New York in the Springtime (Bleeding Fiction)

New York in the Springtime

Yesterday I got an email from Eugene, announcing his annual birthday barbecue. In North Jersey my friends and I have a barbecue season; every few weeks we get together for a barbecue. We've had as few as two to as many as six over the course of a season. It's a good time, sitting with good, old friends on a relaxing afternoon outside, enjoying good grilled food and some drinks... Maybe playing a little football, which might involve accidentally knocking Adi to the ground... I think of the start of the season as Eugene's birthday barbecue. Getting Eugene's email, I had one of those homesick moments that happen whenever I miss something important to me. It's what happens when you move far away from the friends you love.

Around the time I got the email, though, I also found the website Overheard in New York. It's impossible, in New York, not to touch on other people's lives. You ignore each other with blithe abandon as you walk down the street, but things are cramped enough that parts of people, snippets of their conversation, drift into your personal plane of reality and help make up your world. If New York is a microcosm for the world (and it just might be), then New York, and through New York this website, is a reminder that distant things might not be so far away. I read a lot of the site's archive yesterday, and I laughed a lot at what's up there, and when I stopped, I stopped with a sigh and thought "it's good to be home."

Posted on May 4, 2005 11:47 AM | Permalink