Puddles of Everlasting Now

I love rainy days when I'm inside...

The Best Thing

In the world is sometimes Lewis Lapham, I think:

By the time I read White’s essay “Here Is New York”, I was a city-side reporter for the New York Herald Tribune and beginning to suspect what he meant by the city’s capacity to bestow “queer prizes,” among them “the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy” that place the inhabitant in “the happy position of being able to choose his spectacle and so conserve his soul.” The meaning of the remark came clear on a cloudy afternoon in Central Park when I came across two men seated on a bench, each with a fanciful parrot resting on his shoulder, engaged in intense discussion accompanied by decisive gestures and rapid changes of expression. The parrots were identical; the two men were as unlike one another as a ferret and a panda—on the near end of the bench a small and heavily damaged white man in a threadbare raincoat, early seventies, not many teeth, sunken chest, furtive demeanor; at the far end of the bench a handsome and handsomely tailored black man, gold jewelry, stylish hat and brocade vest, broad-gauged grin, majestic presence.

In answer to my questions, I was told that the parrots were the only two of their particular species ever to have made it north of the Panama Canal, that the two men had met by accident while out walking their birds on 125th Street, that each had come to regard the other as the only man in America with whom it was possible to hold an important conversation. E. B. White had attributed New York’s “poetical deportment” to the fortunate meeting of minds among people come to town in search of “some greater or lesser grail.” Here then, seated with parrots on a bench in Central Park, was the transfer of energy that is the source of the city light. “The metropolis,” as per the observation of Ezra Pound, as “that which accepts all gifts and all heights of excellence, usually the excellence that is tabu in its own village.”

The Worst Sound in the World

The weird skin flatulence emitted when the fleshy part of my forearm, resting on a table, shifts against the hard surface.

Hi Sally

Film editor Sally Menke died on Tuesday. She worked on all of Tarantino's films and he called her his greatest collaborator.

I like this clip a lot. It's like the cast is saying hi to Sally in her editor's heaven:

Rocky Picnic Dream #1

Last night I dreamt Micah's party wasn't at his apartment but at a beautiful grey, windy rocky beach. We all arrived, food and drink in tow, gathered on this deserted beach, ready to lay our blankets out when we realized we were all standing ankle deep in the cool water.

We should have been upset, but it was so pretty, and so quiet we all just stood there, looking at each other and decided we'd have to climb higher.

Badbucks

The garbage man asked me if I liked Starbucks and then if I wanted to go on a Starbucks date and then, as I was walking away, called after me again and again asking what my favorite Starbucks drink is.

No thank you, I know how dates with garbage men end:

Advice in an email from B

Drawings can be relentlessly perfect in their execution, and weight, and composition, and be a total virtuoso experience, and you get double meaning -- you have the meaning of the subject matter, the imagery, and how it relates to you, or what you meant it to be, but then you have the other meaning -- whatever it is you're drawing, if you draw it beautifully and lovingly and caringly, then you have the really simple meaning that this is important enough to distill, to crystalize and to spend time on, which is such an elemental meaning.

The whole uniqueness thing is a grey area, on one level everyone shares so much visual info, life experiences, yada yada, that to an extent we all can have similar visual output, but on another level the system through which those influences are being filtered (your brain) is such a ridiculously complex, complicated, intricate, and utterly unique system that I have no patience for anyone to second-guess their own obvious individuality, and by extension the uniqueness of a product of that individuality, you know?

Autumnal

I can't stop looking at my Fbook photos. I miss living with you and what will Christmas be without the coziness of our life together.

Win Some, Lose Some

Last night we saw a friend of mine from high school whom I hadn't seen in 10 years. Then I went home and dreamt that he and his entire family were killed in a car crash.

Film Will Be Our Baby

Yesterday W. decided to buy three years of a subscription to Film Comment. I asked him if he would love me as long as he loved film. I don't recall his exact response (vanity trumps all) but believe it involved a nod or a nuzzle and a kiss.

This is the best thing I've read all day, and probably will all week:

HOUELLEBECQ

I think that there is a sharp contrast for most people between life at university, where they meet lots of people, and the moment when they enter the workforce, when they basically no longer meet anyone. Life becomes dull. So as a result people get married to have a personal life. I could elaborate but I think everyone understands.

Fashion Statement

As I awoke this morning, it occurred to me that we ought to make t-shirts with little kittens in hardhats that say: Cats in Progress.

