Photo by Taylor McIntyre

Train rides are that space between life. When you are in the middle of something in the most literal sense. On your way to somewhere from somewhere. Maybe it’s Christmas morning and no one really talks to one another. Or you sit next to a stranger you have nothing in common with, except that you’re both on the same train to the same place. You can look differently, act differently, and have different lives. All that bonds you to your seatmate is just that. You’re seatmates.

Unless you pay extra, the seats aren’t comfortable. They aren’t meant to be laid across so you can put your legs up on the wall. Or to hang your knees over the side into the aisle. You move with the train, with every bump. And every sway. Traveling for long distances or for short ones, you always can’t wait to get where you’re going. That’s the catch. You never want to get there, you just want to be there. Unless, of course, you find those nomads who live to travel. They sleep on your couch and use your toothpaste. One bag will do them just fine. They’ll carry it on their back, as not to make one shoulder sorer than the other. It will fit under their seat. That terribly, uncomfortable seat.

Some pairs of seats have an arm in the middle where you have to play the arm rest game. It can go one of two ways. You feel bad about hogging it, or you got stuck next to a hogger. “I’ll never see them again. What’s the difference?” It has run through all of our minds.

Other chairs don’t have an arm between the two, or three. Those were the seats that were meant to be sprawled across. They’re too inviting. “Yeah…I can do this.” You think to yourself, “It’s not too comfortable, but I’m on a train. Public displays of sleeping are forgiven on trains.” You’ll get sleep creases on your face and your body will get weirdly hot. No one has yet figured out why that happens.

It’s a marvel when you are on the train and no one sits next to you the whole way. Maybe it’s proof that there is a God. Just for that one day, you get the two whole seats to yourself. Then there’s the day that the girl on the phone sits next to you. Or the dental student, looking at creepy x-rays and diagnostic photos of tooth decay that she’s studying. Some days when the last thing you want to do is travel, the words “Is anyone sitting there?” or “Is that seat taken?” can be like someone rubbing mustard in your eyes. It stings and you know now that you have to deal with it for an allotted time. You’re stuck in that train-time-continuum.

Time spent on a train is a modern marvel. People can be who they want to be and portray themselves as a different person. You don’t have to hide or change. It can just be a simple saving face game you can play every time you travel. Maybe without it, some people would have nothing. But Hal has nothing to lose.

He travels between cities for work frequently enough to have a Rapid Rewards Membership ID barcode on his keychain. Dressed keenly in three piece suits, he is tailored and lean. He doesn’t hang his legs over the side into the isle. And he doesn’t hog the arm rest. Rarely does Hal even take off his suit jacket. Forget about seeing him without his shoes on.

A thin man, he’s a child living a man’s life. Hal’s tattoos are neatly covered, most days, living underneath his polka dotted dress shirts. Other days they hide under his loud, neon pastel shirts that somehow go well with his plaid, striped, and black suits. Actually, they really pop out at you. Which, we assume, is the plan all along. Two small hoop earrings remain in one ear, and an unnoticeable silver stud in both. His facial hair is never the same two weeks in a row. Sometimes it’s just a mustache. Other times Hal has a full, shaggy grey beard. Rarely is he clean shaven. His hair is natural, not dyed. And when he wears his black horn-rimmed glasses it just adds to it all, nicely reminding you that he is that strange poindexter you can’t put your finger on. In the end, Hal is not the easy traveler. Due to his fancy outfits, he travels heavy. Hal’s bag cannot fit under the seat. He carries two.

Unmarried, Hal chooses to sit next to women, when he can. The train is Hal’s stage. Becoming someone he cannot be in the office, he lets young women swoon, and laugh at his tasteful vulgar commentary. He might gesture to the small of their back. Hal might even give them chills.

Work reimburses Hal for his train fare. He gets the nicer train, nicer seats. It travels faster. No one keeps a businessman waiting. With every bob and weave that comes with the quickness of the train, his hair (some days resembling a mullet a little too closely) moves with it. So much time on a train, Hal barely notices its movement to being with.

Hal also embraces the looks he gets from his seat mate when his tattoos are in fact showing. He’ll catch that early morning train dressed in plain clothes. His three piece suits folded and tucked away. Or Hal will work through the night wearing tight jeans and a green baseball tee. It will show just enough to make out the snakes that curl up his wrists. On those baseball shirt days Hal might swing his legs over the aisle. And put his feat up on the seat. While the businessman will sit at work on a train with his ankles neatly crossed, baseball Hal will find himself sleeping, and weirdly warm. He’ll wake up with a sleep crease. He’ll wake up at his other home.

Written by Sarah Paolantonio. Photo by Taylor McIntyre.

Photo by Lauren DeCicca

His regular place, as it always seemed to be these days, was crowded. Wall to wall, people stuffed into tables. “For sandwiches,” he grumbled, knowing he was there for the very same reason.

Every Tuesday for the past year, Ethan followed a routine. A book, a table by the window, a sandwich and a cookie for dessert. Two months ago, some high and mighty travel writer had come in and done a story on the place. The rest was history. Every tourist, visitor or relocated rich person within 50 miles seemed to be packed into the four walls of the Pinewood Sandwich Shoppe on a daily basis.

Ethan fought his way to the host stand, and for his troubles, only got a sad smile in return. “Table for one?” the hostess asked.

“Same as last week,” he growled in response.

“It’ll be a few minutes, so why don’t you grab a seat?” The relentlessly cheerful blonde replied.

