I've been drummed out of Barnes & Noble. The drumming was performed by a chatty man who wanted to tell me all about his difficult decision about should-he-go-for-a-new-job, and what to do about his weekend beach house, and ...
But I was sitting placidly in a chair, working on an essay, and listening to my little music. My B & N has a second floor with all these huge, cushy chairs clumped in groups of 4 around coffee tables. It's a great place to work or read or nap. I do all of the above.
Or did. This is the third time a random man has started to jabber jabber at me about all sorts of things in his life. My husband thinks they're hitting on me, but they're not. There must be something in my aura that yelps, "Open for business!" It's happened all my life.
The time before that it was a Russian emigre, who lectured me about American food, American lifestyles, how Americans are so dirty and don't know how to cook. That happens all the time, too, people deciding I'm just the individual to try out their fix-the-world ideas on.
But this man went too far. Just over the edge. Can't say how I can tell, just can. And he trampled right all over my delicate introvert sensibilities. He kept interrupting my work (I cannot write if I think someone's going to talk to me at any moment--if I have houseguests, my writing life disappears). He asked for my email address.
He asked where I was from. I told him (heaven help me, I can't lie), and privately choked a moment at the physical grip the Rockies still have on me. God, I miss home. He said, "That's why you're so nice." I thought (sometimes wish I'd said), "No, where I'm from people respond politely when interrupted in a coffee shop because where I'm from the interruptor knows to go away."
A few days later I risked Barnes & Noble again. I hid at a table, away from the cushy chairs, near the used book section. An hour later, he found me, grinned, pulled a chair out as I reluctantly removed my earphones (I can only listen to one of 3 CDs when writing, and bookstores don't play them).
He jabbered. I shrank. Now I can't go back. I'm stuck at home, with so many distractions, like a computer with Internet access. Why why why! In the spirit of Jonathan Rauch, "How interesting. Now please shush."
Showing posts with label East Coast Exile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label East Coast Exile. Show all posts
Monday, June 4, 2007
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Grocery Shopping Battles
This morning I'm preparing to go grocery shopping, as I do every Wednesday. To at least three-quarters of the population, the phrase "preparing to go grocery shopping" has no meaning. But for those of us who shrink from the countless inane encounters and pushy crowds of an everyday life, it means everything.
I used to shop at a local chain, but have recently discovered a Trader Joe's just 40 minutes south, in a crowded area of New Jersey. Since TJ's is vastly cheaper than anywhere else, I kind of have to go there. Besides, it gives you that warm fuzzy of shopping in the granola-friendly Trader Joe's atmosphere.
Problem is, this area of New Jersey is terribly overcrowded. There are people, people everywhere. In small, squeezed streets of what were once separate small towns, women with starched hair and pinched expressions maneuver massive SUVs that take just a bit over their fair share of the road.
I really don't know how these people live like this all the time. I don't know why there aren't accidents all the time, constantly. New Jersey residents are truly terrible drivers, almost as bad as Bostonians--weaving across the road, chittering on phones, never using turn signals.
Anyway, the traffic gamut makes my fingers weak. And then I have to face the crowds. When I get into the parking lot, I sit with my head on the steering wheel for a minute, just to recuperate.
It's hard to explain to a non-introvert what the experience of crowding is like. Not crowds--introversion is not enochlophobia; this is not about the suffocating quantity of people--it's the constant chatter going on around you, the idiotic impulse most people feel to either a) say whatever comes into their head to the person they're with, or b) if they're not with someone, getting out their cell phone because they can't stand not talking to someone even for the short time it takes to choose groceries.
This chatter is like breathing pollution to introverts. Jonathan Rauch's statement, "please shush" sums up an introvert's deepest desire. Please stop talking about nothing. Please be silent for a bit.
For me, this doesn't just apply to someone talking at me over the phone or at a social event. It's all around me, all the time, like some sort of blaring klaxon that keeps me jittery and anxious.
