I am not intimidated by these people - though at first I wondered if that was perhaps the origin of this feeling. Surrounded by Big Apple PR pros and celebrities who make more in a week than I do in a year, I felt - what was it?
Not intimidated.
Not envious...
...
Alien.
Like either they - or, more likely, I - am not "of this world."
I find I approach conversations here the way an anthropologist might when attempting to communicate with a "lost" tribe: Asking a series of routine questions and being astonished by the degree to which the answers differ from anything I'd ever associate with my "normal" life.
I have to stifle the urge to preface every sentence with "Where you're from, how do they..."
"They."
That's the heart of it really.
I am presently among a group of "them" - a group to which I do not belong. And I can feel my alienness with every interaction.
It's a gargantuan divide; like the Grand Canyon of "Upstairs, Downstairs."
Sure, I know they put on their $500 pants one leg at a time (don't they?!?), but in many ways it appears that's where the similarity ends...
I don't desire to be or join them, but I do hope someday to understand - to find the humanity in this alien world. And maybe, just maybe, to help them find it in me.
