Thursday.

Every time I listen to the song Marvin's Room by Drake, it puts be in a weird mood. While I don't become depressed, furious or any form of being upset, I still feel a bit empty. I think the song makes me more eager than anything. While many of us can say that we've had our fair share of heart break, none of us can really relate to each other's emotion. However, whenever I hear Drake's voice proclaiming how he deserve's a girls love more than the one that she actually loves, it makes me think just how cool this guy is. The same goes for when I listen to any song by The Weeknd, (which you have to listen to if you haven't already!) or anyone else like them. When The Weeknd is talking about losing his girl to another girl in The Knowing, and how he's discovered her secret, but how he still loves her it just puts me in an emotional grind. As we all know, emotions are not 'cool.' It isn't cool to lose your girlfriend. It isn't cool to be lonely. Tears are not cool. However, the after effect is. Nowadays the brooding, dark and mysterious figures which populate the back of the bars, clubs and taverns are the ones that are the coolest. Falling into habit to fill some sort of void, that is something that we can deem cool though right? I don't know what it is that makes these people cool, but what  it shows us is that happiness is not 'cool.' Which sort of draws a rift between what it is that we want, and what it is that we need. (Haha, no pun intended.)

Anne-Catherine Frey... has no reason to be pictured here. I just want to be her friend. D=
Photo from A Truly Intriguing Subject.

I love my friends, many of them are like siblings to me, and I think that many of them are really 'cool.' At the same time, it was a process to become friends with them. It wasn't easy to become friends with a lot of them, while others was incredibly simple to befriend. I think their 'coolness' comes from their elusiveness. People are  animals, plain and simple. In the social jungle that we live in, being elusive allows one to protect themselves many times. Acting cold to strangers, and being unfriendly to most people prevents one from having to open up, or waste time on people that may either harm them or endanger them. It takes effort to befriend a 'cool' person. However, this self-defense system essentially sacrifices their friendliness. On one side we have being able to defend oneself from the tribulations that Drake and The Weeknd face in their songs, by being elusive and thus mysteriously cool. On the other side we have the opportunity to meet people who we want to befriend, and enjoy the company of people that we can trust. I've had many friends that have betrayed my trust. For that reason, it would make sense to limit my social circle, but it just makes my selection of 'real' friends rather small. There are very few people that really know the real me, and I like it that way. Of course, this isn't because of some sort of hidden aspiration to be the cool guy, but makes me seem either stoic or unemotional. The truth is, it takes effort to know me, and the same goes for anyone that knows the difference between a friend and an acquaintance. Obviously you wouldn't tell your entire life story to a person you meet at the store just so that they could be your friend, right? It takes time to open oneself up to other people. Media makes us believe that the harder it is to crack open that exterior, the cooler this person is, because they know the significance of solitude. Whether that's true is questionable, but I find it fascinating. 

Like minded friends.
Photo from Black Fashion

I guess it also makes friendships more valuable. CONTRADICTIONS.

Vespa.

Photo from Anne-Catherine's blog: A Truly Intriguing Subject.

Vespa.

Photo from Tommy Ton for GQ.

Saturday.

Last night was a whirlwind of circumstances. I'd rather not go into details, let's just say that I bumped in to a few people that I didn't expect to bump in to. While the night went off without a hint of awkwardness I feel as though I'm being lured into some sort of atypical rift of the Twilight Zone. I was fortunate enough to see a friend that I really admire, and a friend that I've crossed blades with once a few years back. With the former, we've already arranged a time to see each other again, but the latter still makes me uneasy. Perhaps I'm just not too sure about where our relationship can go from here. Either way, it made me start to think about the power of circumstance. If I had done anything else that night, I could have seen one, and not the other, or perhaps seen neither one of them, or perhaps even seen them both but under completely different circumstances. Perhaps I'm thinking about this a bit too much, but what can I say: I love Philosophy. I also love the scene from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which they spend a small portion of the movie describing the significance of circumstance.


While that film isn't one of my favorites, I don't mind watching it, simply because of the desired nostalgia of living in the past. Of course, while I was not born a second before 1989, I still feel a connection to the past. Perhaps I feel like that was when I should have been born. While I admire the technology that the human race has crafted, I envy Marty McFly and his time-traveling automobile. So I figured why not get one of my own? These passed few weeks I've been seriously considering the purchase of one of Italy's classics: A Vespa.

Vespa advertisement. (above & below)
All credit due to the owners of these photos.

While I don't think that as soon as I hop onto the back of one of these things, the wheels are going to produce embers on the pavement behind me, and I'll instantly appear in 1955, I do think that I'll feel the nostalgia. A motorcycle is one thing, and while a lot of people might think it's more 'manly,' I think it's nothing but machismo. The Vespa isn't meant to show people how well endowed you are, it's meant to get you from point A to point B. Zipping through traffic at 20mph over the speed limit isn't what the creators of the classic were hoping for, but instead something that lets you admire and appreciate the surroundings that you live in. In my opinion, The Vespa is something that many people would consider futile or perhaps even repugnant, but when what many people don't seem to understand is...

Audrey Hepburn on the back of Gregory Peck's Vespa (above)
Two women sporting bathing suits and a Vespa (below)
All credit due to the owners of these photos.

... women love Vespas.