Someone should sit all the Republicans and Democrats down in front of Ingrid Michaelson while she sings Blood Brothers and those who don’t reach their hands across the aisle afterwords should be impeached for Inability to Feel. And that’s my vote.

While walking to Rockefeller Center a few nights ago to marvel at this year’s tree and ransack the book section of Anthropologie, I had the good fortune of enjoying the company of one of my most valued friends with whom I always enjoy some of my most thoughtful, hilarious, nonsensical, and bizarre conversations. After glancing in an afterthought kind of way at the tree as we griped about the increasing materialism and insensitivity of some of the people we know and spending what felt like five hours not talking one another out of buying varied decorative knobs and books about the trees of Canada, we made the mistake of walking through Times Square on the way home. As we waited for the walk sign to cross Sixth Avenue, I stared in abject horror at the mob of people and said, “I don’t know why I proactively choose over and over again to live here when I hate people so much.” And my friend, always tuned to the same obscure channel on which my brain operates, immediately responded, “Because you love humanity as much as you hate people.”

A truer inherently contradictory statement has never been uttered. The more exposure I have to individuals (even New Yorkers, all of whom I hold to a higher standard and derive great pleasure from), the more I hate people…including, at times, myself.

This day and age does nothing for our likability, let me tell you. Not that it’s merely the fault of the 21st Century or Al Gore when he invented the internet or the iPhone. But those things don’t help. I don’t notice the same things when I look at people that I used to notice. At one time, I was set on autopilot to observe the quirky, admirable traits people didn’t even realize they were exuding. Now my default is noticing the proliferation of annoying crap people are hyper-conscious in striving to affect.

Why, yes, I do actually see you there with your iPad nestled into a case that mocks an Edwardian first edition, flicking at warp speeds through your Mother Jones articles while covertly (or not-so-covertly, as it happens) monitoring the level of interest in your said behavior by fellow members of the 1 train community. And, believe it not, I am not mesmerized by your purposefully audible conversation about farm subsidization and Scandinavian design trends as I sip my overpriced drink at Starbucks. Actually, I would be eternally grateful if you would shut up so I can finish this story in my Roald Dahl book, okay? And no, I don’t care that you hold Roald Dahl in low esteem when compared with Maurice Sendak. “I understand what you’re saying, and your comments are valuable, but I’m gonna ignore your advice.” Do you know who said that, Mr. Ray Ban Readers? The Fantastic Mr. Fox. No, not Wes Anderson. Roald freaking Dahl!

People! They wear disgustingly showy fur coats and say racist things and look self-satisfied when loaded down with shopping bags and take themselves far too seriously and rely on cell phones to do basic math and use the word “like” as a glue to holds every thought together and talk badly about everyone they know to everyone else they know and smack gum too loudly and leave enough water in soap dishes to float the Titanic. People are mean and selfish and egocentric and rude and shallow and ignorant.

But, my oh, my…human beings! They wait five extra seconds to hold doors and they feel genuinely badly for babies who cry on airplanes and they catch one another’s smiling eyes on the train when they overhear a person utter the same ridiculous comment and they are homeless but can play flutes as well as if they’d gone to Julliard and maybe they did and they wear ugly but comfortable shoes and they make childlike comments about holiday decorations and tell hopeful lies that they call resolutions. They are imperfect and get pimples and are out-of-breath after grocery runs. And yet they are so much more beautiful and lovable and admirable than people.

There are so many people in New York City. Over eight million of them. Over eight million annoying, shallow, selfish, trend-following, rude, disheartening people.

But there are so many human beings in New York City. Over eight million of them. Over eight million human beings, getting though it the best they can in that beautifully flawed way, making the mistakes that all people do.

*Illustrations by Ms. Carson Ellis, an absolutely admirable human being

]]> http://katekoza.com/2011/12/04/people-vs-humans/feed/ 0 katekoza party-big poetic-pete2-500x368 http://katekoza.com/2011/12/04/random-thoughtlet/ http://katekoza.com/2011/12/04/random-thoughtlet/#comments Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:55:43 +0000 katekoza http://katekoza.wordpress.com/?p=1679 ]]>

Twitter rarely makes me joyful or contemplative, but when I saw this, I smiled out loud. Not because I’m over the moon about the Kate Bush album (I do really like it, though), but because Ben Gibbard can now blithely proclaim such opinions without having to fully think through the implications upon, say, the holiday album of a certain Missus & Mister.

