I'am used to discarding the forwarded e-mails. But as destiny would have it, I happened to read this particular one. I know nothing about its original source nor do I know as to who is the author. Its beautiful nonetheless and definitely worth a blog share. Do read. :)
5 Fantasy Exit Strategies
1. Run away to Brooklyn. Rent an apartment with a claw
footed bathtub. Commute to Manhattan during the week and put in hours at a
menial publishing job. Drive home to New Jersey on weekends to swim in the pool
and cry to your mother. Smoke Gauloises on the fire escape. Let yellowing
issues of Rolling Stone and Vogue pile into a protective fortress around your
bed. Listen to Cat Power. Fall asleep mostly naked beneath the duvet watching
Sports-center and drinking earl grey. Date a Yankees fan and kiss his hands on
the 4 Train into the Bronx.
2. Run away to Barcelona. Eat milk chocolate magnum bars
and drink cheap champagne. Burst into charming fits of laughter whenever you
get embarrassed about butchering the Catalan language. Wear denim cutoffs, Dr.
Pepper chapstick, and very little else. Go dancing at 3 a.m. Whiten your teeth.
Tan your shoulders. Braid feathers into your hair. Perpetually wake up with
sand caught in the thin cotton sheets of your tiny bed. Listen to the Rolling
Stones and kiss all the longhaired boys you can get your hands on without ever
having to apologize.
3. Run away to Los Angeles. Sublet a studio in Venice
three blocks from the beach. Listen to top 40 radio. Go to Chateau Marmont and
charge drinks you can’t afford to a long-dormant credit card. Sleep with a
television actor who lives in the valley. Sleep with a musician who lives in
Bel Air. Break things off with both of them when gas prices begin to rise. Find
Gilda Radner’s star on the Walk Of Fame and swallow a sob when you see the filthy
cement around her name is cracked. Walk through the Venice Canals until the sun
sets and you forget your own name. Call your mother crying from the parking lot
of a 24-hour Ralph’s supermarket. Tell her you want to come home.
4. Run away to Paris. Gaze at the pink and pistachio glow
of macarons in the window on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Listen to Joni Mitchell.
Meet an Argentinean man in the Latin Quarter for drinks. Melt into his accent
and kiss him goodnight, but return to your apartment alone because his face
doesn’t look enough like the man’s you are trying to forget. Get lost in the
Richelieu Wing of the Louvre, admiring Napoleon’s fine red damask. Walk alone
along the Seine in an old dress, ten-dollar shoes, and an Hermes scarf. Fumble
with the locks on the fence overlooking the river. They all have lovers’ names
etched into them and the girl who left the red heart-shaped lock has the same
name as you.
5. Run away to Martha’s Vineyard. Write heartbroken
stories during the day in front of a large fan that blows curls of humid hair
across your tired face. Take a waitress job at The Black Dog at night and try
hard not to drop too many trays. Learn to ride a moped. Pretend you’re a
Kennedy. Listen to Carly Simon. Eat hand-churned ice cream out of waffle cones.
Visit the flying horses and consider how many girls just like you have sat on
the same horse clutching for the same brass ring. Get stoned and dance barefoot
down the length of the eroded Jaws beach. Date a Red Sox fan. Yell at each
other during baseball games, and then kiss and make up between tangled sheets.
............................................................................................................
