quelling

Tonight my roommate and I walked to the drug store, after an extended back-and-forth whinealog about needing toilet paper and sandwich bags, and who should go get them. We agreed to slog through the muggy early evening together, and appease each other with frozen custard on the way back.

The custard stand occupies a corner storefront on Belmont Avenue, and summer evenings find it air conditioned ice cold and crammed with sticky bodies. The side of the building runs back up the street perpendicular to Belmont and a few benches and trash cans line the sidewalk surrounding a small red-awning-clad walk-up window. Thinking ourselves to have outsmarted the crowd stuck in the winding and awkward line indoors, we sallied up behind a father waiting to order his kids a treat.

The younger of his two boys, curly-brown wisps of hair framing his gleaming face, was excitedly tapping his hands on his father’s thigh as the attendant placed the previous customer’s confections on the sill. Chocolate custard with brownie bits and gummy worms, vanilla custard with cookie dough, a junior hot fudge shake – the small child’s tongue curled uncontrollably around one side of his lower lip as his face turned upward.

His feet began to tap. I watched the child’s face as his father ordered a cup of chocolate custard, and the way his expression changed from general ice cream excitement to the realization that his dreams of sweet cold creamy bliss would be realized – that chocolate cup was for him! His weight shifted from one foot to the other at a quickening pace, and he shook his hands in the air, mimicking the idle shake one might employ to dry the hands after washing. His tongue was still out and his face fixed on the light emanating from the window, as his entire body betrayed his excitement.

At that moment, it occurred to me that I felt the very same way. I felt exactly the same about the chocolate custard that I was on the verge of having for my own. I could not wait! It was going to taste so good!

But no hand-flip-flopping-tongue-lolling ice cream dance for me. I quelled this feeling and stood and smiled. I pointed him out to my roommate and we laughed. He was so sincere and unaware; we knew he had been thinking about that ice cream for a good long time.

Throughout our meandering lives, we negotiate our instinctual reactions to every sort of new event and personal experience, learning to recognize that our emotions – from pure ice cream joy to kicking-screaming tantrums of angry frustration (another scene I witnessed this week at Starbucks) – are something that we are able to, and must, allay. Grace is emotional maturity. It is a rare possession.

Most recently, I have grown aware of my capricious tendency to chase lofty goals, considering only vaguely the practicality of my choices, then changing my mind altogether a few months later. I look back on a career path that seems most closely to resemble, metaphorically of course, that of a curious dog: following one “scent” so intently, only to pick up on another one, alter his course completely, and earnestly follow his nose until the next thing strikes his fancy.

I want to think there is something that ties together all my disordered yet earnest wandering (the dog does, ultimately, make it around the block, right?) I feel I may be on the verge of finding it, and I know part of that has to do with quelling.

A few days ago, my excited brain picked up on something. Why not, I asked myself, pursue a career in asylum law and join the Free Tibet movement and work with refugees and publish articles and tour the country and save the world and learn the Tibetan language and start practicing Buddhism and be the one to finally, personally, give China the big old boot? And right away this time, there was another part of me that sighed and rolled her eyes. There are many reasons that, although it would be a very noble path, it is not the one for me.

It is the hot fudge brownie sundae with sprinkles. It sounds so good. But I know I would rather treat myself, gracefully, to something else.

in with the old

There is a thought I have been mulling over and around, something I have wanted to explore but haven't been sure the proper format or style with which to meditate on the issue. But just now I was reading about these "new cities" - Shenzhen and Dubai - and they struck me as emblematic.

For years I have wondered when this generation's fascination with all things 'retro' would subside. Being an unavoidable member of said generation, I will certainly admit to being of the same mind. Old cowboy boots, vintage dresses, antique boudoir, retro-print hand towels: I got 'em. I am only now, however, beginning to understand, perhaps, why I like them so much.

Think of Europe - the way the folks there harken back to better times, the way Americans tour around and gasp and wish we had that kind of living history at our fingertips, and are convinced that the Renaissance architects and painters and writers really knew how to live. Then we come back home and put on an old Dylan record, and lace up our Chucks, and walk down to the dive bar with the orange and brown upholstered chairs and Schlitz beer (it's back!). Maybe we even bring along a pair of big aviators for the walk over. Or just for style.

But what style? The style of our parents. The style of our grandparents. Quaint and appealing, yes. But why? What happened to The Present?

So along come China and India, building their new cities around all the little old towns and settlements (kind of like we did in the U.S.). Constructing the shiniest, tallest, and most different-looking architecture you've ever seen. "They want to make everything new" because they are the future of economic and cultural hegemony and they know it.

Could it be that Americans are finally letting go? We'll just bask in our memories of the good days - the infant days of Rock 'n' Roll - when we had it going on, we think. We're the new Europe. We brought a lot to the world for a few centuries, and now it's someone else's turn. Is that it?