New Jersey blues
Where my family and I live in Jersey feels a bit like No Man’s Land — across the river from Manhattan but not close enough to be convenient. ’Cause, see, the city, I like. But here? Wedged uncomfortably between the bustling culture of Manhattan and the sleepy Jersey suburbs? Over it.
…the purpose of this blog is not to pinpoint problems and offer solutions — more rather, to simply lament.
The smell
It’s more like a reek — an industrially-charged odor that blankets the landscape and slithers its way into homes like an uninvited guest. Its source? Hard to pinpoint. Is it the rancid, pollution-drowned waters of the Hackensack river? Certainly don’t drink it. Perhaps it’s the fish riding the current belly up after one too many rounds of toxic sludge. Could it be the factory behemoths pumping clouds of sulfuric gas into the air? It’s easy to lose sight of the present when the planet’s future smells so hopeless.
The sounds
At least in Manhattan, it’s a constant hum — like white noise, or more fittingly, grey noise. In Jersey, you can’t escape the staccato rhythm of big rigs accelerating down straightaways and bored teenagers revving their engines to antagonize red lights.
Just the other day outside our 5th floor apartment window, some idiot was doing donuts in the parking lot, giving the pavement tired tire marks before speeding away. It was all very loud — and he must have been very proud of himself. Oh, to have a word with him… (yes, I do unapologetically assume it’s a him).
I heard once that people who make a lot of noise in life are simply scared of the world. Like prey attempting to make itself look bigger when confronted by a predator, so does the insecure boy-man who makes loud donuts in a parking lot. In the end, I had to settle for rolling my eyes before retreating with a sigh from the window.
The people
For whatever reason, the people in my town, I’ve got beef with. To be fair, I have a short temper when it comes to people in general, so my dislike says very little about the actual character of my neighbors. And it’s worth noting that my general bad attitude these days seems to be a product of where I live, in effect souring my general POV. Chicken? Egg? What came first?
In any case, the people seem (to me) to be loud, self-serving, angry, short-sighted, greedy— all things that I also am. The point is, there are too many of us selfish a**holes in one place, which really isn’t sustainable in the long-run. Community members should have the ability to share, pitch in, and, at the very least, acknowledge the well-being of their neighbors. Where I live now, more than anywhere else I’ve been, lacks what I’d call true community potential. Of course, there are why’s for this phenomenon — reasons for it. But the purpose of this blog is not to pinpoint problems and offer solutions — more rather, to simply lament.
The traffic
This category I’ll initiate using anecdote.
There’s a department store a couple blocks away from us. I needed to buy a swimsuit for my daughter. Should have taken me two minutes by car/fifteen minutes by foot. Being lazy, I opted to drive. Mistake, which I should have anticipated. It ended up taking me 30 minutes to drive two blocks.
This is not an isolated event.
You can and must anticipate tripling the amount of time it should take you to get anywhere. Yes, traffic in Manhattan is really bad. Yes, it’s a problem. But at least traffic on the tight city streets of over-populated Manhattan makes sense... and it usually moves, albeit slowly. I just can’t reconcile the amount of near stand-still traffic with our location. I can only guess it’s over-crowded neighborhoods plus the worst traffic patterns known to man. Who engineered these highways? I’m taking them to court, I mean it.
Sigh.
Well… there’s some consolation in airing one’s grievances and moving on with life — until I remember my life very much exists in Jersey. And there I go feeling all prickly again. I suppose I could move…
