Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-03-02- 3:06 p.m.

Luminescence

On cold sunny mornings, the clarity of the rising sun tears through the shadows of luxury co-op buildings to rush towards your eyes if you aren’t prepared. Pupils contract too slowly, and light, naturally moving at its own eponymous speed, bulldozes past the retina to assault rods and cones. The mere act of writing about it causes optical nerves to throb with pain memory.
I am a great believer in sunglasses.
I’ve never owned a nice pair of sunglasses. I’ve always only had those cheap, brandless sorts that you buy for ten dollars off free standing drugstore lazy susans or five dollar knockoffs from Times Square street vendors. When I was young, I didn’t know this was a bad thing; when I was young, my friends and I didn’t know there was anything to sunglasses other than their pure utilitarianism.
Those Oakley “Thermonuclear Protection” shirts were so cool when I first saw them. I didn’t know what they were, of course. It was before the fashionable thing to wear was clothing that allowed you to serve as a double for a billboard. But what a fabulous slogan to have on a t-shirt. I wanted one terribly of course. I looked around in stores, always frustrated. Few things in this world are harder than shopping for something when you have no idea what it is.
In the end, I suffered the humiliation of asking one of the Oakley product placement clad horde what those “Oakley” things were. And with only a modicum of derision, he told me. And I went to the store and took a gander at my first hundred dollar pair of sunglasses. And the world changed.
You are never the same after you discover fashion. As grown-ups, we all find in ourselves the need to be self-effacing, self-deprecating even, when we should happen to be the center of attention. Even the best of us, the most accomplished, belittle our own achievements and magnify our faults. And the worst of all isn’t that we do this to ourselves, but that we do it in front of others. As much as anything, we all loathe being admired.
But this is merely another symptom of the mysterious malady of adolescence. Children are not this way. A child at a birthday party surrounded by friends and family radiates joy. As adults, we force ourselves to clothe our joy in irony. When I was a child, I merely knew that I was clothed, whereas today, I could tell you the brand name of every article I have on.
But I’ve never owned a nice pair of sunglasses. I’ve never once stepped into a Sunglass Hut and picked out a pair of Ray-Bans or Armanis. I could tell you it’s the money, but the truth is that they would probably be worth the money to me. I know that light of the morning; only too well in fact. Mornings in high school when I was too wired to fall asleep; nights in college when I was so drunk, I watched the dawn. Even post-graduate walks of shame (and a little joy) in the previous evening’s clothes. And all this without the protective barrier of highly fashionable eyewear.
Some people choose to eschew the world of fashion; others, being blessed with the means to their ends, embrace it fully. I make my home in a nebulous region, unable to reject its warmth and too impoverished to bask in its protection. I inhabit the middle ground. I straddle the fence.
I hedge my bets.

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Older

Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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