The billboard ad

Yesterday I was driving by Philly and saw a really clever billboard. It read:

Don't Advertise!
You might run out of product.

Don't worry, it took me a second, too.

The journey

I step out the front door, bundled up in several layers to try to keep warm. It is very early in the morning, still dark out, and very quiet. It is the kind of quiet you only get very early in the morning, after the late night revelers have finally called it quits, but before the early birds have crawled out of bed. It is an eerie and still quiet, like you are the only person in the city and time has stopped. A palpable solitude. I look all around me. Sure enough, not a single person. Perhaps I should have stayed in bed longer. Doesn't matter - I wasn't able to sleep anyways.

I walk down the street, hang a right, and begin heading north. I'm finally starting to wake up and a hint of excitement begins to build in my chest, but it is just a whisper. After I walk a few blocks, as yet having seen no one, I spot one, then two solitary souls up ahead of me, also sauntering north. As I carry on, one at a time, I begin to see a few more people, and then a couple. There is now a slight spring in my feet, as the grogginess slowly fades away, in part because the cold is seeping through my layering to my body. Despite the dozen or so people I now see spread over the blocks in front of me, it is still very silent.

People continue to slowly materialize out of the dark all around me, and I can just make out a few words exchanged here and there. Then, behind me, I hear a rather boisterous group turn onto the street. They aren't really that noisy, but relative to the silence before, they sound almost as if they are shouting. It's still too early for me to try to make conversation, but I perk up a little more and quicken my pace.

I take a left, walk a few blocks, and then take another right, headed north again. My brain is only starting to function , so I'm just guessing and following others. There still isn't much of a crowd, just small pockets of people, and everyone now is taking lefts and rights almost at random, slowly moving across the grid of the city towards the northwest.

And then I hear a faint noise in the distance, almost like music blaring on outdoor speakers. I walk another block; the music slowly grows louder and now I can see lines of people moving in the same direction, towards a faint light in the distance. As I walk another block, it strikes me how bizarre it all is. Thousands of people now, very orderly streaming in the frigid and black early morning towards distant lights and music. The whole scene is surreal: it's like something out of a sci-fi movie, maybe Close Encounters of the Third Kind or War of the Worlds.

As I get closer to the crowd and then become one amid the current, my energy level and emotions jump start, and the hair on my neck and arms stands on end. I have to mentally check myself to save my physical and emotional energy. But now I am finally there - my journey through the streets of Philadelphia has brought me to the start of a much longer and more intense journey through Philly. Marathon number 2 is about to be underway...

She likes it bossy

Are you ever polite to inanimate objects? I often use the voice command on my blue tooth to call people from my cell when I am driving. I always feel a little bad demanding it to "call so and so." In my delirium driving home from the gym at 10:15 tonight, I asked my blue tooth to "please call mom's cell." She told me that she couldn't understand. I guess she just likes it bossy.

My new favorite word

These days people often use the word "ambivalent" interchangeably with "indifferent." But I've recently come to learn that a better definition of ambivalent is to feel two opposing or conflicting emotions towards something, or to simultaneously have both positive and negative feelings about something. (And I know I just used a split infinitive, and I don't care - I actually like them sometimes.)

When I learned this new definition, my hair stood up on end, because it seems to perfectly capture my sentiments about so much these days. I see a beautiful sunset and am filled with joy, and yet I am also filled with sadness because I have no one beside me to turn to and share it with. It makes for an incredibly complicated emotional state. To feel so full of life and yet so empty. I don't understand why so much of life is richer when there is someone to share it with, and the closer you are to that person, the richer it is. But I have a hunch we were designed like this: as God put it, "It is not good for the man to be alone."

It's sort of like when you are in a room full of people and feel overwhelming loneliness, or alone in the woods and overflowing with love for people. In the first case, you wonder why you can't be lonely on your own; in the latter, you wonder why there is no one to share all your love with. I even feel this way towards romantic love, eros (the way C.S. Lewis means it, to "be in love", not just sexual love). I am both frightened by it and enraptured by it. I want nothing to do with it and yet desire it intensely. In a word, I am ambivalent towards it, but certainly not indifferent.

Here comes the sun
And the rain
All at once
How it sing
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Now playing: Jason Mraz - Forecast
via FoxyTunes

Lips (too much lip)

This past Saturday I took the NJ Transit to NYC to see my cousin, who I hadn't seen in about 8 years. It's intriguing how much people change, and yet how little.

While I was riding on the train to Penn Station, back resting against the side of the train in order to spread my legs out a little towards the aisle, I looked up from my book, in my never-ending curiosity, to check out my fellow passengers. I noticed a cute brunette sitting on the the opposite side of the train, one seat back. She had on one of those old brown hats, somewhat similar to the one Jason Mraz wears in his music video for I'm Yours, and a black top. Very simple, but attractive. I noticed she was playing with and picking at her lips. In my hopeless romanticism, I imagined she was about to be re-united with some love she had been apart from for the past week. She was excited to press her lips against his, and in excited expectation was making sure her lips were perfect for the soft collision.

I looked up a short time later and noticed she was still playing with her lips, running her fingers along them and then picking at them with her fingernails. It was starting to get a little distracting and seemed to be a little more than just preparation for a long-desired kiss. As I looked up periodically throughout the rest of the hour-long train ride, I noticed she was continually touching her lips. By the end of the ride, I was somewhat disgusted with her lip obsession.

I hope the kiss was still great. But seriously, girl, give it a break! I hope he is less annoyed with your habit than I am. And think about it: you are riding on the NJ Transit, one of the dirtiest places known to man, sticking your hands all over your lips and mouth. Not exactly hygienic.

Fish out of water

I have been told that I am "quite a catch" about one too many times. As much as I appreciate the sentiment, the next time someone tells me this, I may very well go throw myself into the Delaware River. My premise: I must be taking people too figuratively. Maybe I will have more luck if I take them literally.