My Favorite Things

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about myself. Call me self-centered, egocentric, vain, but not conceited. Generally, “thinking of oneself” means that one does not take into account other people’s feelings or interests. That is not my case. By “thinking of myself”, I mean that I am constanly contemplating my “self” and engaging in self-psychoanalysis. I analyze why I think a certain way, what makes me happy or sad, and why something upsets me. It is a process that is automatic, like a reflex that I cannot control. It is an ongoing internal dialogue, often times an absurd debate.

Last night prior to falling asleep, I was listing those subtle and less obvious things, the simple pleasures, that I most enjoy in life. These are a few of the “My Favorite Things” (other than WiFi everywhere) that I came up with:

• Long, hot showers.
• Brushing my teeth with a brand new toothbrush.
• Soap. Clean, fresh scents.
• Cookies.
• Sandwiches and saying sandwiches.
• A laugh or a smile in reaction to something I have said or done.
• Not just holding the door for someone, but going out of my way to hold the door open for someone I do not know.
• Meandering, taking my time with the most irrelevant of things.
• Intensity, being rushed to finish the most complex of tasks.
• Proactive inaction.
• Opening the door to enter my apartment.
• Entering my aparment.
• Singing to myself “I’ll be home for Christmas” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” on the airplane on my way home.
• Defending the indefensible for sake of argument.
• Overdrawn, contrived generalizations for the sake of annoying my brother and others.
• Defending my country abroad and criticizing it at home.
• Repeating myself and watching my friends go from being annoyed to finding it funny.
• Children laughing hysterically, at least until I get bored of repeating the same joke over and over again.
• Babies crying, simply because it is what they do.
• Bluebells.
• Learning something new that the great majority of people couldn’t care less about, and then trying to sneak it into a conversation on an unrelated matter.
• Being recommended music or literature and discovering something wonderful.
• Innocently using words like bufas or coquitos.
• Saying “unnerbrookies”.
• Being an immigrant to identify with the underdog.
• Getting a haircut.
• Replaying the sound of my maternal grandmother’s laugh, the smell of my maternal grandfather’s Manhattan, the legacy of my paternal grandfather’s handshake.
• Grandparents and grandchildren.
• Mothers.
• Fiddling with my sister’s childrearing by letting her kids break some of the rules and seeing that my sister really doesn’t mind.
• Public speaking.
• Making someone smile.
• Comforting other people’s shyness.
• Being an unwanted misfit in a Lesbian bar.
• My friends’ successes.
• Other people’s adventures.
• A surplus of clean underwear.
• Pretending and make-believe.
• My personal, internal dialogue while Neska and Berga are talking.
• Getting into a car that has been heated by the sun (other than in summertime).
• Lying on the carpet.
• Occupying only one corner of a large bed, always the same corner.
• Scarves.
• Infatuation in general.
• Infatuation with something that no one else finds interesting.
• The anxiety of capricious, impulse purchasing.
• Music and literature, but never at the same time.
• Talking to strangers and store attendants.
• Justifying my purchase to the pharmacist as not being a warning sign of hypochondria.
• Learning about human migration and diasporas.
• Contradicting the most common beliefs.
• The joy of quitting a job.
• Curing nausea by breaking up.
• Recommending that my friends should break up with their respective boyfriends and girlfriends.
• Sharing when it feels natural.
• Love stories disguised as something else.
• Water, the sun, the rain.
• September.
• Missing the characters from a novel.
• Evening cañas in Madrid in a neighborhood terraza.
• Thinking that I will enjoy eating dinner “out back” before I take into account the mosquitos.
• Getting to the beach early.
• Canal road, River Road, Kendale Road.
• Tall trees, barren trees, lush green trees.
• My goddaughter pronouncing flowers as “faffos”.
• Imitating my friends in their presence only if they think it is funny.
• Hearing someone’s voice over the phone that I don’t often speak to and recognizing how much I love its sound and familiarity.
• When my friends visit my blog for the first time, search desperately for their name, and then ask why I haven’t written about them.
• The unhindered view from a window.
• Immense skies and an open horizon.
• Goldfinches.
• Easements.
• Streams and creaks.
• Foreign accents, vernaculars and dialects.
• Thinking about the separation of powers, constitutional law, and political theory.
• Describing US federalism to non Americans.
• Cultures that are not principally based on Greek and Roman civilization.
• Words that are not “Greek words”.
• Peeled tomatoes.
• Basil.
• A garden path.
• A ball at my feet, and the feeling after having enjoyed playing soccer.
• Having fun, but not too much fun.
• Hope.
• Beauty before it knows it is beautiful.
• The lines that trace a woman’s form.
• Becoming.
• Words.