Ethan slumped into a wooden chair, shaking the floorboards as he adjusted his 6’4” frame for a long wait. He opened his book, getting through almost a full chapter before the hostess looked his way.

“Ethan, if you want to sit at the bar, a seat just opened up.”

None too pleased with the idea of eating right next to absolute strangers, Ethan hesitated. His stomach let out an embarassingly loud growl. “Okay, fine,” he grumbled, making his way to the small bar area.

At 60, Ethan was easily the oldest person perched on the restaurant’s six barstools. Seated with him was couple in their twenties, a boisterous trio of boys, and a woman seated to his right, who appeared to be in her thirties. Ethan gave his order and pulled out his book, settling in for his perfect pairing, a reuben and a Grisham novel.

The woman next to him sneezed. “Bless you,” he said, glancing her way for the first time. He froze. She looked just like someone he used to know. Someone he knew very well indeed.

“Jackie?!” He gasped, grabbing her shoulder. “Is that you?”

Startled, the woman glanced up. Her blue eyes were questioning, her red hair pulled back from her face by a peach ribbon. Ethan could hardly breathe.

“I’m sorry,” she said tensely, “you must have me mistaken for someone else.”

Ethan knew there was no mistake. The resemblance was uncanny. The ribbon, that was the icing on the cake. Jackie had worn a ribbon in her hair every day.

Ethan turned back to his book, but he could hardly see the words on the page. The ribbon. Blues, greens, reds – whatever the color, it was always there. Three decades ago, Jackie had always been there too. Until… Ethan looked up from his book.

This wasn’t 1974. Jackie couldn’t be here, next to him, and still look the same. What a fool he’d been, scaring this woman. No wonder she’d spoken so coldly.

He looked down again, twisting his wedding ring around his finger, a nervous tick he’d developed when his wife Amy had gotten so sick. At the time, it had reminded him of the good memories they’d had. Now, it just reminded him of why he was sitting on this bar stool alone, making strange comments to strange women.

He turned to the woman, prepared to apologize for his error. The woman was gone. In her place was a teetering stool and a peach ribbon. Ethan picked the ribbon up and raced out the door, ignoring the shouts of surprise as he rushed out of the dining room.

He ran down the block, jumping and ducking as he tried to spot the woman’s fiery red hair. He caught a glimpse of her as she turned the corner, heading for an overlook near the creek. He picked up his pace.

He turned the corner seconds after her, and was rewarded for his efforts by a solid shove to the chest. “How dare you call me that name!” the redhead screamed. Tears streamed down her face. She was shaking, her complexion turning nearly the same color as the ribbon Ethan still held in his hand.

“Jackie? I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else?” Ethan stammered over the apology. These situations were not his forte.

“Jackie Harwood was my mother, you idiot,” she spat. “And who the hell are you, exactly?”

“Ethan Pawlak. I was a… friend. Of your mother’s.”

The redhead threw her hands in the air in disgust. Mumbling under her breath, she stormed several yards away. All he could hear were bits and piece of her murmured conversation, “not worth it” and “let it lie.” For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what she meant.

She finally stopped storming around, allowing Ethan to walk up beside her. He held out the ribbon like a peace offering.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” She asked softly, still facing away from him.

“I’m sorry, I don’t. Should I?” He replied.

“Thirty years ago, you met a woman named Jackie. You fell in love, then you called it off. You wrote her a letter about changes, about becoming a different person. Then you never wrote again.”

The weight of his past decisions crushing his chest, Ethan could only nod.

“Well, she became a different person too. A mother. My mother.”

This wasn’t happening. Ethan shook his head and held onto the ribbon as if it were his lifeline.

She whispered the three words he craved and feared.

“I’m your daughter,” she said, stepping away.

The ribbon slipped through his hands. In a second, she was gone. Ethan collapsed on a nearby wooden bench. Head in his hands, no idea what to do next, he took out his book. Always the creature of habit.

“Your table is ready, sir.” Startled, Ethan looked up from his book. The memories from the last half hour raced through his mind. Real? Imagined? Who knew?

“You know what?” He said. “I’ll just take something to go.”

Written by Alyssa Gardina. Photo by Lauren DeCicca.

Photo by Amy Ginsberg

Dear older, more mature self,

Here’s the article you wrote for a college website years ago. You thought it might be a good way to get some attention (hopefully you haven’t changed and you’re still the center of attention everywhere you go).

I hope you’re still living the life. Read this and be proud – you were one kick ass girl. You may have screwed up a lot, but life goes on. Pat yourself on the back if when you read this you made it to be a real adult. You’re grown up now. Weird.

I hope you’re still bouncing around, with any luck not at dive bars but at classy black tie parties and you’re still in the game. Lord knows I’m sure you fell through the flippers once or twice, but knowing you, you got back up and were out hitting the ‘points when lit’, bonus buttons the next night. Always remember that life goes on, there’s always another try at everything. Another ball is waiting when the first falls through: It may come with a price, but anything worth having does.

Remember I love you, and always have. You’re a bombshell, never forget it.

Go Getter

Posted by thatgirl from Ithaca College.

—

I won’t lie, one of my favorite things to do when I wake up on a Saturday morning is walk across the hall to my roommate’s room and discuss the night before, after a Diet Coke and four aspirin, of course.

Don’t shake your head, you know you still love to call your friends and recap your weekends. I hope the sugar substitute in Diet Coke doesn’t actually cause cancer, because if it does you’re screwed.

It’s a fun game to recap the night, laugh at the dumb stuff I did, and pick on the people who were stumbling around the bar worse than me.  My mom wouldn’t be proud of this, but it’s college right? Mistakes will be made: As long as they aren’t life altering, we’re all set. That’s what I tell myself. It’s my time to do whatever the hell I want and just be me.

