sunset
cafe pick me up
At an old place Jonathan loves, ate cookies and a
cafe au lait, watched people walk by with ice cream, felt the
breeze from a square (which reminds me of Savannah, reminds me
of Paris), as I type up the minutia I scribbled with my blue
ink pen over the course of the past few months. Those
tumultuous months.
I haven't been here two weeks yet, and it's hard to believe,
and it's hard to remember that two weeks ago I didn't know how
the express trains worked and I was still afraid of
harlemlonelinesscryingstressfailure. I think I'm not as scared
anymore, either that or I carry that fear in a locket in my
chest and treasure it, the way it makes me feel alive.
Most of my NYU orientation events are complete now, and I am
grateful, because though I can be outgoing, it gives me a bad
taste in my mouth to be so around strangers, without a
companion to roll their eyes at me (with me, at me). I worry
and get insecure and wonder why I want to ask the panelists, "I
know how to get around, how to talk to professors: how do you
make friends?" because at the age of 25, I suppose that
should not be new information to be revealed. And I suppose
that I may have a bit too much of the blood of competition in
me: now that I have placed a moment of thought upon it, I know
that I do not mesh well with people that I am thrown into by
chance and circumstance, I must grow into people much more
slowly than chatting them up at wineandcheese, exchanging
contact info. Only because there were a few pretty
girls, well-attired young men who were so good at it that I,
who probably has more social graces than are good for her,
usually, wanted to eat cheese and drink sparkling water, stand
by myself.
But I finally talked to a French girl who was similarly
reclusive (only being introduced because her friend, an
adorably bumbling Frenchman who does math: Nicholas, gallantly
stepped forth with no regard to being out-of-bounds) and I like
her.
I don't know how I was blessed so abundantly in Atlanta;
there are more dear friends there than I can think about right
now without a lump rising in my throat, my eyes becoming
glassy.
And yet. And yet New York does have a certain something; I
already feel like it knows me, we don't have to say anything,
yet it knows how to make me smile.
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Marilyn C. Cole (email), 27, New York City, an apartment in the
Hamilton Heights end of Harlem, since August 2006. Before that,
Atlanta, Georgia for seven years, through a Georgia Tech computer
science degree and three years of learning how to be a grown-up and
still have fun. Before that, ten years in Savannah, the place that
gives her stability, that she considers to be home. Before that,
short stints in middle Georgia next to a lake; on Tybee Island next
to the beach; in a suburb of Dallas, Texas during the peak of
Dallas (the nighttime soap opera); the middle of Oklahoma for
the birth of her little brother; and Nashville, Tennessee, where she
greeted this mad messed up world.
Attending New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical
Sciences, taking coursework toward her Masters in Computer Science,
with debatable ambitions in the direction of a Ph.D. in something or
other.
Simply head over heels for a
musician whose songs makes her
woozy, whose words make her happy, who she wants to marry one day.
Strawberry-blonde hair, blue-green-yellow eyes, pale skin
with freckles.
academia,
acoustic guitar,
acting intelligent, adventures in the car,
after-rain smell, alanis morissette, angelina jolie, ani difranco,
articulateness, artificial intelligence, audrey hepburn, avocados,
bad pick up lines, beauty, being egotistical, being insecure, ben
folds, bertrand russell, bisexuality, björk, black eyeliner,
blackberries, bloody marys, books,
britney spears, bubble baths, candy, cat power, cemeteries, cheap red
wine, collar bones, conan o'brien, cooking, cool points, crisp pickle
spears, dancing, dar williams, daria, death cab for cutie,
dismemberment plan, douglas coupland,
drinking, drugs, eating outside, eeevil, elvis costello, english
accents, etiquette, falling in love,
feminism, firefly, fishnets,
flowers, freaks and geeks, frolicking, fun, getting my way, gilmore
girls, gin and tonics, girls, google, grammatical correctness, greek
mythology, hal9000, handwritten letters, happiness, harold and maude,
harry potter, harry/draco, homemade t-shirts, hot hot baths,
intelligence, jem, joel, kids in the hall, kissing, kittens,
knee-high socks, knitting, late night conversations, laughing, life,
luna lovegood, magnetic poetry, making things, margaret atwood, math,
max rebo, mazzy star, messy hair, milk, mirah, modest mouse, my
computer, my mama and
daddy
and little bro,
night swimming, nintendo, nonsense, not waiting,
nudity, new york, originality, pi, pie,
pillows, pinky and the brain, radiohead, rainer maria, reading in the
bathtub, red popsicles, richard bach, road trips,
robots, rocking
out, roller coasters, sandals, sarcasm, seduction,
sexuality, shoes,
sifl & olly, simon & garfunkel, simone de beauvoir, singing very
loudly, skirts that twirl, sleep, songs: ohia, soup, stars, staying
up too late, subversive literature, sushi, swings, sylvia plath,
tetris, thai food, the beach, the color pink,
the history channel, the month of october, the simpsons, the smell of
bookstores, the windows down, the word indeed, thrift stores,
thunderstorms, virginia woolf, weezer, wet trampolines, winks, words.
