Month: January 2012

The tiny train station

a beacon  in the

mounds of snow and

then the cab ride through

the somnolent town,

colorful Victorian homes

contrasting the white,

the gold-domed capital

glowing like a nimbus,

guiding the way up the hill

to the college, where we’d

analyze characters like

our own flesh and blood,

all of us crowded together,

breathing the same air,

our hearts beating faster,

energy flowing so fervently,

that one needed to pause,

and I’d retreat back down,

to the health store where

I’d sit by a window overlooking

the frozen river, and drink

herbal tea, watching the

churn of water under

the ice, knowing that

soon it would all be a

rush, and that this

would be a

moment.

In this era of social networking the greener grass syndrome is even more profound.  We view pictures of beautiful people in beautiful places as we struggle to make end’s meet each day. What we have to keep in mind is that FB isn’t the real world–it is pictures of an imagined world that people want us to believe they exist in: all sun and smiles. We are all part of the human conditon: some days are good, some days are bad, and some days are just darn awful–and we are true heroes for slogging on. I guess my point is that we expend huge amounts of energy envying make-believe lives, when that energy would be put to much better use trying to make our real lives and the lives of others better. Even my friends who are in the Caribbean now, posting pictures of themselves in bikinis on sailboats in blue water, have to, eventually, come up for air.