Hawksley Workman once wrote a song called "Tonight, Romanticise the Automobile". Now, whenever I hear the word 'romanticise' I think of that song, hum a few bars and continue on with whatever it was I was doing.

The word reminds me of what movies do to my psyche. They make me believe, for short amounts of time (around 5 or 10 minutes) that my life could be like the characters in the movie. That I could casually walk along Amsterdam avenue in New York City and buy flowers for my little kitchen table, or maybe come across a stand that sells apples. As if there would be flower sellers or apple buyers on Amsterdam avenue. Wrong neighbourhood, Gish.

Crisp Royal Gala apples (currently one of my little addictions) and sunny yellow tulips that sit in a clear vase in the throes of death, but looking stunningly beautiful whilst they die. Simple things like sweeping the floor, watching Fall leaves drift to the ground.

Oh, and consuming products like Coke Plus, or Diet Cherry 7-up, eating blueberry donuts and smoking Capri slim cigarettes. Those are the things that I managed to experience while driving around small town Michigan yesterday.

And of course, the reference to life romanticized into tiny manageable bites, is because You've Got Mail is on. Which I am sure is not an accurate portrayal of life in New York, but I suppose that it doesn't matter right now.

I'm going to fall asleep in clean bright red sheets that I picked up in Michigan, and dream of possible, attainable things.

Not things like buying apples from a stand in New York or ideas of snorkeling gin and tonics in a swanky bar in the Upper East Side. Although truth be told, I am not all that interested in the swanky bar bit. People don't really live like that, right?

People shop at Target, they eat at Chili's once a week, and then go home to their bedroom communities of large cities with matching bed sheets and non-slip decals in the bath tub. I've got to just give up the ghost and find my place amongst them.

Bed time. Red sheets, an apple and a novel I've read 10 times before.

Labels: hawksley workman, how not to be an idiot, layers, neurotic, New York, travelling