Revisions Necessary

Bits and pieces of a sleepy, saucy, silently-typed rave on the 6:07 train after a day in Jersey.

Sometimes, I feel liable to collapse.

I feel so overwhelmed by possibilities - options, courses of action, absolute outcomes of the next 15 seconds - that I literally paralyze my mind or my legs or my hands, which stop altogether in whatever I am doing or thinking. My eyes may well up, I might get a little shaky or break out into a giant wide smile. For me, at least recently (much like many, many years ago), possibility holds no anxiety: only joy, wonder or confusion.

There are no sweaty palms, no hyperventilation, just a whole set of hopes and wishes for my immediate future or the future that might have been- might have been, might have been - occurring every few seconds as the possibilities scatter like chopped film strips left to collect dust on the studio floor. This is not an everyday, all-the-time occurrence. Just an occasional road block in the normalcy I've adopted to cover my tracks as the tallest 4 year old girl on the planet.

***

When I see a stranger visibly upset - someone I haven't met and probably will never see again - I still feel the urge to comfort them. My instinct tells me (my American-bred, kind but cautious instinct) that going up and hugging or striking up a conversation or patting the back of a stranger who is upset could lead to a multitude of problems.

But gosh, it is hard to see someone cry or blink away tears and look down with a heavy, heavy stare, when you cannot do a damn thing about it. Some of them look like the VCR that was playing their soul got its tape ejected and was unplugged and put in the basement. I wonder when the next time there will be (or last time there was) wonder in their eyes - life in their eyes. And it makes my heart hurt so much to see people trudge from point to point and stare into space. Even if this is a relaxing comfort between work and home - and I know I’ve been there myself - it makes me sad.

I think I may have some sort of disease that wants every moment to be filled with gorgeousness and light and beauty and fun and creativity. I feel somehow that this is the best defense against waking up one day and realizing I am completely numb…like an Obsessive Compulsive taking vitamins and washing their hands, done unintentionally but with great care.

I just can't imagine being that someone sitting on a train, staring at the back of the head of the person in front of me, wondering how long I could prolong the journey home before launching into another night of work. To go sleep. To go to another day of work. To be back on that train, wishing I was anywhere but this place.

***

Sitting in a company meeting this afternoon, I began to want and dream and scheme and plan things I haven’t wanted (or dreamed or schemed or planned) in quite some time. I began to feel the stir of that feeling I got back in Judy Austin or DeLamarter & Schaefer’s classes, when I thought that advertising could make anything possible...

Large grassroots movements could launch and gain momentum and grow and grow and change the world.

People could be mobilized to get up from their very televisions and help to fix the state of things.

People could be persuaded by a newspaper or magazine ad to write a letter and together, they could save the Grand Canyon from muddy flooding.

I lost some of this wonder in my third year of college, regained for a brief shining moment watching a Sony Bravia commercial on the second floor office on Lower John Street outside of Picadilly Circus. [Bouncing colored balls on a San Francisco street and Jose Gonzalez’s Heartbeats.]

But today- well, today was just sunshine. Sunshine packaged in the form of men and women and a Powerpoint presentation that wasn’t projected in quite the right colors. A man who turns phrases like some people jiggle rusty light bulbs out of sockets. A man who doesn’t say no. A man who turns the world into a neat joke. A woman who believes that anything can be done with the right amount of time and brainstorming.

I am just in awe of how such a functional and successful company could be built in only 8 years and how I (one who has years and years of experience at being an extroverted, flashy, flighty, messy, loud, sometimes quiet and dead, messy messy colorful accidentally-intelligent mess of a human being) got taken under its wing and trusted to maintain something as large as what I do. It might not be large in the scope of their entire project roster, but man, it’s insane to me.

Sometimes, when I have a call or a meeting with people- people at a network or an agency or even the clients I talk to daily, I think, "Do they know who I AM?! Do they know what I’ve done?! Do they know where I came from??" Not like I’ve murdered people or chopped up puppies in my basement, but...I am not one of them.

I mean, I might be one of them. Whoever they may be...I mean, I might have ideas, I might be creative, I might be driven. But I am not born and bred from agency or corporation stock. My mom has a mind for numbers, a soul for art and hands for baking. My dad loves to read and write and talk to people and now cleans a grocery store for a living. I don’t think my parents have ever individually made the amount of money I am making this year- and they have at least 28 years of experience on me.

It’s insanity.

I feel insane.

But happy. And hopeful.

***

I can be known to overwhelm myself and others. I hope I have not done the latter here. I know I have already accomplished the former.