I’m sure mom is more proud of you now. Not that she wasn’t before, but hopefully you’ve put her tuition dollars to something better than seven dollar pitchers at Trivia Tuesdays.

Someone once told me, “work hard and party harder.” I think I accomplished that through my three and a half years at college so far and I still have the last semester to make epic memories. Let’s hope the tables I dance on are just as strong as the shots I take.

Coming to school I made a bucket list of all the things that I wanted to do. I lost that list. No surprise. I think it had “make dean’s list,” “get a good job,” “don’t become the sloppy girls you hated in high school” and “find a boyfriend or husband” on it.

What a sorry list.

That really was a sorry list.

With that list done and gone, I started making a new list. A list my dad at age 22 would have high-fived me for and would now gouge his ears out if he heard.

You are so lucky dad didn’t follow through with his threats and send you to an all girls’ school!

In the past month life has become more interesting as I’ve started adding things to my bucket list – after they happened. I’m not even sure I wanted to do them, but it’s always a story so I write it down and cross it off. (I think this is why I always lose at Never Have I Ever.)

It’s a list that’s growing. Hopefully once I graduate every word will have a line through it. All the stupid shit I did in college. (And will be paying off for the next 30 years of my life.) I better make it worth it. I WILL make it worth it.

How are those college loans? Pay them off yet? Are you still cooking mac and cheese for dinner? Or did you find a rich guy to take you out every night for dinner? I hope the latter.

Just picture it. My nights are like a pinball game. I storm into the bar, bounce around off everyone, dancing, flirting, kissing, spilling my drinks, trying not to fall through the flippers, keeping myself in the game until the lights in the bar go on. Getting points for everything I can cross of my list.

I bet you’re wishing you could still get this drunk and bounce back like you could before. You always have had a liking for Bloody Mary’s…

I can’t say my choices have come without repercussions: heartbreak, vomit, bruises, headaches, crying phone calls, loss of friends, walk of shames, rumors, and overdraft charges.

You learned your lessons, always the hard way, but I bet that made you a rock in life. I hope you’re still a rock but holding your alcohol much better.

Some days I wonder if all that bouncing around, isn’t denting my body. I know it’s had its toll on my heart, but I get up, brush my shoulders off, take a shot, and turn my music up loud, and dance around the apartment.

Isn’t that what living life is all about? No regrets. Just lessons learned.

I heard if you dent a beer pong ball you can pop it back out again by putting a flame under it. I live life by this philosophy. I keep that fire lit under my ass, so I always keep going hard.

I hope you still do live life this way. Never ever take yourself too seriously. Know that you lived your life – you did exactly what you wanted to, you took risks, you made mistakes but you learned something from every action you took. Keep that fire under your ass. You only have this life to live, so get out there hot stuff and go hard or go home.

Written by Lindsey Hadlock. Photo by Amy Ginsberg.

Photo by Mick Rouse

The silence was palpable as my body flew through the air. The only sounds I could hear were the rapid thump-thump of my heart pounding and the slight echo in my head from the snap of my teeth clapping together. I didn’t know what I had expected; placing myself directly in the path of a 5’10”, 200 pound moving mass of muscle and body sweating testosterone. And it was just a friendly pickup game in a friend’s backyard. What was I thinking?

Regardless of what my plans had been, John hit me like a car discarding a misplaced 13-year-old crash test dummy and left my 145 pound frame in his wake as he raced toward the end zone for his fifth touchdown on the game. As I shook my head and rose to my feet, I could hear the collective snickers on the sideline of the girls who had gathered to watch the dreamsicle play. I could taste the blood in my mouth from where I had chomped down on my tongue.

“You alright?,” he asked as he trotted back toward the other end of the field.

“Yeah,” I replied, spitting out a mouthful of saliva and blood. “I’m good.”

This is just one of the moments cemented in my mind of when I discovered I wasn’t the athletic one in my family. I grew up in a family of three boys, so naturally we all needed to be placed into sports. It wasn’t a question of pride or vain ambition by my parents to regain their former glory. It was a way to channel all of our pent-up energy in ways that wouldn’t destroy of the house and get us to socialize. My older brother is autistic and moderately high functioning, but he couldn’t play rec baseball or basketball. So that’s where I started off, playing rec baseball at the age of 8.

I could pitch just fine and started to excel there, striking out 6-7 guys a game. My confidence was peaking already. I was a prodigy, a Cy Young in the making. Soon I’d be throwing 60 to 70 mile-an-hour fastballs and gunning them past high school players who would stare in amazement, wondering, Who is this boy?

But that was the opposite of how it really went. As the seasons went on, the batters started getting smarter and I, well, didn’t. I was just a decent pitcher now, one with only two pitches in my lineup: slow and fast. To make matters worse, I was a terrible batter. You couldn’t even call me that; I was a prop that pitchers would practice on during a game, like a breathing cardboard cutout who would suddenly surprise everyone with a swing.  My birthday cake had more batter in it than I did. My tactic became to move ever so slightly into the path of the pitch just to get on base. Ah, young masochism.

After 3 years of this, my parents must have recognized something. My younger brother, the athletic one, had his own baseball games on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while my older brother did therapeutic horseback riding on Fridays. This meant we were out 5 days a week with me in sports, a lot to handle for them. This coupled with the fact that I was terrible may or may not have influenced them to make the decision to pull me out. All I know is that one day, they sat me down, told me I was being pulled out of baseball and handed me a book for piano lessons. My slight moment of excitement faded like a bell curve as I realized I wasn’t going to be starting piano lessons; this was a teach-yourself-to-play-piano kind of lesson book. Yup.

