A couple of years ago I decided to stop listening to music I loved but brought me down. The first to go, or probably the one I missed the most, was Leonard Cohen. But I forced myself to listen to Cat Steven’s “If you want to sing out” instead of “Bird on a Wire”, or even worse, “Traitor”. They still demand my attention from time to time, like this morning when I listened to Ani Di Franco’s “Both Hands” in repeat, reloading at every subway stop because I have to go online to listen to these … drugs.
It must be birthday season.
In a week I will be 38 years old. When do I settle down? When do I know what awaits around the corner? This last month I obsessively asked people who moved to New York how long it took them to stop feeling like they just moved to New York. Their answers went from 4 months to one year, so I am ok. So far, so good. I know how to return home without looking at an app from several places now. I don’t bump into people that much anymore (getting better at playing frogger, for all those gen x’ers out there). I am becoming picky with bagels, and buying overpriced goat’s yogurt at Whole Foods. But if I finish getting ready for work early, I still don’t know what to do with myself at home, so I just leave.
And the passive-aggressive. I know living in Israel for 18 years made me addicted to direct communication but I didn’t realize how oblivious I was to indirect insults until someone passively-aggressively insulted me last week and I didn’t catch on until way later. It’s as if my radar is on a different frequency and simply does not compute. Sad, I would say, that this is the language I probably speak best, and yet, I don’t understand it.
Time will work its magic. I remind myself that now, as I am anxious to understand what I am feeling and why, and what it means and what I am supposed to do about it. Time, take it away.