Not being married is the new marriage. That’s all I’m saying. I’ll take my ability to eat Blueberry Special K in my high school ballet leotard while watching Nova over picking out adorable Rifle Paper Co. wedding invitations emblazoned with woodland creatures any day of the weekend.

Until Chris Walla comes knocking on my door, that is. At which point I will stay true to the above diatribe by eloping via Post-it® strategy while stopped at a red light.

I lifted the warped lid of my jewelry box just now and saw one of her business cards sitting right on top of my old turtle brooch.

“Why did you give me ten of these cards when you knew I already had your contact info?” I wish I’d asked her. But what would’ve been the point? I already know the answer.

It’s her rung.

It’s proof of where she is on the ladder she’s chosen to climb. And in handing those cards to me, she’s ensuring that I understand that in order to see me, she has to look down. Even though I’m three inches taller than she is. The pedestal is not measured by the length of our bones, but by what we grab onto and how tightly we hold it once we do.

What she doesn’t care to notice is that I’m even further down than she thought. I’m not even on her ladder, following in her footsteps, straining, climbing, knowing there will always be more people ahead than behind. Knowing that just because the ladder disappears into the clouds doesn’t mean it ever stops. Knowing that it connects directly with the sun itself, and by the time you’re aflame, you’re don’t climb down. You fall.

I’m so far below her, in fact, that she can’t even really see me. Because I’m still on the ground, craning my neck and shielding my eyes as I survey the millions of ladders soaring into the stratosphere like tin redwoods.

The people on the bottom rungs of the ladders are still distinct and clear enough that I can see them for who they are, or at the very least, most of who they are about to used to be. But as they climb higher, they all begin to look the same until they becomes indistinguishable and, then, one day disappear head-first.

There are not many people trained in climbing who have chosen to stay on the ground like me. Some did for a while but ultimately couldn’t stand the sight of the others going up without them, succumbing to the life-affirming fear of being left behind. Some only recently heaved a sigh twice their age and grabbed a rung at random, resigned to doing what it takes to avoid being an undefined unknown at a low altitude.

Sometimes I want to run amongst the ladders and grab at the new climbers on the bottom rungs and fling them back to earth just so I won’t be so alone here. But it would be pointless — the moment their palms start to chafe, they become determined to develop calluses. And after all, there are others who have chosen a sore neck over blistered hands, other who wander the dark and flickering maze of the forests floor. Sometime I think I see them, pausing in their journeys to glance skywards.  I can’t wait to finally find them, meet these people I know must be there. Nothing ever happens only once. Even me.

I don’t ever want a job that comes with a box of freshly-cut business cards. I don’t even want to make my own. There are enough people in this jungle looking to discover the view from the top. Not understanding that the view comes at a price. Because there are not many people above those clouds, and when you get all the way up there, you’re closest companion is going to be very, very far away.

Please don’t bother to look back down at me or laugh about how I’ve yet to take hold of it, of any of it. Because your view will always be a hastened downward glance to quantify your progress, and mine will always be a sweeping view of something so much larger than us both.

Today, Facebook made me type in the CAPTCHA “day, bovices” in order to post an article on my wall about watching episodes of Law & Order: SVU eight hundred times simply because you lack the modicum of decisiveness needed to make a decision about what to watch on Netflix instant streaming after perusing all of the main page suggestions for 21.7 minutes.

I don’t know what a day bovice is, let alone how it differs from a night bovice, but I’m pretty it sure it has something to do with me needing to get a life.