A few years later, when I was 16, my family went to visit my grandparents, who live about 20 minutes outside of Ithaca. It was a brisk October day, so we took a drive down to Cornell to look at the campus and watch the leaves change. After all, I would be looking at colleges the following fall, so why not start here? Plus it was right in the middle of fall break for the college students, so no one was around. Win-win.

We drove the family van up the hills, creeping at 10 miles-an-hour as we passed by building after building of monolithic stone and brains, admiring the beauty of it all. We ended up parking in the garage outside of Schoellkopf Field and walking toward the stadium to see it in all of its silent glory. None of us had ever been to a major football game, so this was big for us: a Division I school’s playing field. The gate was open, so we slipped inside, immediately racing toward the turf with the extra football we had brought along to play with in the yard.

My younger brother and I took turns tossing the ball to one another and walking up and down the steps of the bleachers to see the view from where we were. It was a city in itself on a hill, the likes of which we hadn’t seen before. Just as I didn’t think it couldn’t get any better, my brother and I decided to line up on the field. He stood in front of me and I was under center. The ball snapped and I dropped by, five steps, just like I had watched. As my eyes swept side to side, they found my brother streaking to the right down the field toward the goal line. I tossed up what must have been a 15-yard pass, but it sure felt like a 45-yard one to me. My heart began to beat in slow motion.

And as he caught that pass in stride, we cheered like it was LSU vs. Alabama. No Ivy League rivalries for us. And pardon the quote from Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, but in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

Written by Seth Palmer. Photo by Mick Rouse.

Actual Conversation

[Ed. note: That's right bromigos, brosefs, and brobeans, my photo for this is a screenshot. Get over it. I’ve been asked many times why I don’t like emoticons, but I’ve never actually tried to write it down and make sense of it. Here’s a stab at it. Enjoy.]

The first important thing to note is that there was no specific moment where my brain went “FUCK EMOTICONS!” and drastically changed my life forever. It’s been a conversion over time; one that may only make sense to me even after a thousand words describe it. There was no frowny-faced breakup, no winky-eyed sexual tryst, and certainly no specific creepy smiley-faced moment that took me over the edge. For a while, I used emoticons. Then I didn’t. And that was that.

I began publicly railing against them a little over a year ago when I was becoming more heavily involved in social media from a brand perspective. It bothered me that a company would wink after it made a cheeky comment. As much as Citizens United may disagree, corporations are not people, and therefore should not wink at me. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the importance of building a brand identity and a brand voice (in fact, I do it daily over here), but the insertion of emoticons seemed like a line was being crossed.

From there it became more philosophical. As all philosophizing works, I will now break it down in a manner that all but assures me a MacArthur genius grant or a trip to the looney bin (there’s really no middle ground with these sorts of things). Put on your waders folks, because this is about to get deep.

Emoticons codify our emotions, like an alphabet does letters and a dictionary does words. These are the emotions we recognize and find true. These are the emoticons you can use to transmit them virtually. That used to be okay, back when virtual space and reality were walled from each other. But this is no longer the case, and blurred lines have changed the game.  Our lives are a streaming series of interactions based in both the virtual and real. We make friends, take photos, listen to music, and it’s all accessible in our life stream (sounds like Timeline, amirite?). I no longer end conversations with my closest friends. We don’t say goodbye because in a given day our conversation will move from twitter to Facebook to texting to seeing each other in real life. That blurred line means that those definitions of virtual and real no longer hold true. I’m sure you’ve heard of apps that use augmented reality – but really, aren’t our entire lives an augmented reality now? I reference a YouTube video at lunch and then immediately pull it up on my iPhone. Isn’t that projecting the virtual in a real space?

[Ed. note: Wow. Sorry. I think we might've lost a few good men back there. It got hairy quick, didn't it? One second it's "FUCK EMOTICONS!" this and the next it's augmented reality that - let's all take a deep breath before we head back in…]

So our lives today are augmented by virtual things wherever we go. We, as a society, have, for the most part, accepted that, embraced it and nourished it. But that doesn’t mean we have to cheapen the real by always infecting it with the virtual.

Most people say they use emoticons because they’re afraid that someone won’t understand their tone. That seems perfectly reasonable on its face, but it’s really more like a band-aid for a decapitation. The problem isn’t that people don’t understand our tone – it’s that they don’t know us. They know the avatars, the Foursquare check-ins and the usernames, but sometimes they don’t really know us. And that’s the problem. Or at least one of them.

Another problem is that a lot of people still don’t truly treat the internet and real life the same, which means they project who they think they are or want to be into these virtual spaces. That causes an identity crisis of epic proportions that works to worsen our real friendships and forcibly forge others based on lies, half-truths and “will saying it like this get me laid?” moments. This distrust in identity plays right into the problems with tone, adding yet another layer of potential confusion to statuses, tweets and comment forums.

Now if you know me, you know that I’m a champion of the internet. I play with every new social tool I can get my hands on because I firmly believe that an augmented reality is a good thing. I’ve met some of my best friends through sites like Twitter and have been able to continue friendships because of sites like Facebook. They are legitimately adding to the greater good of society. I may believe those things, but I don’t think a semi-colon is a wink. I think it’s a cop-out that says that we don’t really know who we’re talking to anymore.