So that's what happens in the grocery store. People talk, talk, talk. They try to make small talk as we stand choosing tea. They say pointless things to the checkout person. They review their sex lives while on the phone. They keep a running commentary with a friend while letting their children run around hapless and screaming.
Like many introverts, I need about two hours of alone recovery time for every hour of small-talk-type social events. After the grocery store, after I've battled pushy, greedy, permanently annoyed drivers for over an hour, and after I've walked through a sea of talk that feels like walking through verbal thorns I need the rest of the day to recover. I can work. I can function. But I just need, desperately to be left alone.
I used to shop at a local chain, but have recently discovered a Trader Joe's just 40 minutes south, in a crowded area of New Jersey. Since TJ's is vastly cheaper than anywhere else, I kind of have to go there. Besides, it gives you that warm fuzzy of shopping in the granola-friendly Trader Joe's atmosphere.
Problem is, this area of New Jersey is terribly overcrowded. There are people, people everywhere. In small, squeezed streets of what were once separate small towns, women with starched hair and pinched expressions maneuver massive SUVs that take just a bit over their fair share of the road.
I really don't know how these people live like this all the time. I don't know why there aren't accidents all the time, constantly. New Jersey residents are truly terrible drivers, almost as bad as Bostonians--weaving across the road, chittering on phones, never using turn signals.
Anyway, the traffic gamut makes my fingers weak. And then I have to face the crowds. When I get into the parking lot, I sit with my head on the steering wheel for a minute, just to recuperate.
It's hard to explain to a non-introvert what the experience of crowding is like. Not crowds--introversion is not enochlophobia; this is not about the suffocating quantity of people--it's the constant chatter going on around you, the idiotic impulse most people feel to either a) say whatever comes into their head to the person they're with, or b) if they're not with someone, getting out their cell phone because they can't stand not talking to someone even for the short time it takes to choose groceries.
This chatter is like breathing pollution to introverts. Jonathan Rauch's statement, "please shush" sums up an introvert's deepest desire. Please stop talking about nothing. Please be silent for a bit.
For me, this doesn't just apply to someone talking at me over the phone or at a social event. It's all around me, all the time, like some sort of blaring klaxon that keeps me jittery and anxious.
So that's what happens in the grocery store. People talk, talk, talk. They try to make small talk as we stand choosing tea. They say pointless things to the checkout person. They review their sex lives while on the phone. They keep a running commentary with a friend while letting their children run around hapless and screaming.
Like many introverts, I need about two hours of alone recovery time for every hour of small-talk-type social events. After the grocery store, after I've battled pushy, greedy, permanently annoyed drivers for over an hour, and after I've walked through a sea of talk that feels like walking through verbal thorns I need the rest of the day to recover. I can work. I can function. But I just need, desperately to be left alone.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Hating New York
Maybe it's not true that I hate New York. I don't like it, certainly. It bores me, definitely. Frustrating? Annoying? Dull? Absolutely. But hateful? I'm not sure. Mostly it puts me to sleep. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the people. Maybe it's the fact that, to New Yorkers, a Westerner like me has nothing to add to their worldview. In their minds, I should be grateful to be here. That makes me hate it.
I hate Boston, its snobbish, introverted self-interest and obsession with inherited blueblood money. It's like a wealthy old great-aunt who's always reminding you that your hippie mother from Seattle was never accepted as "one of the family," and you never will be either. New York seems so childish by comparison, some little toddler boy fascinated with the action of its own penis. It's hard to hate a baby that's always so gleefully impressed with its own accomplishments.
"I'll move anywhere with you," I told my travel-loving husband almost ten years ago. I wanted to see the world, too. "Anywhere, except the East Coast of the U.S." I meant it. The one place I'd loathed and dreaded since my childhood, the one place I held a grudge against. I hated the East Coasters' assumption that the middle didn't matter, that those of us in rural places, hiding in the mountains or on the plains, were just dying to get out. I hated the New Yorker magazine's grip on the throat of American literary culture.
