U2, New York, & France

You know how certain time periods seem to revolve around certain elements? Such as you are a long time smoker and you try to quit and nothing but smoking comes up everywhere? Or your bike is stolen and everyone asks you to ride with them or there are non-stop commercials on the radio for bike gear just to rub it in? Lately, I have had the following three things come up over and over- U2, New York City, and France.

I’ve heard a lot of U2 songs lately- especially tunes from the Joshua Tree. When I do I think #1 Bono’s wife is a lucky woman and #2 I want to be loved like I have fascinated that Bono loves his wife. I once wrote a poem for a college course where we were to compare someone in our life to food. I chose my mom and an orange. I don’t remember all of it but I do remember trying to convey my relationship with my mother as messy, deep, good and bad. (as a point of reference, I hate peeling oranges, you can’t ever get away from the mess, you get it under your nails and it feels like it is on you all day long, kinda like a mom) I remember some line mentioning the juice of an orange and it spilling down my arm and leaving sticky on my chin. That is how I imagine real deep true love is. You sink into it. It oozes all over you and you are happy to be a mess in it. Bono has a poetry in him. An undulating emotion. He oozes. He is affected by the world and the people in it. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be on the receiving end as his woman. I want to have sex like my orange story. I want to be what Bono has been looking for, I’ll be his honey lips.

I keep seeing everything creative point its origin back to New York City. I think I would have loved to have gone there in my 20s and done it up. Maybe I would have survived and thrived? Maybe I would have fallen apart. But I would have had the experience to talk about. I work in a creative field yet I constantly feel like an imposter. I am constantly in meetings thinking, “I don’t belong here, these people are going to find out I am a phony. Because I am not naturally smart, I have to work at my smarts. It takes review and revision for me to get something right. I feel that in design, I need the same. Honestly, I think I need to surround myself with more creative people. In college, I would always sit in a desk next to one of the most creative people in my studio classes, hoping some of their goodness would seep into me just by being near. I feel my insides aching for more creation, innovation, new ideas. I am sick of pushing the business of design. I want the heart of it. I want more. No, I can’t pick up and move to New York as so many do when this urge gets them. I will have to figure out how to do it in my growing city of Minneapolis for now.

Do people really honestly book the Concord to fly to Paris for just an evening meal at a favorite restaurant? I just finished up a book where there was a young budding relationship brewing and the new boyfriend did this to impress the woman. How amazing would that be? I don’t know if I could actually enjoy it without thinking constantly about the cost of the flight. -But really, what an amazing thing to do. I also saw on the back jacket of a book I got in the mail from Amazon that one of my favorite authors travels the world doing lectures and lives in France. That kind of life is what I am always referring to my dear Irish friend as “fabulous”. I need a more fabulous life. These couple things about France made my wheels spin. If I were to have this sort of fabulous life and lived in France, really, I would have everything I need- wine, cheese, small little restaurants, romantic people just because they make them that way over there, cobbled streets, and people who give a damn about how they dress. Reality is, I should have been born a gay man. They get to have their life “just so” and the world just excuses them as “gay”. For me, if I want things “just so”, I am an inflexible bitch who needs to give a little. I want to fuss about what peppers to buy at the grocery store. I want a cute little seating arrangement outside to drink a morning cappuccino that does not get dismantled each night. For sanity sake let’s just hope that France has something wrong with it. France would probably reject me; after all I am an Angry American.