooms and mango trees and elkhorn coral and parrotfish and bougainvillea. As if the universe had an excess of its most striking colors and decided to drop all of them in one place.
You know what else likes all of these colors? Mosquitoes. But being ready for something does not necessarily make it any easier, does it?
Days like today are terrifying because they're perfect. This island is so damn crafty. It rained just enough this morning to cool everything down a little and now the sun is here. It's the right time of year for the butterflies, who ride on the scent of plumeria that weaves itself into the breeze. And the breeze is a specific kind, gentle and warm and intimate. I feel like I am being dared to leave. Like St. John is betting me twenty bucks that I won't really be able to do it.
This island woos you to stay even as it is pushing you away. If St. John were a dude, I would dump him for sending so many mixed signals.
As it stands, I think the break up is more mutual than that. When people ask why I'm leaving (And they do. All the time.), all I can do is smile and that that it is just time. Too simple for most, but the truth just the same.
So, a life without sunscreen. I will be able to go downtown and not see anyone that I know. I won't have to stand in line for every meal. My work life and my personal life will actually exist in different places.
Fitting back in will be a feat, won't it? Part of what is so great about St. John is that there really are no taboos. The only think people will judge you for is judging other people unfairly. There are three prominent bumper stickers pasted on all of the local cars; One says, "St. John: The world's largest open air asylum." Another, "We're all here 'cause we're not all there." And my favorite says only "Coexist."
Weirdness is sought after and wildly, loudly celebrated. In a world like this, inhibitions and social filters are few. So few, in fact, that we have all pretty much lost track of what our own weirdnesses are. Everything feels normal when nothing is identified as strange. So, plop us back into a world of image-consciousness and we become the "off" people who paint their toenails a million different colors and think it's funny when we accidentally clean our whole houses in wind shield wiper fluid (That WAS funny, by the way. Vineyard people just thought it was..well..weird.) I am quite sure that nothing I own can be considered fashionable beyond just being beachy, and beachy does not work in Colorado in October. I will probably still take cold showers and you will be able to follow flip flop prints in the snow if you want to find me, shivering in a corner somewhere wondering what the hell I was thinking when I decided to come back.
I'll get sinus infections from climate control and I won't have any clue what music/movies/TV shows people are talking about. I will show up at the downtown Friday night clubs in denim cut-offs again, and I will not understand why everyone looks at me like I'm crazy. And then I'll try to walk out of one of those bars with a beer I have not finished yet and it will be my turn to look at them like they're crazy when they tell me no.
I am probably not that apt to fit in anywhere, maybe ever again. I'm ok with that, but I will meet people who are not.
There is no back-up plan, here. It will all work out and I am better for having spent these years on this island. But this is about to be a very different road than the one I have been on...

Dumb Comparisons

Do life crises happen to everyone? Here I am, almost thirty. Ten years ago, I certainly thought I'd be married by now, and I'm not. Nowhere close, am I? For me now, this seems right, not being close. As much as I couldn't imagine not being married by thirty then, thinking of being married by thirty when it's only a few short year away seems extreme, and much too adult for a girl like me. But. There is always a but. As one best friend has his second child and another grills me about when I'm coming home so I can help plan her wedding, I can't help but wonder if I am, brutally, behind this curve. Would we feel the same envies and jealousies and insecurities if we had nothing to compare ourselves and our own lives to? Because I honestly think that if I were stranded without communication, if I had no idea what any of my more commitment-friendly amigos were doing with their lives, I would not question my inability to settle down. I would take it as who I am and assume that things would change if they would change and there would be no worry about it. It would just be.
Why do we get so wrapped up in comparisons? There is no introspection in it, really. In looking at other people. It helps nothing. We are the product of our lives and our lives are the product of us. Sort of a mobius strip of fate and free will. To look at my married friend, happy with his wife and children and 9-5, and wonder why I don't already have the same thing would be like wondering why an Amazonian doesn't live in an igloo when it seems to work just fine for the Eskimos. Useless.
So you can't wonder. It will drive you crazy and it doesn't even change anything.
I keep looking at my past and thinking about the different outcomes I could have had. Such dangerous territory, isn't it? I can think of two boys that I probably would have been married to by now had I wanted that. Maybe three. Boys that were ready when I wasn't. But that was before most of my friends and my friends' younger siblings were getting married. And now...
I meant it when I said that all of this is useless.

I'm not writing well. I'm not thinking well. This one is over for now.

True Love= Boredom,,,?