Then six years ago his company transferred us to my own personal hell. We spent two years in Boston, two dull, despised years among the most provincial people I have ever met. I daydreamed of the Rockies where I grew up and gritted my teeth at the tolerant smiles given by people who assumed that I was grateful to be somewhere cultural--somewhere that meant something. I felt like I was constantly hammering on a glass wall, waiting for the people on the other side to notice me. What I really wanted was for them to admit that my reality--my Western life--was just as valid and important and meaningful as theirs, or more so. Which they never did.
Now I've been sixty miles outside of New York City for four years, another four long, boring years. My neighbors are all natives of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. They're fat. They're stupid. They're ugly--god, they're ugly. And they're loud. God, they're loud.
Then there's the other group, the urbane New York City-dwellers who come up here on the weekends to their tiny unheated cabins. They're nice, in general, fairly intelligent, self-absorbed, and boring. Between these two groups, I've never met people so uninterested in the world outside their home, or in the world at large.
The truth is, New York is too boring to hate. I go into Manhatten fairly often. I see plays, go to bars, walk around a whole lot, and find the whole city incredibly tedious. Why? Because it's completely turned inward on itself. Its residents think they have the entire world at their fingertips. Its art--music, theater, literature--feeds upon itself, regurgitating never-ending variations on the same "Isn't New York endlessly fascinating" theme.
Like a toddler, New York doesn't see itself as part of the wider world. Anything that matters begins and ends with the limit of its limbs. You can tickle a toddler, or feed it, or watch its antics, but you can't hold a conversation with it. And you can't expect it to grow up and take its place among entities that matter.
I hate Boston, its snobbish, introverted self-interest and obsession with inherited blueblood money. It's like a wealthy old great-aunt who's always reminding you that your hippie mother from Seattle was never accepted as "one of the family," and you never will be either. New York seems so childish by comparison, some little toddler boy fascinated with the action of its own penis. It's hard to hate a baby that's always so gleefully impressed with its own accomplishments.
"I'll move anywhere with you," I told my travel-loving husband almost ten years ago. I wanted to see the world, too. "Anywhere, except the East Coast of the U.S." I meant it. The one place I'd loathed and dreaded since my childhood, the one place I held a grudge against. I hated the East Coasters' assumption that the middle didn't matter, that those of us in rural places, hiding in the mountains or on the plains, were just dying to get out. I hated the New Yorker magazine's grip on the throat of American literary culture.
Then six years ago his company transferred us to my own personal hell. We spent two years in Boston, two dull, despised years among the most provincial people I have ever met. I daydreamed of the Rockies where I grew up and gritted my teeth at the tolerant smiles given by people who assumed that I was grateful to be somewhere cultural--somewhere that meant something. I felt like I was constantly hammering on a glass wall, waiting for the people on the other side to notice me. What I really wanted was for them to admit that my reality--my Western life--was just as valid and important and meaningful as theirs, or more so. Which they never did.
Now I've been sixty miles outside of New York City for four years, another four long, boring years. My neighbors are all natives of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. They're fat. They're stupid. They're ugly--god, they're ugly. And they're loud. God, they're loud.
Then there's the other group, the urbane New York City-dwellers who come up here on the weekends to their tiny unheated cabins. They're nice, in general, fairly intelligent, self-absorbed, and boring. Between these two groups, I've never met people so uninterested in the world outside their home, or in the world at large.
The truth is, New York is too boring to hate. I go into Manhatten fairly often. I see plays, go to bars, walk around a whole lot, and find the whole city incredibly tedious. Why? Because it's completely turned inward on itself. Its residents think they have the entire world at their fingertips. Its art--music, theater, literature--feeds upon itself, regurgitating never-ending variations on the same "Isn't New York endlessly fascinating" theme.
Like a toddler, New York doesn't see itself as part of the wider world. Anything that matters begins and ends with the limit of its limbs. You can tickle a toddler, or feed it, or watch its antics, but you can't hold a conversation with it. And you can't expect it to grow up and take its place among entities that matter.
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