There's something about it that never sat well with me. Sending a few lines to your friend. You respond back. Three or four messages go back and forth. Something you could have solved in ten seconds of talking if you just hit SEND and talked to them. Revolutionary, I know. There's also something about it that makes me want to scream, "just grow a pair and call the person!" Especially when it's a guy - you can't be a man to at least call, really? It's rare even to get a voicemail message anymore. From anybody, it seems. You leave a voicemail message, and I'll be at your house baking chocolate chip cookies from scratch. You handwrite a letter and mail it to me, I'll be cooking a three-course dinner.
I don't accept text messaging as a valid method of communication. Not even a missed call. The wonderful 'Chocolate' cell phone, when it slides open, which can happen when I just toss it into my purse, will open and list 'Missed Call' when I've missed a call. And when it slides closed, it closes the status update and I don't ever see it again until I open the 'Missed Calls' option on the phone. But if you didn't leave a message anyway, it probably wasn't important. If you didn't need to let me know why you called, whatever.
But I've found that this perspective is not always the consensus.
"I called you last night, but you didn't call me back."
"Well, you didn't leave a message."
"Yeah, but you didn't call me back."
"Why didn't you leave a message?"
I suppose, then, we're both guilty. My argument, then, is that, instead of the occurrence of phone tag, if the initial caller had left a message, then, at least the other person would know what was up. Instead, the sad phone tag continues. All because no one left any messages. Text message tag. Missed call tag. Facebook wall-to-wall tag.
Add that to the flaky landscape of SoCal, and we're easily in Jadedville. Ah, flakiness. That's another blog in itself, which I'm sure will happen sooner or later.
So many ways we have to communicate with each other; we live in such a luxurious time. Perhaps it does save us time, perhaps it only further complicates our lives. Time being the essence of everything that's been on the brain lately. Yet I still can't prevent getting stuck on the freeway, spending precious minutes looking for parking, futile hours tossed in the wastebasket of the evils of Los Angeles. Moments that keep recurring in that I have bouts of, "why didn't I get a Mini Cooper? Then I could fit perfectly right...there."
But there's always something to want more of, better of, brand-spankin' newer of. But I digress.
SO many things wrong with the apartment. The space in which you come home to, should not be a source of stress in your life. It's your home, my goodness. As I type this, I sit in the second floor apartment on a barstool. The oscillating plastic fan that my roommate assembled is blowing and providing the comfort in this 98 degree day (and still hot evening) along with a cold glass of water. The water pressure in the sink is still shot. The neighbors downstairs are blasting the bass on their stereo, which means they're probably banging each other. This morning, albeit a holiday morning, was not without the sanitation employees loudly taking the contents of the dumpsters of a certain studio's loading area, via monstrous trash truck. They're doing their jobs, but whenever it happens it is not without a complete and utter sense of wrongdoing that I hear the racket at such early morning hours. The small dog downstairs is yapping. I haven't washed my car in over a month since the street parking is prone to early morning sprinklers so I don't see the point. The garage, which may or may not be blocked by delivery trucks, other residents' cars, takes more hassle to open and close than to be worth the wasted minutes of life.
I just don't understand it. All these snags that keep coming up in life that serve up obstacles everywhere I turn. Like life is consistently trying to make things harder than it is. Things that make it harder to relax, things that some people never face but I find myself facing and trying not to dwell on them, trying not to become stone-cold with resentment. The struggles of starving artists, of big dreamers, of diligent assistants that have the burning passion of ambition and artistry, of success and love and getting somewhere bigger than their own small towns and humble beginnings that nobody in this town seems to talk about.
I breathe a few sighs, I'm sweating because it's still hot up here. I'm sure my make-up looks great under stress.
Today I feel old.
Lines-of-the-Week
"The road is long and seamless. Even over water. And though the tar is paved in blood of the last animals on earth, it is also a path paved in love & light, where every direction is just a roundabout way home." My heart, my heart.
Jeff: "Who's gonna do my laundry? Who's gonna cook my breakfast? (beat) She's so selfish." Oh Bravo, how you make me laugh so.