When photography began to first emerge, many cultures were wary of its power. Some believed that creating an image of a human would take part of their soul with it. The root of the belief was usually based on the spirituality of our reflection, the idea that what we see in the mirror isn’t really us, but our soul.

Society is currently standing at an awesome mirror (emphasis on the awe). On the other side, a virtual realm so powerful that it has proven to move mountains and dethrone dictators. The augmented reality we create will be one that no one could have ever imagined, but that also means that no one has ever successfully determined the consequences. Do we lose a piece of ourselves when we use a frown to tell a friend on Facebook we’ve had a bad day? No, but we certainly begin to lose the complexities of life that the virtual world can’t even begin to comprehend. Emotions are humanity at its rawest point and there isn’t a computer that anyone can ever create that will understand that power like we do.

My semi-colons are going to stay semi-colons. My parentheses will always include an open and close. The lines are blurred enough without my help, and I want to hold on to as much of humanity as I can. (Insert pessimistic quasi-frown tempered with shrugged shoulders emoticon here.)

Written by Rob Engelsman.

Photo by Evan Johnson

After taking one final look around the room for anything he might have forgotten (a sweatshirt and a laptop charger), Andrew took a piece of notebook paper and left a note on the door. It read:

GONE FOR BREAK. HAPPY HOLIDAYS OR WHATEVER.

Considering the events of the past semester and the pace at which it had abruptly ended, the note seemed fitting and I grinned while he scribbled and taped it to his door. We didn’t just want to be out of there – we wanted to flee. He was headed south to Alabama for Christmas and I was headed east to Vermont, where the snow had apparently been falling since last night. We shook hands and then he, like the rest of the campus, was gone.

Back at my room, I put on music and commenced to empty drawers into two massive Tupperware boxes while Bob Dylan started his nasally crooning and suddenly I was depressed. For me, packing is as much of an emotional act as it is a physical one. Home, as the cliché goes, is where I hang my hat and to begin to remove myself from a place is to subject myself to being mobile and dynamic. It is a sensation that leaves me feeling vulnerable and small. I had too many goodbyes to say and a feeling that I would not get to say them all so I kept packing and when I was bored of it I worked on a fiction blog I had been desperately trying to keep updated. Writers block set in quickly as it predictably does and suddenly I was staring at the screen with my head in my hands. So I called the girlfriend and arranged to meet for dinner. She let me spend the night.

The drive home typically lasts five hours and goes in several uncomfortable turns of emotions and the psyche. The first feeling while driving out of the city is one of reluctance to leave; a sheepish feeling that you’re leaving defeated an without any sense of triumph or accomplishment. I had finished the fall semester yet I still felt like I was escaping something by the skin of my teeth. Accompanying this is a numb realization at the hours in a car before you. This is relieved by the next phase of the journey, which for me is around when I cross the Susquehanna River and turn onto 88 heading towards Oneonta and then Albany. It’s is an acceptance of the trip. With the right music and weather, the drive can be beautiful, even enjoyable. But eventually around the New York/Vermont border, you hit a psychological wall and start chewing on your seatbelt. I was edgy and hungry when I pulled into my driveway. My homecomings carry a degree of sameness. The house is a mess and my mother has usually piled my mail on my bed – an Outside magazine and two or three bank statements. I ate dinner and then Mark called. His voice was static-y and familiar over the phone line:

Get a drink?

The two of us had turned 21 earlier and we no longer had to do our drinking in basement parties at college so the idea seemed mature and appealing. His older sisters were coming with us and were going to see old friends from high school years ago. Apparently this was the night to head to the bars and see who else was back. This was a night for reconnection. They picked me up at 10 pm. And the conversation picked up almost where it had left off in a diner last new years eve. However it began with a roll call of friends at home

Who else?

Doug’s back. Maggie’s leaving soon.

Nicki’s doing something next week – we’ll see everyone then.

Nice.

… So mister, what’s this about a girlfriend?

It continued like that until town. A man wearing a kilt checked my ID, verifying the fact that I was in Brattleboro, Vermont. I nodded and went inside to fight through the crowd. Flat Street Pub was destroyed in the fall during a hurricane named Irene and this was among the first weekends since it reopened. The bar was fully stocked but the kitchen was lacking; the only food available was popcorn and hotdogs.

The bar scene in my town is lacking, especially for young people. But when the kids come home on breaks, the bars become flooded with a younger set – precisely the group of people I had no interest in seeing. While Mark and I were there to compare notes from the past few months, they were there not to simply meet, but to relive and desperately try to rekindle the confidence and glory of their senior year of high school, validated by the fact that they could now legally consume alcohol. Mark’s older sister bought us our first pints (her birthday presents to us). I bought the second, Mark bought the third and then I became cynical.

Where?

White jacket, next to Mike J.

It’s been since what – AP History?

Not long enough…

The (has-been) star quarterback sipping IPA with the homecoming queen of four years ago must have been nostalgic for them, but from a bar stool removed from the fray, I noted it was all relative. For some, this is what a homecoming meant to us at the age of 21 or 22. The crowd mingled in circles and clusters, swapping slaps on shoulders and shaking hands, shouting and racking up bar tabs before stepping out with a designated driver for a long, frozen drive.

The sign on the door dismissed us with a cheery: Happy Holiday’s! Come Again!

I came home feeling exhausted still moody. After brushing my teeth, I sat in bed with Egan’s book in my lap, wondering exactly what it was that I had come for. And like every other cold winter homecoming, I fell asleep alone, grasping at the threads that would finally bind and reel me home.

Written by Evan Johnson.