For the first eight years of my life I operated under the assumption that those who sought careers in education did so as a result of a besotted fascination with the world, an incurable desire to never stop discovering. For years nine through twelve, I came to the conclusion that some exceptions existed, but only because some educators didn’t know how to hold age and wonderment at the same time. That for these people, age got too big for fascination and bumped it right out of their hands, leaving them clinging to a date on a driver’s license and the car that went with it. After the age of 12, I realized that age brought a loss of sight, and it was this astigmatism that debilitated the wonder, not the number itself. And at age 23 I found out possibly the worst thing of all: Most people never suffered from acute fascination to begin with, and wouldn’t know wonder if it landed them in critical condition. If you see, really see, and think, really think, you’re going to be a very lonely person indeed. What’s more, if your wonder makes more minutes of lonely worthwhile than not, well, let’s just say you might as well go ahead and buy the one bedroom and save yourself the money lost on rent and waiting around.

I hate when people say, “I can’t believe this,” and, “I can’t believe that.” I believe everything because I have eyes and a pulse and  therefore what’s not to believe? I can believe education is becoming a micro-market economy. I can believe that one day soon you will see GTWN and HRVD and BKLY listed in the WSJ and on the NYSE. I can believe that my friends’ children will pay $200,000 to sit obediently before professors who have not opened a book in over three years. I can believe that this won’t much matter to my friends’ children because they won’t even know what a book is.

I am laying this path of recycled cement where there used to be bedrock so that I can tell you something much, much worse: It already happened. It’s not my friends’ hypothetical kids in ten years who suffer these afflictions of turn-page depravity. It’s the girl sitting next to me on the Metro and the professor you’re listening to on Wednesday night and the man in line in front of you at Starbucks and my mom’s best friend.

THE GOOD PEOPLE DO NOT READ.

Right now, all over America, people sit, not reading.

People are listening to cars go by on the 405 not reading. Talking about bitches and bad boyfriends not reading. Waiting to proceed to the register at Whole Foods not reading. Climbing stairs and walking onto elevators that will take them to apartments where they will unlock their doors and not read. Settling into sheets with the remote not reading. Placing their hands on their palms bathed in the light of Just Jared not reading. Staring at walls not reading. Crying not reading. Feeling alone, obviously not reading. Gathering around tables carved from heavy trees and nodding solemnly and launching missiles not reading. Lying underneath other people resignedly, not reading. Hiding in caves in deserts not reading. Taking Carnival cruises not reading. Looking at blogs with pictures of shirts from J.Crew not reading. Pushing carts down aisles and standing in front of thirty brands of paper towels not reading. Walking quickly from sample cart to sample cart at Costco accepting tiny cardboard offerings not reading. Cursing as umbrellas flip inside out and getting drenched and not reading. Teaching reading not reading.

I believe this and I believe that and I believe it all because I see and think and watch and wonder and hope and dream and judge and get enchanted too easily and get sad too easily and get knocked down and get back up and at the end of all of that I read.

I believe I believe I believe. I believe we’re here now and it’s a long way past the last book that guy over there read. I believe we are endless. I believe we are a continuation. I believe we are not so very clever as all that backlit hype may have you think because never again will you find the next celebrated big thing paparazzi-target kahuna man sitting in his trousers and socks, reading.

The last lauded man to find the Answer on a dogeared page has walked quietly into the night and the next one won’t be lauded at all.

Move to a place that’s cold and rainy and damp and puddly and perfect for a closet full of Helvetica, and save yourself from the dangerous and fast-approaching scourge of people for whom books are too damned real to be important. They’ll be wielding things with screens and they’ll have you before you realize it happened and by 2015 you won’t remember that the question was to be or not to be.

Dear Facebook,

I know we were never on-again-off-again. Ours was an overtly pickled relationship preserved out of necessity and reluctant practicality. But you’re simply becoming more than I can bear to handle, even on an irregular basis. And it’s not the ads. It’s not the stupid polls and quizzes and miniature thumbs indicating the directions of heaven (“Dudes and dudettes I just got XFinity!”)  and hell (“XFinity is sh**. Never trust those Comcast commies!”).

No, no. The problem is this: you turn people I once vaguely enjoyed for five minutes at the 2008 Christmas ugly sweater party into people I will passionately despise for all eternity.

