{"id":67114,"date":"2013-04-12T06:09:10","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T10:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=67114"},"modified":"2013-04-12T06:27:20","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T10:27:20","slug":"looking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=67114","title":{"rendered":"Looking"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nA chilly spring evening, threatening rain. The blue lights were out on the trees. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but twilight was upon us. <\/p>\n

My first reaction, upon seeing the blue lights and the building was to stop and snap a pic. But I hesitated for a second. And this entire thought process unfurled in my head, vast, critical, and multi-layered. It all happened in a moment. Proust or Joyce could describe the actual thought process better. But it went something like this: “Wait. Put camera down. Beautiful image. LOOK at the beautiful image for a while. LOOK. I wonder if people now have forgotten how to look? Have I forgotten how to look? Since everything beautiful can be captured immediately … are people more concerned with the capturing of the beauty as opposed to reveling in said beauty? What price are we paying right now? How is this impacting movies, books, the art world, our interactions with one another? Where will it end? Can’t I just stand here and LOOK at the beauty<\/em>?” This entire worry-wart monologue\/lecture took place over a period of about 2 seconds. I felt some dismay, because all around me I saw people take pictures of the beauty – standing still long enough to hold the camera still – and then continuing walking. In general, I don’t believe in judging other people for behavior like that. I do my best to only judge people who commit crimes. If you’re a murderer or a rapist or Idi Amin, I feel completely fine in judging you and calling you by your proper name which is “Asshole” and “Scum of the Earth”. If you’re a man who’s done me wrong personally, then I feel justified in judging you and saying, “How you behaved is why you SUCK.” I’m not gunning for the Saint of the Year award. There are exceptions, and I do slip up, but in general, I don’t think that judging people for what is, essentially, benign behavior, is the way to go. Besides, I was participating in the phenomena as well. As in: OMG BEAUTIFUL SIGHT WHERE IS MY PHONE. <\/p>\n

Anyway, I wasn’t in a rush. I had had a rigorous couple of hours, in the care of the medical profession, and I was both stressed out and exhausted (a dangerous combo). So I had my little “Oh woe to us who do not take the time to LOOK” lecture imposed on me by some busybody-inner-voice, and decided to just stand there for a while, looking at the scene. The sky was this weird deep blue. The sun was gone from the sky, and it had been a dramatic cold day of clouds and dampness. I couldn’t tell if there were clouds up there in the sky, but there probably were. The lights around 30 Rock are dramatic and cinematic, making the building look iconic and impressive. The skating rink has been dismantled, now that spring is upon us. There was work going on down there. There was work going on outside the entrance as well.<\/p>\n

I worked in 30 Rock for a year<\/a>. I have really fond associations with the place. I worked on the 17th floor, the SNL<\/i> floor (due to a glitch in office-assignments: there was zero reason that I should have been placed on that floor! I’d go to the ladies room and be surrounded by the glorious lady performers of SNL<\/em>, all of us washing our hands, me trying to be cool, them probably thinking, “Who the hell is she and why is she on our floor?”) I would come outside onto that stone area facing the skating rink (where the Christmas tree goes), and be assaulted by the throngs of people, making it hard to walk even a foot in any direction without bumping into someone. There were definitely a ton of cons to working at 30 Rock. The amount of people there on a daily basis, for one. You just had to accept it, get to a Zen place with it. There is never a time there when it is not crowded. On the day the Christmas tree lights go on, they let us all go home at 2 p.m., because otherwise we would have been trapped. It was very interesting working there. It was a good job, a windfall in my lap, I made good friends, worked my ass off, and learned a lot. I almost never go by 30 Rock or Radio City anymore because I just can’t take the crowds. But last night I found myself on 50th Street, and was struck dumb by the beauty of the blue lights and the building and the dark blue sky. <\/p>\n

It was around 8 p.m., so the crowds weren’t all that bad, especially because the skating rink is closed. The flags were fluttering a little bit, there was some wind, although nothing like the random gales going on right now as I type this. <\/p>\n

As I let myself just stand there, forced myself to stand still, things actually started to look different. But the difference was in me, not the surroundings. People were posing by the blue-light trees, having their pictures taken. People were hurrying by on their phones, talking. They were probably hurrying home to someone who loved them. They were probably coordinating with friends over which wine bar to meet up at. Maybe they stopped on the sidewalk to snap a pic of the beauty because they were late somewhere, and wanted to make sure to savor the image later.<\/p>\n

I do that a lot. “I don’t have time right now to enjoy this … but later … later I will savor it.”<\/p>\n

And I do. Or I try to.<\/p>\n

I’m just doing the best I can. And so is everybody else. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A chilly spring evening, threatening rain. The blue lights were out on the trees. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but twilight was upon us. My first reaction, upon seeing the blue lights and the building was to stop and snap … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[161],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67114"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67124,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67114\/revisions\/67124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}