I read this lovely bit by Courtney Preiss and thought I'd share it with you.
1. Run away to Brooklyn. Rent an apartment with a
claw footed bathtub. Commute to Manhattan during the week and put in
hours at a menial publishing job. Drive home to New Jersey on weekends
to swim in the pool and cry to your mother. Smoke Gauloises on the fire
escape. Let yellowing issues of Rolling Stone and Vogue pile into a
protective fortress around your bed. Listen to Cat Power. Fall asleep
mostly naked beneath the duvet watching Sportscenter and drinking earl
grey. Date a Yankees fan and kiss his hands on the 4 Train into the
Bronx.
2. Run away to Barcelona. Eat milk chocolate magnum
bars and drink cheap champagne. Burst into charming fits of laughter
whenever you get embarrassed about butchering the Catalan language. Wear
denim cutoffs, Dr. Pepper chapstick, and very little else. Go dancing
at 3 a.m. Whiten your teeth. Tan your shoulders. Braid feathers into
your hair. Perpetually wake up with sand caught in the thin cotton
sheets of your tiny bed. Listen to the Rolling Stones and kiss all the
longhaired boys you can get your hands on without ever having to
apologize.
3. Run away to Los Angeles. Sublet a studio in Venice three blocks from the beach. Listen to top 40 radio. Go to Chateau Marmont and charge drinks you can’t afford to a long-dormant credit card. Sleep with a television actor who lives in the valley. Sleep with a musician who lives in Bel Air. Break things off with both of them when gas prices begin to rise. Find Gilda Radner’s star on the Walk Of Fame and swallow a sob when you see the filthy cement around her name is cracked. Walk through the Venice Canals until the sun sets and you forget your own name. Call your mother crying from the parking lot of a 24-hour Ralph’s supermarket. Tell her you want to come home.
4. Run away to Paris. Gaze at the pink and pistachio glow of macarons in the window on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Listen to Joni Mitchell. Meet an Argentinean man in the Latin Quarter for drinks. Melt into his accent and kiss him goodnight, but return to your apartment alone because his face doesn’t look enough like the man’s you are trying to forget. Get lost in the Richelieu Wing of the Louvre, admiring Napoleon’s fine red damask. Walk alone along the Seine in an old dress, ten-dollar shoes, and an Hermes scarf. Fumble with the locks on the fence overlooking the river. They all have lovers’ names etched into them and the girl who left the red heart-shaped lock has the same name as you.
5. Run away to Martha’s Vineyard. Write heartbroken
stories during the day in front of a large fan that blows curls of humid
hair across your tired face. Take a waitress job at The Black Dog at
night and try hard not to drop too many trays. Learn to ride a moped.
Pretend you’re a Kennedy. Listen to Carly Simon. Eat hand-churned ice
cream out of waffle cones. Visit the flying horses and consider how many
girls just like you have sat on the same horse clutching for the same
brass ring. Get stoned and dance barefoot down the length of the eroded Jaws beach. Date a Red Sox fan. Yell at each other during baseball games, and then kiss and make up between tangled sheets.
Photos via Tumblr