Photo by Michelle Bizon

Today, Rusty Laur sits on the edge of his bed weeping.

This is not the type of room you weep in. A dark walnut paneling covers the walls. The rug is a forest green color. Mismatched wooden dressers and nightstands line the walls, cluttering every juncture in which walls and floor meet. There was an old record player in the corner, currently playing Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe” at a low volume (“And Mama said it was shame about Billie Joe, anyhow / Seems like nothing ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge”). The bedspread is a predominantly brown plaid with greens, yellows, reds and darker browns mixed in. There are no deer heads hanging from the walls, but with the lodge-y feel of the room, such additions would not look out of place. Rustic is the term the snooty interior designers and real estate agents on TV would use to describe it.

And Laur is not the type of man you would expect to find weeping. He is a burly man and quite intimidating at six-foot-three-inches. Reddish-brown whiskers conceal the lower half of his face. Long, scraggly hair of the same shade covers his head. This leaves little of his face uncovered, making his large, brown eyes seem as if they’re poking through brush in the woods. Today, remember, those eyes are filled with tears.

But, there’s no one there to hear him. There’s no one around.

Laur works as a ranger for a state park, so his house is in a pretty remote area. His patrolling duties involve stopping reckless teenagers from trespassing and finding the occasional lost hiker. Every so often he has to deal with illegal hunting or an assault at the campground. Sometimes he has to respond to bear sightings at the campsites because a lot of city slickers don’t remember to store their food away, so it’s out of reach of wildlife at night. He always tells people he’s not scared of bears in the least. He says, after all, he was married for 14 years.

When he first moved out this way, that’s not the kind of crime-fighting Laur was used to, considering he was a police officer by trade. He spent the better part of his professional life policing and protecting the streets of Alexandria, Va. No, he hadn’t dealt with the hardened felons from the inner city, either, but he’d seen his fair share of rough stuff. Drunk driving. Shootings. Murder. Rape.

That stress had left him with high blood pressure. He couldn’t sleep. He was depressed. He was barely ever home. That’s what his ex-wife had used against him many years ago during their divorce proceedings.

Eventually, the doctors told him he needed a change because he had a high risk of a heart attack. They suggested a change in his workload, but you can’t just go up to your police chief and tell him you want to work less. So, he moved out to the country. He thought some fresh air would do his body and his mind some good. And it did.

For a second, he even cursed himself improving his health. He may not have had to experience this moment otherwise.

This morning he’d had to go to court. He put on his suit and even trimmed his beard. Though his daily uniform included a shirt with a collar, this particular getup made him feel uncomfortable and out of place. It’d been years since he’d had to go to court for a case.

He walked into the courtroom for the first day of the case proceedings and sat in the third row to the back. Today he was just watching — he wanted to be prepared. The defendant was a man around 30 years old. He was charged with aggravated assault. Both sides were painting it as a drug deal gone bad. The district attorney had opportunity, means and motive on his side. The defendant had no alibi and had been caught with the weapon used in the attack — a hunting knife. Plus, it happened during, well, a drug deal.

The defense was working with a self-defense angle. What other option did they have? How else could one hope to elicit sympathy for a drug user who stabbed someone? They were trying to convince the jurors the dealer had gotten violent with the defendant when he refused to pay an increased price for the cocaine he was selling.

For those who’ve worked in law enforcement, a stab wound to the chest rarely denotes a defensive strategy when the defendant has no indication of defensive injuries. The jury seemed to be buying the defense’s story, though, for the time being, at least. The defendant’s lawyer characterized him as a sorry young man who deserved another chance and hadn’t wanted to cause harm in the first place. He was smart enough to keep his client silent too. You won’t incriminate yourself if you keep your mouth shut. The defendant kept his eyes glued to the floor throughout the morning. He barely moved a muscle.

The proceedings broke for lunch, and when they resumed after the break, the defense announced it would accept a plea bargain to lesser charges — with less jail time — offered by the district attorney. Really, it was a good deal. The defense had a lock on the emotional side of the case, but the forensic specialists lined up to testify during the afternoon presumably made them nervous. The judge set a date for sentencing and adjourned the proceedings.

Laur walked out of the courthouse unsure of whether he ought to be disappointed. He drove home to his little house in the woods and sank to his current position on the edge of the bed.

He’d never cried for a criminal before. For victims, yes … but not criminals. Only, most criminals were not his son.

Written by Michelle Bizon.

Photo by Melanie Breault

It’s their fourth visit this year, but today is extra special. Everything looks the same: the view is still breathtaking; the place is still plagued with couples who have the same agenda; and the locks are still there, maybe a few more have accumulated since their last visit. It has been a few months. They watch as Koreans, Americans, Canadians and everyone else walk hand in hand around the viewing tower. One young girl bought a special purple marker for her lock. It must be her favorite. She writes in Korean, “I give myself to him from now until the end of time. I will love him forever.” Her boyfriend, fiancé, husband or whatever stares at her, eyes a wonder, and writes something similar on his lock. They close them together and tie them to the fence. They gaze at their promise for a minute and then walk away wrapped around each other so tightly; it looks like they really won’t ever let go.

In a place like Korea where being in a relationship is a social necessity, it could make a person cynical, sick to their stomach even. Everything is adorable. Everything is cute, especially around Christmas time. Marketing campaigns are targeted to the young, new couples all the way up to the hopelessly in love married soul mates. Matching promise rings and ID bracelets are all the rage. One of the first questions asked upon meeting someone is, “Oh, you have boyfriend, husband?” If the answer is, “no,” that is the end of that, but not before a look of pity from the ahjumma, or older woman usually asking you the question. But if the answer is, “yes,” that begins a 20-minute interrogation about what he’s like, how long you’ve been together and any other question she can come up with that has nothing to do with who you are.

