Making sense of things...or not

Michael here, sitting beside a pool in Long Island at J's aunt's house. A really pretty part of LI, a bit further out, right near the water. An old suburban neighborhood with big trees, quiet streets, and an absence of noise and commotion. We've been in NYC for the past two days. I've spent a lot of time in NY over the past two years doing work and, while I feel much more comfortable in the city getting around, knowing where things are, feeling at ease, I've never gotten used to the energy it takes to just walk down the street there. It's such a demanding place with so much of everything. So much of this country -- at least the parts that I know -- share that demand, but in different ways. It seems that this is one of the things that I wanted to get away from, at least for a while.

An interesting story: we walked up to Central Park from our hotel at 42nd and 5th yesterday afternoon, right past the really cool Apple store at 5th and the S end of the park. Before we got there, we started to see police, barricades, tv news trucks, and began wondering what the tragedy of the day was. As we began wading our way through the edges of the crowd, we realized that the lines and crowd had formed for the opening of the sale of the iPhone, which was officially on sale at 7pm. It was amazing to see the crowd and the to do for a phone. We passed by a few other stores -- AT&T Stores, I think...the carrier for the iPhone in the US -- that also had lines of people queuing up to purchase the latest and greatest doo dad for consumption. One of the thing that J noticed in looking at the newspapers here are the succession of ads for people to cast of the old latest and greatest and to get the newest (or newer) latest and greatest, dropping off your old phone in the box at the Whole Foods to re-issue to emergency personnell, to donate your old laptop to the local school (that has piles of outdated equipment with no one to service them), etc.

We have another week and a half + in the US -- today and tomorrow in NY, next week in DC, and then Boston. There's a part of me that's really looking forward to the rest of our trip -- to seeing my family more, to seeing friends in Boston that we haven't seen. But I'm also already ready to go back. We now own barbara's house -- I guess it's our house now. and we've got all of that to deal with once we return. And while I'm ready to go back to NZ, I'm going back without J, which is hard in a few ways. Lots of people ask us questions about life there, with the "What do you like/What bothers you about it there/What do you miss?" and I find myself answering those questions about NZ but asking them to myself about life in the US. Just babbling a bit, I guess.

It is very pretty here, this part of LI. Blue skies and cool air today. So many people, though. So many cars, so much pollution and waste, suca resource intense realities of life and society here. (Sigh.) Still trying to make sense of all this.