Something a little new on my mind. I don't write about love all that often. Really, I am alternately totally uncomfortable with and then totally thrilled with love. As a chronic commitment-phobe (places to live, people to be with, favorite ice cream flavors..I have a hard time committing to anything), the idea of true love makes me squirm more than a bit. Because that's it, right? Once you have found the one, there is no need to keep searching. This is what most people hope for. It's what I fear. Among all of my ridiculous idiosyncrasies and irrational nightmares, my fear of boredom reigns king. And somewhere in there, I began to equate true love with boredom. To me, they are the same thing.
And this is what's bugging me right now.
I essentially live inside a Billabong catalogue. The sunsets nestle nicely into postcards and beautiful, tan people are everywhere, barely dressed, surfing and sunning and falling deeply in lust. It's exciting. There are new couples whose butterflies you can almost feel yourself. They sparkle, the couples in lust. Lust makes you high.
And then I look at the people who vacation here. We are a family resort, so we get a good glance at marriage at most levels. No kids to young kids to adolescent kids to the horror that is having teenagers and then the empty nesters and, finally, the retirees. We see all of them. Now, I am well aware that comfort and boredom can be easily confused. From the outside, these couples look bored. They are out of firsts, maybe. Or she has washed too many pairs of his stinky socks and he has picked up too many boxes of tampons at the grocery store for the butterflies to live. Butterflies breathe thrill, I've heard, and flirtation. And I could be wrong, here. But I see a lot of couples sitting at dinner without much to say to each other. And I hear them have lengthy, invested conversations about what size of Gatorade they should take to the beach. Without holding hands. Without smiling. Without any hint of an emotional relationship or connection. I suppose it's a lot like being tired of living here. Like I've said before, a beautiful place to live eventually just becomes home, where you do your laundry and make coffee in the mornings. But is that really what you're supposed to be looking for? Comfort, fine. But who, as they are smile-tipsy and falling madly in love with the one person they are absolutely supposed to be with for the rest of forever, thinks that they will end up having full conversations about whether they should go to Bed Bath & Beyond on Saturday or Sunday? Honestly? What happened to the madly in love part?
Do you think that is the fate of lifelong relationships? It must be. It can't not be, really. It seems like it's just the natural progression of things, and an obvious result of eating breakfast with someone every morning for anything beyond five years. I could buy twelve women's magazines right this second and probably find an article in each one that is dedicated to keeping your marriage exciting. Getting the spark back, that sort of thing. If you have to get the spark back, it can only be assumed that it was lost at some point. Why is that so normal?
I'm beginning to think that womanizers and women labeled as heartbreakers are just addicted to this spark everybody talks about. Once you get a few tastes of it, you're hooked. Nothing else will do after that. And as soon as it's gone, so are you.
Maybe your opinion of this whole thing changes after you've found that one person. I might be blurring the lines between boredom and contentment. My hope is that the spark is dynamic; it changes colors and shapes as the relationship evolves. Sometimes it wears a mask and is hard to recognize, and that's when you think it's lost. But maybe you know how many sugars to put in his cup of coffee and he always wakes up in the morning to let the dogs out so you don't have to, and that's where it is.
Ugh, I don't know. It's a hard line to draw, isn't it? If it stays small like that for a long time, I suppose it could just burn out entirely. And though they're completely terrible, I can see how affairs happen when it's tiny and wearing a mask. Because what's so great about love if you have to look to make sure it's still there?
Clearly, I have no real idea of what I'm talking about, here. I'm attempting to predict what the end of a curvy road looks like, and I've never even been on it. Pointless. A textbook case of fear of the unknown. People say all the time that relationships are work and marriage is a full-time job. I get that. Melting two people together does not always go smoothly and compromise is constant and difficult. But the heat involved is enough to make everything worth it. And that part should be automatic, shouldn't it? Why should that require work, too?
These couples fighting about Gatorade, do they still get giddy and stupid when they kiss each other? Do they still kiss? Do they sing love songs to the radios in their cars and think about one another? Do they still have big crushes on each other? Because I think that they should. And if they don't, then I have no interest in that life.
This is not something than can be answered by anything but experience. We won't know until we know. And I'm always game for a road I have never been down, but boredom is a dead end sign and I really hope that that's not what happens every time.