If you are in a meaningful relationship filled with mutual understanding, love and friendship, standing at the top of a mountain overlooking a whole new world can do something to you. It makes you look at your life with this person differently. You become less cynical and more sickeningly cutesy with them. You want to hold their hand just like the other lovers surrounding you. You want to write a note about your everlasting love on a lock for others to read and for you to one day come back to and see is still right there where you left it.

The concept of “soul mates,” the idea that there is only one person out there among the seven billion people of the world, is really like a crapshoot. What are the chances that you have really found the one person who truly understands you and will love you until the day they die?

We want to believe this is possible because otherwise life would really be meaningless, wouldn’t it? Walking at the top of that mountain alone, watching the people who have seemingly beaten the odds, watching as they carve their initials inside a heart on the benches, is all too sad to endure. But it’s okay to be alone. It is only then that we can really open ourselves to someone. Isn’t it supposed to happen when we least expect it? If we planned the minute we were supposed to find the love of our life, would it mean the same to us? If we knew exactly when they were going to walk through that classroom door, would it make that moment special at all? Love at first sight does not exist. It takes longer than a brief glance to realize you are meeting the person for you. It takes a conversation, a kiss, a laughing session, a crying session, a goodbye at the airport, a short phrase, a walk up a mountain, a longing look that’s longer than a brief moment.

It is possible that there is more than one person out there for us. With seven billion people, it’s hard to accept that only one of them is someone we could share our lives with. But at the same time, it’s a beautiful idea. Why else would hundreds of people choose to hang locks with someone promising to be with them forever unless they really did believe in that idea? Maybe it’s that idea that keeps us going, keeps us searching. Without it, what’s the point?

It’s Christmas day and she can’t imagine being anywhere else. The trek up here killed her calves, but it was worth it. She never thought Seoul was as big of a city as it really is. When you live in such a big space, you get so fixated on your little hub of it that you forget where you really are. You forget that there are so many other people – people different from you, people looking for the same thing, people feeling the same way as you or just people living their lives beside you – that it takes a trek up a mountain to change your perspective.

The air is bitter and it’s getting harder to feel her toes. She didn’t think it would be this cold today. She’s happy she wore her thick green coat and two pairs of socks. Some of the women here are in heels and tights. She can’t imagine that can be very comfortable, but the men these women are with seem to like it. They can’t seem to keep their hands off the tight dresses and thin skirts. But then he comes over. He doesn’t care that she’s in her thick coat and jeans. He likes her better that way.

They stand next to each other and look out at the city, their new home. They’ve only been here a mere few months, but it feels like a lifetime, a lifetime they’ve always wanted with someone. Maybe “endless love” is possible. Maybe all it takes is a few hundred cutesy locks of love to believe it could be true. Maybe, just maybe.

Written by Melanie Breault.

Some of the older girls at my dance studio had done select clinics with the Rockettes and I dreamed of the day I would get to participate. I worked extra hard in all of my dance classes, spent hours stretching myself at home, and perfected my Rockette smile.

But then I stopped growing.

You see, to be a Rockette, you absolutely have to be between 5’6” and 5’10.5” tall. No exceptions. They won’t even let you audition if you don’t measure up.

I was four inches away and my dream was crushed. I had no idea what I was going to do. I would not be high kicking with seventeen other girls. Maybe I wouldn’t even be living in an Upper West Side apartment with my astronaut husband and our seven kids.

We all have great expectations.

Sometimes I think back to a year or two ago and marvel at how much has changed. The biggest difference is between where I thought I’d be now and where I actually ended up. This seems to be a common theme among us twenty-somethings. We’ve grown up expecting a lot out of life: a great education, a great career, a great love. It’s not that we’re necessarily entitled, but we’ve been taught that we all have the ability to grasp that American dream.

So what happens when these fail? Is it better to go through life without any expectations whatsoever, so that when good things do happen, they end up exceeding our wildest dreams? Or should we suck it up, deal with the failure, and adjust our expectations to meet our reality?

We spend so much time living in the future tense instead of enjoying the present: I will go to the gym; I will get a promotion; I will be happy instead of I am happy. Some of us are even stuck in the past: the idea of what could have been or what should have been haunts us until our present is consumed. We need to find it within ourselves to learn from and appreciate the past, look forward to the future, but live mainly within the present and what we can do right now.

My hopes have changed hundreds of times since the day I learned I would never be a Rockette. First I wanted to be a chef. Then an actress. After headshots, countless auditions, and a summer of acting school, I realized I didn’t have to be on a stage to be creative and I moved to communications.

My expectations shifted. I believed I would graduate from college in four years, move to California with the boy I loved, and work in public relations for an entertainment industry firm.

What’s that saying? If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.

Nothing is going as planned. Instead of graduating in four years, I transferred to an in-state school. Instead of moving to California, I am living at home to save money while I finish my degree. The boy is long gone. My dream career has changed.

I spend a ridiculous amount of time daydreaming and it’s so easy to get my hopes up. I’m a glass-half-full kinda girl. So when I hear about that great job opening at my dream agency, all I can think about is my fabulous life in the city, becoming president of a company, and winning the world. I dream of falling in love and getting married. I dream of having kids. As silly as it sounds, I keep a secret list of baby names that I’ve had since middle school. I can promise I won’t be naming any potential child Summer (I’ve always been a huge Rachel Bilson fan), but it’s just part of that hopefulness that accompanies my expectations for what my life will be.