The Big Bad Wolf is now the Big Bad Facebook of Us, and teeth are the least of Red Riding Hood’s concerns. “My, my what big egos you have!”

Look, Facebook. You once amused me, I admit. People can be so daft, the resulting status updates so very amusing. Jolly fun it is when it’s occasional, when it’s a simple matter of vapidness. And I confess – I enjoyed letting people know that my Saturday afternoons are This American Life, my Friday nights Gin Rummy, and my “inspirational person” the fiercest of them all, Ms. Lauren Bacall. It seemed a way to declare “I’m not you!” Like an Obama 2008 yard sign in Palatka, Florida. Or enjoying an obnoxiously loud box of green apple Nerds while seeing L’Amour Fou.

But that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? The things that are supposed to distinguish us on Facebook, and anywhere else online for that matter (“Touche,” says my blog.), are now the very things that serve to make us camp and tragically unoriginal. Part of the great heaving cystic mass of indistinguishable gluttony and banality that will seal our fate as the generation who killed genuine thoughtfulness, mystique, subtlety, and the greatest attribute of them all — humility.

I’m all for connecting with people, for doors being opened, for being gifted with stories, for really listening to what it’s been for another person to walk this earth. It’s genuinely fascinating to listen to people, no? Once of life’s great treats. Humanity’s great accomplishment. Man’s great luck.

But you, Facebook, are not connecting us. If anything, you’re increasing quantity while sending quality the way of the stegosaurus, a most nuanced, unique, and irreplaceable creature. Irreplaceable. Will the richness of our connectedness, the humility once lauded, our kindness and outward looking-ness be irreplaceable? Because I think it’s fading. And I think it’s a damn shame.

You’ll say it’s not your fault, Facebook, even make the case that none of it is true. Other’s will come to your aid, call me antiquated and stuffy and pseudo-critical. A great many others won’t care — will move on to their next status update, their next poke.

And that’s all fine. You’re changing the world whether I like it or not, that’s for sure. You’re changing my friends, probably changing me. Changing my options, anyway, changing the people with whom I have to travel through life. I may not like it, but wonders will never cease and desist.

But what I know most certainly is this: Once upon a time, I had the chance to wonder about people. To meet them and find them fascinating and discoverable. To peel away the layers. To be delighted and repulsed in turn, to try to focus on the former and understand the latter.

But you’ve done it, Facebook. You’ve really done it. In a opportunistic triumph greater than that of Columbus himself, you’ve discovered not America, but the people of the world. Discovered them, stripped them, laid bare some of the least admirable facets of who they are. And for people like me, there’s much less wondering, much less mystery, much less opportunity to discover a little something of our own.

Outside Union Station in Washington, DC, there is a marble statue of Christopher Columbus emblazoned with the tragi-comic phrase, “To the memory of Christopher Columbus, whose high faith and indomitable courage gave to mankind a new world.”

Like Columbus, Facebook, you give to us nothing that wasn’t there all along. Instead, you seize on what already existed, offering it freely to those whose tastes and expectations will become as cheap as your triumph. Nothing left to discover. Nothing left to earn.

But to me, the absolute saddest part is this: you’ll never get your bombastic statue, your romantic homage. Because you’re not dying. We are.

The sincerest of sincerities,

Kate of the Done Day

From top let: Henri dining chair, A Blossom Takes Hold Magnets, Abahna Soap, Saturated Dewdrops Chandelier, Amazonia Journals, Happ & Stahns Perfume,  Pencils in Pinstripes Cosmetics Bag, Ardennes Skirt, Gallerista Dress, Sage Chino Dress, Wallpaper Butter Dish, Extraterrestrial Hoop Earrings, Cocoon Jewelry Box, Tea Rose Wallet, Hobnail Tumbler, Aged Leaf Ring

And, because I can…

The opening credits of Bonnie & Clyde are some of my favorite preemptive film credits of all time. It’s like being six again and forced to sit on a 1970s orange bouclé couch in front of a blank wall in a screening room (read: sunken den) while my Aunt Agnes flips through family photos from Chicago circa 1934 on her aquamarine LaBelle slide projector.