Dead Trees

Yes, travel is useful (even if it's metaphorical). I started reading The Year of Magical Thinking and it's all about death and grief and it seems appropriate for fall because all the trees are dying. I like when nature and my reading patterns coordinate with each other.

For whatever reason, an evening with the Brits re-energized my sense of yearning for a real love affair.

#Separation Is Hard

I WANT A TEA BREAK.

Life Without (Heads of) Horses

Can you please change the name of today's Art Notes to "Life Without Headless Horses, I don't think so"?

I put my computer on top of two pretty yellow bound books that are histories of Lee and Patton that I will never read, but their spines are nice and clean.

Here is a list of animals I've seen outside my window:
Crickets
Pigeons (both copulating and just hanging)
Crows (both cawing for hours and just hanging)
Primordial bugs that have learned to blend in with the Watergate's stucco

More on men later, but A2's Facebook escapade took him down two notches in my book, and he's already pretty short, so he needs all the notches he can get.

Also last night I dreamt I was planning a party for Samina which just happened to be in the cornfield next to a certain ex-boyfriend of mine's wedding. They were hacking down corn rows to create an altar or a path, and as I passed by to get to my own party, I made a demeaning remark that wifey heard. I believe I ran but I don't remember.

Cleaning out the archives

I have a tendency of going back to read the emails where I poured my heart out to someone. Though it's always disappointing to find that I defensively and preemptively deleted the emails to protect myself from further pining, I am also proud of my occasional effort of self-preservation.

Physics of Friends

I have an equal and opposite matter of gratitude for you: I have been so grateful that, when I needed it, you told me why I shouldn't love A. The other A, I mean.

You stoked my ego (mostly what I remember is you telling me how he wasn't hot or fun enough for me) and you helped push me away from an unhealthy, one-sided love.

And I traded up for the very reciprocal, healthy (if obsessive) true love I have for you.

That experience has sometimes made me wonder if I should (or maybe should have, past tense) push back on you more the way you did for me. Not because I don't think W is worthy, or that your love isn't real/enduring, or because I want you entirely to myself (we're both a mess without cock, let's not even try it).

But since I needed you to do that for me, I have this kind of knee-jerk mental reaction where I wondered if you needed it, too. It sometimes made me feel like a bad friend for not being harder or more dismissive or critical, particularly through the harder times.

But really, what could I say? The essential truth is that I'm not sure I'll ever think that there is someone out there who is really actually good enough for you. And so I have to put my trust in the real love that I see between you, and all the rat babies to come.

It's burning

I just ate said soup for lunch at work.

And then unfortunately I put my finger in my nose.

Rest Coast

You asked me this Friday night while we made spicy butternut apple soup whether you were right to love A, and to have told him so. It's the kind of question I love to answer because I am conceited and think I know everything, but you asking me that made me remember I am a liar and a thief who doesn't know anything and I talked cryptically and made jokes to get out of it...

Walking home on Saturday night I realized why. When I thought I loved W and was going to upend my life (worth it) but wasn't sure if it was just a passing infatuation (it wasn't and isn't), you were the only one to tell me you thought it was real. I can't tell you how important that was to me. I think about it all the time, mostly because it let me love W and that has proved lasting, but also because it made me trust you, emotionally, and to realize in so many ways our souls are aligned and that you and I understand each other in ways I've never had with anyone before. I want to give you a similar gift, but I guess I still only feel confident telling you how much I love you, not telling you how much you love A.

Maybe you were lying to me that fall day 3 years ago, or just telling me what you thought I wanted to hear (also true), but I think even to do that, I'd need to know how you really feel about A.

My instinct is you love him, not forever, but for now. And since our life here still feels very now, and not forever, I think you were right to say it.

But I'll ask you again in three years.

Blue Is True

I meant to tell you this yesterday, but in my dream two nights ago I committed suicide, unsuccessfully. I know we're really supposed to die when we die in dreams, but since I jumped off a zeppelin (can we agree to not care about spelling here?) fell through the sky and landed on the roof of a hotel, dazed but ok, unsure how to tell people I'd failed at dying.

I suppose it's a metaphor for fears of failure, or falling, but I woke up in a really good mood.

Every time I see two pigeons (not having sex) on the stoop outside my window I think of us.

Adult Disasters

After awaking to find my kitchen floor covered in worms, I later heard a Modest Mouse song on Pandora that was popular when I was in college. It made me feel maudlin.