Sometimes I can’t help but wonder: will I look back on these dreams in a year or two and laugh at how naïve I was? Will my choices and mistakes lead me in a completely different direction? Or maybe, just maybe, everything will work out exactly how I’d like.

Hope can sometimes feel like tempting fate. As if wishing too hard can actually repel the thing you so desperately desire. But without it, we’d never be able to get through the tough times that life inevitably brings. Along with hope, we need patience and hard work. If we ever want to shed the entitled stigma attached to our generation, we need to continue to pursue our dreams with the deepest fervor we have.

I still daydream that they’ll adjust the height requirement for the Rockettes. And if that doesn’t work out, perhaps I have a bright future writing for Chelsea Handler or rescuing dogs from puppy mills. For now, I’m going to leave it a little more open-ended because I believe lots of expectations are better than no expectations at all.

I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers. But if experience has taught me anything, it’s that everything happens for a reason. If you’re giving it all you have in pursuit of a dream and it fails to come to fruition, it’s because it wasn’t meant to be. You are meant for something else, maybe even something better.

Look back a year or two. Is your life what you thought it’d be now? I know mine’s not, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. If everything worked out exactly how we wanted, if we never made any mistakes, how would we learn anything? Sometimes it takes veering completely off the path you thought you wanted to find the one you really need.

Photo by Andrew Buraczenski

Written by Christine Perez. Photo by Andrew Buraczenski.

Photo by Lauren DeCicca

When my phone rang that morning I was surprised to hear my dad’s voice on the other end. It was two weeks after I learned I was going to be an aunt for the third time. My younger sister, Amy, was just 27 and was already having her third child, a baby girl they planned to name Isabelle. She married her high school sweetheart, Jonathan, and they moved to Connecticut a few years ago. Amy has always been a hopeless romantic and dreamed of having the house with the yard and the big family. Even though we grew up in Manhattan, Amy was never really a city girl. My mom wished she lived closer, but she always loved Jonathan and she was happy for them. Now all she talks about is how we have to focus on finding me a husband.

I was 32 and single and had pretty much given up on men. My parents got divorced when I was ten and it hit me really hard. I got it in my head that love didn’t exist, and subsequently pushed away anyone I ever got really close to. Everyone except for Amy, she was five when my dad moved out and she didn’t remember the yelling and the tears and the door slamming. I’ve always been thankful that she was somehow shielded from all that.

“How’s everything going hunny?” my dad said, trying to make small talk over the phone. We’ve always been really close, but neither of us are big talkers. “I’m doing well dad, is everything okay?” The tone of his voice made it sound like he didn’t call just to say hi. “Oh I’m fine Kaitlyn, I called to tell you about Granny’s house… someone finally bought the property.” When my grandmother passed away she left the house to my dad. The mortgage had been paid off years before, but the house was located in a small town upstate and with all of us living in the city no one really wanted or needed the chore of tending to it.

“That’s good dad, you’ve been trying to sell it forever.” I said. I don’t know why he felt the need to tell me, it had been years since I’d last been there. “Yeah that’s true, but the house is practically condemned and the new owner wants to tear it down, I just thought you should know. I think I’m going to drive up there this weekend and walk through the place and see if there is anything I’d like to save.”

I guess my dad knew how much I used to love that old house; even though it deteriorated after my granny’s death, I still felt a pang of sorrow knowing it was going to be torn down. “I was hoping you might want to drive up with me?” he said. The last time I had been there was six years ago when my granny passed away. I knew she always wanted to be a great grandmother, but she never got the chance. Amy had her first baby just one year later.

Prior to my granny passing away I only visited the house once for a short visit. Nothing like when Amy and I used to play there as kids. Our family always spent a week or two during the summer. Dad would tell us stories about him and his brothers growing up and all the trouble they used to get into, and we always loved the cookies and cakes that Granny would spoil us with. We’d play outside in the huge yard, go wadding in the crick down the road, and play with our Barbies on the porch when it rained. The summer after my ninth birthday was probably the last summer we spent there as a family. It wasn’t the same as the other summers I remembered though, my parents fought the entire time and my granny would shoe us outside to try and shelter us from their yelling. It didn’t matter though, I was pretty used to it by then. By the time we made it back to the city that summer it only took a few days before my dad had moved out, and we moved to a smaller apartment up town with my mother.

It made me sad that that was one of my last memories of my granny’s house. I thought about not going, but then I thought I would like to see it one last time before it was gone, so I told my father I’d travel up there with him. We spent the four-hour drive catching up and reminiscing about our road trips up there when we were young. All the driving eye-spy games we’d play, and gas station junk food we’d eat. He slipped in a quick inquiry about my mom, and I told him she was doing fine.

When we pulled in the driveway it was late in the afternoon. As we walked through the house I was flooded with memories of summer, laughter, and love. Most of the rooms were empty but we did manage to rescue a few things. We walked outside around the property until sunset and then left to go find something to eat in town. The next day we drove by one last time on the way back to the city, the construction crew had already started to tear down the house. We stopped and watched them for a minute and one tear streamed down my cheek as I watched the left corner of my granny’s house collapse to the ground. It was sad to see but I was happy I had a chance to say goodbye. My dad placed his hand on my shoulder for a minute and then put the car in drive and pulled away. As we drove off the happy memories that I’d left behind all those years ago traveled back with me, and I realized I had some rebuilding of my own to do.

Written by Morgan Smith. Photo by Lauren DeCicca.