Resort Life

My blog needs a change. The layout is totally boring. I don't even want to read the thing and I re-read everything I write about a million times (mostly marveling at how badly I create sentences and kicking my computerself in the face for the fact that I continue to write insufferable drivel). Regardless of the drivel, I wish the thing looked better. Alas, I have no idea how to do much of anything except make hummus and live in any tense other than the present one, which is not conducive to being able to find or create some kind of stellar blog layout. If anyone has a suggestion, out with it. Help. Me.
Life is exhausting right now. It's hard to explain what seasonal life really feels like to someone who has no hope of an idea. One morning, you drink your coffee and eat breakfast and go to work. This is normal. The next morning, you have to wait in line behind twenty other people for coffee. Those twenty people know that you work there, so before you have even had that essential taste of caffeine, you're answering questions about the weather and which beach is best and where can they get snorkel gear? It's entirely unfair. Once season starts, your customer service face becomes a permanent fixture. You always have to be smiling because anywhere from 100-300 people are always watching. You start to feel like a zoo creature, somehow totally fascinating to vacationers who chose the curtain with the cubicle behind it. Examined and discussed. It's really weird.
Our restaurant serves dinner at 5:30. The staff generally comes down around that time, sits at the same group of tables we have sat at for years now, and eats together. We talk about the day. We tell stories about crazy guests, of which there is never a shortage. We talk about which beach we might head to on our weekends and giggle at inside jokes and try each other's dinners. It's a family thing, really. We get there at 5:30 not because we are hungry then, or even because that's a logical time to eat. We get there at 5:30 because that is when everyone else will be there. We love dinner. We love dinner, that is, until the time of year rolls around. You know in prison movies when they show eating scenes and the guy carrying the tray is always shielding it from the other guys? That's what dinner feels like right now. I have literally had someone breathe over my plate and ask me which entree I got. Touch the arm that is blocking my plate as if to say, "Excuse me, arm. You are in the way of my viewing the food that this young lady whom I do not know has chosen for her dinner." I'm not kidding. This happens.
The beach does not belong to us anymore, either. We are afraid to go to our favorite little sunny corners because we might be followed and then those corners will be covered in beach towels (which don't even make sense here. The sand is calcite. It's little jagged grains that cling to a beach towel like we cling to summer) and we would hang our heads down and walk on, submitting ourselves to something ridiculous like porch-tanning because we can't stand the lack of personal space anywhere else.
Not that it's all bad. There is so much energy this time of year. You can't help but to feel the buzz of the whole thing, even if you don't want it. It gets all over you. Of course, we miss the slow days when no one else is on the beach and we can have Woody's happy hour all to ourselves. But you can't possibly spend a day around people who have worked 51 weeks of the year looking forward to this ONE week and not catch some of their excitement. I find that listening to their conversations makes me think, "Oh my goodness, they're right. This place IS amazing. It IS beautiful. Why do I forget that part sometimes?" Because eventually, wherever you live will just become home. No matter how exotic it may have seemed at the beginning. It becomes the place you do your laundry. Where you fumble through making coffee in the morning. Where you complain about the drivers/grocery prices/post office/bank line. So, it does us a bit of good to be tsunami-ed by the giddiness of hundreds of people who pay exorbitant airline prices and struggle through trying to find a swimsuit to buy in February just to spend a single week here. They've been dreaming of it all year long and by the time they arrive, their skin is the only thing holding them together. They're about to explode into rainbow confetti bits, so tired and so happy to finally have gotten here. How awesome.
Perspective changed. This is why I write a ridiculous, insufferable blog. You can start out a post as grumpy as anything and end feeling a little more sparkly. I'm gonna end this one here, I think, and dream of a place to go on vacation where I'll explode into rainbow confetti bits.

All that I know is I don't know.

