{"id":5094,"date":"2017-07-13T17:59:11","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T21:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/?p=5094"},"modified":"2017-07-13T17:59:11","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T21:59:11","slug":"surrounded-by-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/the-vault-of-dreamers\/surrounded-by-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Surrounded by Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Visiting New York always jolts me. I become super conscious of all the lives unfolding around me, and though they&#8217;re all different from mine, I feel a universality with my fellow people. After all, many of us are focusing on the same basic goals: staying alive, protecting our families, celebrating milestones, earning a living, building community, and saving the world. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com\/post\/23536922667\/sonder\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Sonder&#8221;<\/a> from John Koenig&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Dictionary_of_Obscure_Sorrows\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows<\/a> captures this awareness of other lives well, and one can&#8217;t help letting the imagination wander.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1920px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-5094-1\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" loop preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/IMG_9320.m4v?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/IMG_9320.m4v\">https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/IMG_9320.m4v<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p>When I took a video of the bustle of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.grandcentralterminal.com\/plan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Grand Central Station<\/a> on July 5, 2015 at 2:35 pm, I noticed that the people who held still became more visible in the flow of movement. A solitary man in a white shirt, for instance, lifted his camera to a take a photo in my direction, as if we were tacitly connected through our lenses.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us are usually moving in the stream of everyday life, blurring together, but we pause in our lives at certain milestone portals: weddings, funerals, births, graduations. Here, we can see such a moment in action, or rather, in stillness. If you look closely in the top left corner, a wedding couple stood in a streak of sunlight to have their picture taken.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 452px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-5094-2\" width=\"452\" height=\"289\" loop preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/GrandCentralCouple.mp4?_=2\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/GrandCentralCouple.mp4\">https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/GrandCentralCouple.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p>Such a moment makes me want to move, and makes me want to stay still.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Visiting New York always jolts me. I become super conscious of all the lives unfolding around me, and though they&#8217;re all different from mine, I feel a universality with my fellow people. After all, many of us are focusing on the same basic goals: staying alive, protecting our families, celebrating milestones, earning a living, building [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[955,505],"class_list":["post-5094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-vault-of-dreamers","tag-grand-central-station","tag-vault-of-dreamers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5094"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5104,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094\/revisions\/5104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}