The opportunity for artistry in opening credits is often overlooked; this upsets me greatly. What troubles me even more is that the really good opening credits are often ignored by a population of movie-goers who have ADD and — after consuming all of their popcorn during the Stella Artois commercial, Geico ad, Coca Cola holiday polar bear spot, and fifteen previews – just want the damn movie to start.

By twenty seconds into the opening credits, you should know exactly the sort of picture your $12 has gotten you into. You should have a fairly good idea of whether or not you’re going to be satisfied in two hour’s time. And, if the credits simply exceed all expectation, you should pretty much have your mind made up about pre-ordering the DVD on Amazon as soon as you get home.

I have high standards, I know. But if I wouldn’t if I didn’t know that it could be done. Somewhere. The Kids Are All Right. Please Give. Here are three movies in the last year alone that I knew I was going to be purchasing after mere seconds, all because the credits were so thoroughly lovable.

This being said, films that commence with the credit rolling dans la première scène don’t even deserve comment here. The whole thing is already pretty much a lost cause. TV seems to understand this better than film, and usually does it’s very best to avoid rolling main credits during the opening action. Poor TV. So often it starts out knowing exactly what it’s doing, but then slanders itself with its own idiocy.

What we have here is a delicious and inadvertently discovered treasure-trove of politically incorrect and morally questionable children’s literature published by Penguin Books in the 1940s, available for your immediate rediscovery if the price is right.

The covers above bring to mind many, many questions, none of which I have the answers to. For example, this Orlando character seems like quite the gigolo, enjoying an evening out that’s juicy enough to merit a book. And yet, he’s still simultaneously enjoying the wiles of his wife at home. Though he does look rather dyspeptic on the cover of Orlando’s Home Life. Maybe he needs his evenings out because his wife is smothers him. She kind of looks like the suffocating type, if you ask me. He probably tells her that Monday nights are his bowling league and then goes down to Kettle of Fish in the West Village and gets smashed. Poor guy.

And what of Mitla and Lupe? They are Mexican Indian, yes, but what kind of Indian? The answer to this really makes all the difference. Indian like India? Or Indian like Columbus’ non-West Indies? And what about their Mexican Indian identity so drastically changes the plot of the book that it merits distinction on the cover? Do Mexican Indian children win kittens while the rest of us merely get a goldfish?

Why does the Arab minaret look like a Soviet rocket? I was at first confused and thought the Iranians may have had a prolific space program I was heretofore unaware of. I had to Google it. My high school world history professor was crap, and regardless, we didn’t even make it past the Gilded Age, so…

Why is Worzel Gummidge sitting in a wheelbarrow with a sign around her neck that says “Penny for the guy?” Is Worzel a scarecrow prostitute? If so, she needs to raise her going rate. A penny. That’s just embarrassing. Also, where is the missing first Worzel Gummidge book, if this one is Worzel “Again?” Did she charge more in the first book? Also, what made the cover artist decide to use Roseanne Barr as visual inspiration?

Here is what I do know: If you handed a child a book called Flowers of the Field and Hedgerow and Their Garden Cousins today, he or she would likely look at you with disbelief before shrieking, “Bitch, where be my Wii controller and Odwalla juice blend?” Except for my child, of course, who would promptly look at the cover and say, “But, Mom, Daucus carota is white. Ergo, the pictorial representation on the cover is empirically inaccurate.”

If you are interested in purchasing any of the books featured here, might I recommend visiting the eBay storefront a certain Mr./Mrs.(gender-identity is questionable) djlees. I can only imagine what DJ Hermaphrodite Lees spinz at da club. Probably some of this, and maybe a little bit of this. Of course, djlees is probably much less cosmopolitan that I am imagining. Darrow Johnson Lees of Satffordshire, most likely, owner of [1] large attic filled with boxes of said books, [3] senile Welch Corgies, and [1] harping wife who refuses to die.

*A/N: I have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for the Honourable djlees. Without him, I would not own a first edition of Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield ($5!), therefore being one step further away from actualizing my Ultimate Life Goal of turning myself into Kathleen Kelly. Keep spinning those hits, djlees, keep spinning those hits.