Newest weirdness: Walking around a place knowing you're leaving soon. I guess the last time I really had this happen was my senior year in high school, and I wouldn't say that I was all that aware of it then. Was anyone? Did anyone walk down a hall and look around thinking, "Man, one of these walks will be the last one?" And if they did, was it with a sense of nostalgia or more of a getmeouttahere kind of feeling? Maybe it was both. Personally, I can't even tell how I feel about it. Sometimes, I'm thankful. I think that I won't miss the cold showers or the bugs that fly into my computer screen if I turn it on at night. I have been glancing around at the thorny catch and keep vines and the splintery boardwalks and the fishbowl tents that hold ghosts I haven't let go of yet and I'll catch myself thinking, "A year from now, I won't have to deal with any of this ever again." And then I think, "Damn. A year from now, I won't have to deal with any of this ever again."
The song I am listening to right now just said, "Live through this and you won't look back." Three times.
I lie to myself daily. That never works for too long, does it? Eventually the front of your brain catches up to the back of it and you're screwed. Lie revealed and demanding to be dealt with. It's like telling your mom that you don't know who finished the cookies when you have melted chocolate chip evidence all over your 5 year old face. It's a joke. The truth is, I will miss the cold showers and the boardwalks. Even the thorns, and those are certainly not limited to thorns on vines. I left once, so I know this to be fact. You miss everything. That does not mean it's not what is supposed to happen, which I have found to be a very important distinction to make. Like those ghosts you sometimes think too fondly of, things change and disappear and it's almost always sad and almost always the right thing, anyway. Even if it feels differently at the time. Even if it feels differently forever.
And now I am here with chocolate chips all over my face and I am wondering what, exactly, protocol is here. I have been through my last Maho Christmas now. And the last Maho New Year's Eve. The last beginning of season. The last January swell. It will be a season full of lasts.
The thing is, Maho has been a pretty heavy place in my life. Most people have a place at least a little like this. Maybe your first car. Or those high school halls. Or that house in your college town, which was decorated with what you thought would surely be the best 4 (5? 6?) years of your entire life. This is where I fell in love the first time. It's where I felt what was it was like to have my heart break into a thousand cracked slivers. The only bone I have ever broken can be blamed on a loose rock at Big Maho beach. I learned to run here, and to lull. Televisions exited my life and I found out that I actually hate them. Because of this little place, I can tell you what a tamarind tree looks like, what time of year the mangoes are ripe and where most of the frangipanis are. And what a frangipani is, for that matter. Very simply put, I met myself here. I threw out some of the flaws and vices, gained a few new ones and pretty much figured out how to be someone I like at least most of the time. My life is less ordinary because of Maho. I am, as a direct result, happy. And in fewer than twelve months, I will be leaving.
Leaving places happens. I read somewhere that the average person will relocate eleven times over the span of his or her life. I'm at 12. This isn't something sad. It's not depressing. It's something I am proud of and I would not want my life to have gone down any other road. I have lived here longer than I have ever lived anywhere, which could give me some insight into this wanderlust thing if I ever bothered with it. 12 and counting. I can not wait to see where I will land next and I am happy to continue not knowing where that next place will be.
Still, there is always going to be that one place, isn't there? The one you think about when you're bored or daydreaming or looking for sepia nostalgia. And the unfortunate luxury of knowing what that place is as you are leaving it is a year of sepia moments smack dab in the middle of an otherwise technicolor life. You miss it before it's even gone.
My goal is to rest calmly in between rushing around feeling like I'm losing something and lazily ignoring that I need to soak all of this up. I am happy to leave before I am bored.
That I can not predict what comes next is invigorating and this feels right even as it gives my heart a small stress fracture. I will pack my bags, walk through the ghosts and bite my lip so I cry less. And move on to the next place I can fall desperately, senselessly in love with.

Reblogger.

I'm re-blogging this because I said it pretty well. And because I haven't had time to write a new one.





But it don't snow here. It stays pretty green. Gonna make a lotta money, then I'm gonna quit this crazy scene...

Oh, Joni. I heart you. So here we go, Christmas. Colored lights inside palm trees and if I close my eyes tightly enough, I can pretend that those are snow clouds outside. Tonight, I will go home and rock around my mini-tree. My counter is piled with presents from one home and presents from another. I have about 15 Christmas songs on my reggae-riddled iPod, which will play and play and play until the holiday ends unfairly and abruptly and we all go back to our white sand weekends like nothing ever happened. The reality that Christmas day is, in the end, a day, is weird no matter where you are. It almost seems like an island Christmas is a perfect way to acknowledge that. There is no Santa sitting in a mall, as there is no mall here. We put lights up in our tents, but then, we always put lights up in our tents. It would be hard to bake Christmas cookies on a Coleman stove, and pine trees are a little hard to come by. Unlike you statesiders, we are not bombed with the holidays as soon as Halloween passes. I would like to see the shops in Cruz Bay trying to pull off Christmas music in November, when the weather is just clearing up and the hibiscus printed tourists are pouring in. Nope. It just doesn't work.
Don't get me wrong; we try. It's just that forcing Christmas doesn't feel right. And forcing anything does not get you far in the islands, anyway. So, we watch Christmas movies at a friend's house and then climb back into our open-top jeeps and talk about how we're losing our tans and which beach we're going to tomorrow. If we are on the schedule, then we go to work. If we happen to have the day off, we do not treat it much like any other day off. A Friday is a Friday is a Friday. And then it's Saturday. And that's all there really is to it.
I've come to prefer Christmas this way, I think. Where it actually sneaks up on you. Where you do not even realize what day it is until it's here. And then you look around, quietly and without show, and thank the universe for the people around you and the life you live. Do I wish that I were somewhere else this time of year? Sometimes. But I have a family here whom I am infinitely happy to spend this time with. And besides, it's not that Christmas makes me miss people. It just reminds me that I already do.
On that note, Merry Christmas, all. Be happy, drink egg nog, sing Christmas songs and breathe in the cinnamon and cookie scented Christmas air. Breathe it in as deeply as it will go. Before you can even exhale, just like for me, it will be summer again. It is, at the end of it all, just a day.

I'm ending this with a Hunter S. Thompson quote, which has nothing to do with Christmas at all. But I love it.

"Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives...and to the "good life," whatever it is and wherever it happens to be."