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empty and uninteresting as their perspectives on life
Tuesday, November 19 2002
Gretchen returned from her travels today. She'd been to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to hang out with a friend whose father is dying of brain cancer, but she'd also hung out with Mary Purdy for a day in Manhattan, though the cooing of pigeons and incessant wail of fire engines had kept her from having a sound night's sleep on Mary's couch. In Manhattan's defense, it did turn out that there had been an apartment fire nearby that night. As for the pigeons, perhaps Gretchen had made the mistake of sleeping over on pigeon karaoke night.
I learned these things after picking up Gretchen at the Kingston Greyhound Station. I actually drove down there not once but twice today. I'd thought she'd told me she was coming "at around one" but she'd been talking to me on a shitty cell phone connection and what she'd actually said was "I don't know when." "When" turned out to be four, not one. So, after not seeing Gretchen get off either of the 2pm buses, I gave up, went home, learned the real time she'd be coming in a message on the answering machine, and blah blah blah.
In other news, I've nearly finished the basement hallway wainscoting. I'm still waiting on a sufficiently-straight oak pillar from the deer hunting native lumberman in Saugerties. I need this pillar so I can finish the wall adjacent to the bottom of the basement stairs, which I need to do before finishing the remainder of the wainscoting.
As the evening grew colder, Gretchen started a fire in the woodstove and we sat around talking, mostly about how irritating and uninteresting she finds youth culture. She made the claim that people in their 20s are, for the most part, hopelessly naive and vapid. Not only that, Gretchen doesn't even like the way young people look. Their smooth, wrinkle-free complexions are, to her eye, as empty and uninteresting as their perspectives on life. I don't share Gretchen's view of youth. I think it's possible to find young people with refreshing perspectives that aren't simply yawn-inducingly half-baked prior strata from our own lives. But I also agree with her to a certain extent. Take that girl in the Blimpie commercial who talks trash about people born before 1980 in that smug know-nothing Britney-generation affectation, the kind that presupposes some sort of youth entitlement. Personally, I'd like to set upon her flawless face with a cheese grater.
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