No Clever Title: Goodbye to All That

"I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended." Even though I felt like this was just a longwinded way of saying the cliché, "Hun, what happened to us? How'd we get here?" I enjoyed it. These lines, of course, are the entire model for movies like (500) Days of Summer*, which is now in and of itself, a cliché. I don't mind this cliché, especially in Didion's essay Goodbye to All That. Maybe it's because this essay has a little less predicability than two characters in a indie film being in love with The Smiths and talking of how Ringo is a favorite Beatle solely for the reason of him being the least loved.

I feel as if this cliché needs to be talked about more often but not through other clichés.  (Whew, cliché, cliché, cliché.) This is where Didion comes to the rescue. Throughout the essay, I felt constantly reminded that she was falling in and out of love with her city. "I never told my father that I needed money because then he would have sent it, and I would never know if I could do it by myself. At the time making a living seemed like a game to me, with arbitrary but quite inflexible rules."  After reading this, I couldn't help but wonder if this is why we fall out of interest with certain entities. As soon as we find out everything there is to know/finish the game, do we become so anxious and panic ridden that we can't be comfortable without the game? I feel like I'm stumbling through my reasonings. It seems to me that this is the heart of the essay. Once everything starts to sound the same and you no longer have interest in what something has to offer you, we feel the need to move on. That seems natural. Also exhausting. There are plenty of examples. Divorce, college students changing majors 6-8 times, miserable relationships, sufferers of commitmentphobia. It's a hard subject to write about without being scoffed at by students of an english creative writing course, but it seems to have finally been pulled off.

Also, I'd like to give a big S/O to my main lady, Diane Ackerman. There's a point in Goodbye to All That that would make her proud (at least I think it would.) "For a lot of the time I was in New York I used a perfume called Fleurs de Rocaille, and then L'air du Temps, and now the slightest trace of either can short-circuit my connections for the rest of the day." Pg. 685

*While writing this post, I was trying to think of other movies based around the cliché of "How'd we get here?" This is all I got:

1. Blue Valentine

2. The first 15 minutes of Mrs. Doubtfire. 

3. Hook 

4. Maybe Up? 

I'm struggling. I need help.