Alive Right Now

“We’re just so lucky to be alive right now, aren’t we?”

Last evening I attended my final First Fashion Friday at Aloha Tower Marketplace. I was not really in the mood to attend such a festivity, and I boasted no Plus One, but since I had just closed the proverbial book on a rather emotionally- and intellectually-draining week, I hoped that the event would put me in the mood to attend, as it usually does. Partnering with the fabulous and creative people at Hawaii Fashion Incubator, Honolulu’s “central hub where members of the community can interact, collaborate, and collectively drive the local fashion industry forward,” Aloha Tower Marketplace has staged First Fashion Friday since July of 2007, every month from July through October (rather appropriately, my final First Fashion Friday was also the final event of the current season). It is always a fabulous evening full of fashion, fun, and local businesses, organizations, and personalities coming together to celebrate fashion and personal style. So I harbored hope that my mood would be elevated considerably without the use of pharmaceutical or alcoholic mood elevators.

I had, however, drastically underestimated what this week had actually done to my mood.

Following the main events of the evening, I wandered upstairs to Hawaii Fashion Incubator’s after party, which was showcasing the University of Hawaii’s Costume Collection and highlighting October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Turning away from the refreshment table with a San Pellegrino, I ran into an acquaintance I knew from my activities in Honolulu’s design community, and although I was not in the mood for shallow conversation, I stopped to chat with her out of politeness.

My acquaintance is one of those very happy, very positive Pollyanna types who is so cloyingly sweet that you want to slap her really hard, or show her a graphic photograph of one of those poor clubbed seal pups, just to show her how bad things really are / can be, but you end up resisting the urge to do either because she is actually so genuine and sincere with her happy, shiny sentiments. She’s like the maple syrup on a stack of Belgian waffles that is so sweet that it makes you want to stop eating halfway through the stack but you continue to eat anyway because you need to finish the stack of waffles, right?

Anyway, we began chatting about this and that, which quickly devolved to chatting exclusively about her “that” after I had divulged that my “this” involved leaving the islands permanently to return to New York this month. (This, I’ve noticed, has been standard procedure with my Honolulu acquaintances as I’ve run into them since making plans to leave; it is as if once they hear that I am leaving, I have already left.) She spoke of a benefit she was organizing two weeks from now, of the rapidly approaching Hawaii’s 5-0 Design Competition, and concluded by smiling this alarmingly wide, silly smile and exclaiming breathily, “We’re just so lucky to be alive right now, aren’t we?”

I am rather certain my facial expression contorted immediately into one that clearly communicated, “Are you high?!” The events and thoughts of the past week flashed like sheet lightning through my head: the economy, so badly Nagasakied, already worrying me in regards to my search for employment and real estate in the 212 (718? Dear G-d, not 201?!) upon my return; the two articles I have been researching and attempting to write all week, but that I am so not that into because they both stem from personal, unpleasant online events during the past two weeks; and I will not even go into the media slaughterhouse that occurred yesterday morning, putting several stunningly talented online media professionals out of jobs and, again, echoing my worries regarding finding any kind of gainful employment within, oh, I don’t know, the next decade?

I furrowed my brow at my acquaintance, who was clearly awaiting my concurrence with her ludicrously narrow-minded assertion. I could not very well agree with her that it is “great to be alive right now,” because, hello, unless you have been living under a rock for the past two weeks, you would recognize that this is simply an assinine statement. However, I could not very well disagree with her completely and suggest that the polar opposite of “being alive right now” would be far preferable, since, well, no one really knows if being dead is truly preferable to being alive, right? I mean, sure, you are dead, and all, but can you have fun? Are there parties? Is there hot butt sex? You don’t know!

So I ended up quibbling with her.

“Yes,” I said, smiling sarcastically. “Yes. It is great to be…alive.”

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