anywhere you want
Over the weekend, I found myself on a bench with my friends Dorothy and Eliza, on the other side of a chainlink fence from a makeshift soccer field of concrete, on an island in the middle of Chrystie Street in Chinatown, eating dumplings.
Dorothy, a self-proclaimed "person-who-like-to-ask-questions" turned to me and asked, quite seriously, "If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?"
It didn't take long for me to answer, but I surprised even myself. I said I'd very much like to be sitting on the back porch of a house that I *owned*, somewhere in New England, reading a book. After quickly scanning in my mind the images I have stored of tropical paradise (El Nido, The Philippines), of urban beauty (Harajuku, Tokyo), or of romantic cityscapes (Paris, France), and art historical centers (Rome, Italy), I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do than pull on an oversized wool sweater and a pair of jeans, sit in a plantation chair and tuck into the pages of a great hardback book. On a breezy afternoon. Must be breezy.
It might've been the moment; as we sat watching the pickup soccer game on the basketball-court-sized playing field, a breeze happened to blow away some of our paper napkins. Dorothy had just given me my own copy of Rohinton Mistry's, *A Fine Balance,* one of the best books I've ever read about any place in Asia, and one that shattered my impressions of India as just that place where curry comes from. So maybe I was thinking about how I'd like to build a real adult library. I don't know.
We never got around to Dorothy and Eliza's places, but now I wish we had. I wonder what the answer to this kind of fantasy question says about a person's state of mind, at any given moment. That my place was one that was easy on the senses, full of green and quiet, makes a lot of sense, considering the chaos of New York right now.
Where would you go, if you could be anywhere?
Dorothy, a self-proclaimed "person-who-like-to-ask-questions" turned to me and asked, quite seriously, "If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?"
It didn't take long for me to answer, but I surprised even myself. I said I'd very much like to be sitting on the back porch of a house that I *owned*, somewhere in New England, reading a book. After quickly scanning in my mind the images I have stored of tropical paradise (El Nido, The Philippines), of urban beauty (Harajuku, Tokyo), or of romantic cityscapes (Paris, France), and art historical centers (Rome, Italy), I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do than pull on an oversized wool sweater and a pair of jeans, sit in a plantation chair and tuck into the pages of a great hardback book. On a breezy afternoon. Must be breezy.It might've been the moment; as we sat watching the pickup soccer game on the basketball-court-sized playing field, a breeze happened to blow away some of our paper napkins. Dorothy had just given me my own copy of Rohinton Mistry's, *A Fine Balance,* one of the best books I've ever read about any place in Asia, and one that shattered my impressions of India as just that place where curry comes from. So maybe I was thinking about how I'd like to build a real adult library. I don't know.
We never got around to Dorothy and Eliza's places, but now I wish we had. I wonder what the answer to this kind of fantasy question says about a person's state of mind, at any given moment. That my place was one that was easy on the senses, full of green and quiet, makes a lot of sense, considering the chaos of New York right now.
Where would you go, if you could be anywhere?
posted by brad board babe at 5:22 PM
1 Comments:
for today because i drank some loose jasmine tea at work:
I'd like to be at a tea house in Chengdu drinking tea and playing cards. there are a number of people who'd i want to be sitting across from me.
~lisa
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