Dear Chicago,
You'll never guess.
You know the girl you said I'd meet someday?
Well, I've got something to confess.
She picked me up on Friday.
Asked me if she reminded me of you.
I just laughed and lit a cigarette,
Said "that's impossible to do."
My life's gotten simple since.
And it fluctuates so much.
Happy and sad and back again.
I'm not crying out too much.
Think about you all the time.
It's strange and hard to deal.
Think about you lying there.
And those blankets lie so still.
Nothing breathes here in the cold.
Nothing moves or even smiles.
I've been thinking some of suicide.
But there's bars out here for miles.
Sorry about the every kiss.
Every kiss you wasted back.
I think the thing you said was true,
I'm going to die alone and sad.
The wind's feeling real these days.
Yeah, baby, it hurt's me some.
Never thought I'd feel so blue.
New York City, you're almost gone.
I think that I've fallen out of love,
I think I've fallen out of love...with you.
I road a mechanical bull for the first time on Friday. I'd hoped that might be one of those things that I am amazingly good at, but apparently it's not. I've had to add bull-riding to the long list of things I'm not amazing at. I almost didn't want to ride it at all. And not just because being thrown from a bull, however mechanical, looks relatively painful, but because up until the moment when I was sent flying from that fiberglass shell, there was a chance that I could be the best bull-rider that has ever been. That chance no longer exists. I could still be the world's most incredible violinist. I could still encounter abstract algebra and change the way it's considered for all time. And though I've never tried plumbing, per se, I'm fairly sure that I'm the most incredible plumber who has ever lived. But I can no longer say that about bull-riding. And it's only a matter of time before I try those other things.
"When you're young, your potential is infinite. You might do anything, really. You might be Einstein. You might be Dimaggio. Then you get to an age where what you might be give way to what you have been. You weren't Einstein. You weren't anything. That's a bad moment."
- Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
4.27.2003 Remember when I used to post a lot from the library? (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
A sketch is currently being filmed in my room, so I'm having to write my lit paper in the library computer lab. Because I've been especially self-conscious of my appearance lately, and because I have incredibly few articles of clean clothing, I wore a nice black sweater to the library. The library is a lot warmer than I remember it. I haven't spent a lot of time in the library computer lab this year, what with my having both a single and a time-consuming heroin addiction, but I don't remember it being such a sauna. Granted, I'm wearing a sweater. Granted, I'm leaning against a radiator. But would it be so much trouble for them to put some fans in here? And not just the two fans they already have in place, but maybe a fan at each work station? I don't feel like I'm being unreasonable.
4.25.2003
I love that by quickly glancing at my search referrals, I can tell that somewhere in the world, an entire class of students has to write a paper on the Billy Collin's poem "Picnic, Lightning," and no one has any idea what to write about. Imagine how thrilled they must be to search for information on a poem by name, and find, as their first search result, a page sharing the name of the poem. Then imagine the disappointment of each and every one of those students upon opening this page. I'm really sorry. I've never even read your precious poem, and I have absolutely nothing insightful to say about it.
If you are one of these students, please take a second out of your searching to comment. I'd really appreciate it.
UPDATE: I'm posting the poem in its entirety so as to do my part in closing the gap in the ratio of poetry to pornography on the internet.
It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly within the panels of
the comics, but still, we know it is
possible, as well as the flash of
summer lightning, the thermos toppling
over, spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message can be
delivered from within. The heart, no
valentine, decides to quit after
lunch, the power shut off like a
switch, or a tiny dark ship is
unmoored into the flow of the body's
rivers, the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore. This is
what I think about when I shovel
compost into a wheelbarrow, and when
I fill the long flower boxes, then
press into rows the limp roots of red
impatiens -- the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth from the
sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then
the soil is full of marvels, bits of
leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam. Then
the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the
clouds a brighter white, and all I
hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone, the small
plants singing with lifted faces, and
the click of the sundial as one hour
sweeps into the next.
4.24.2003
Being an American, there are a lot of things I want. But the one thing I constantly come back to, the one thing I continuously wish I had, is a clone of myself. You know--someone I could trust to do all the crap work I have to do on a regular basis (editing video footage, for instance), while I could focus more on other aspects of my life. Somewhat like Michael Keaton's atrocity Multiplicity, only starring me in a Batman costume.
Because I'm a really meticulous perfectionist, and because the older I get, the more immersed I become in creative work, I often have more work than I alone can do, and I don't trust anyone else to do it. I generally have the belief, with few exceptions, that if something needs to be done, I would be able to do a better job at it than the next guy. I guess my complaint is that too few people are perfections, or that too few people put themselves into their work. Anyway.
A few weeks ago I had a dream, and then I awoke into another dream. When I awoke, there were two people standing over me--myself and my friend Dave. I was, of course, immediately confused. It didn't dawn on me that perhaps I was someone else--and, indeed, I wasn't--and I didn't understand how I could be both lying down on the ground and staring down at myself. And then I finally got it.
"Oh, I get it," I said with a smile, "you're my clone." Dave and the standing version of myself started to laugh.
"Actually," he said to me, "you're the clone. Now get to work, dummy. There's a lot of editing to do before the next show."
1. Have you ever thrown out dishes instead of cleaning them? If yes: continue to number 3
2. Have you ever brought dirty dishes with you into the shower in an effort to save time?
3. The act of cleaning your room is most often inspired by: A. your inability to see the floor.
B. neighbors' complaints about the smell emanating from under your door.
C. the loss of an ATM card.
4. In the process of cleaning your room, have you ever discovered drugs, prescription or otherwise, that were not your own? If no: continue to number 7.
5. Did you: A. discard the potentially dangerous drugs?
B. consume the potentially dangerous drugs?
C. put the potentially dangerous drugs in a drawer for safe keeping, like you wish you had done with your ATM card.
6. Ever found a prescription pill in your couch cushions, mistaken it for a mint, and eaten it? If no: you think you're better than me?
If yes: doesn't it taste awful?
7. Is your carpet composed more of crushed-golfish-crackers than fabric? If yes: Do you find the feeling of a clean patch of carpet unfamiliar and alarming?
8. Has the contents of your carpeting ever broken a vacuum? If yes, did you:
A. try to fix the vacuum?
B. return it to where you found it with a note taking responsibility?
C. "The vacuum's broken? How did that happen?!"
4.19.2003 I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects--paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.
4.13.2003 Certain types of paints never dry. And if you kept a time-elapse camera fixed on the canvas for a period of two-thousand years, you would actually be able to observe very minute movements. Right now, at Bard, our internet connection is largely the same speed. Whenever I go out, I load Google's front page, and then when I get back, it's open. So then I enter my search, and by the time I wake up the next morning, the results have loaded. And then there are at least two more long periods of waiting: loading the desired search result and performing a given action on that page. Checking what the weather is like outside has taken me fourteen hours.
4.12.2003 I'm not quite sure how to explain this video.
First of all, while I suppose this is by definition a sketch, it's not scripted. Secondly, the actions performed within this "sketch," if we were to call it that, are not a bi-product of the sketch having been conceived, but rather the sketch was conceived around the actors' desire to perform a specific action. (Excuse the annoying way this disclaimer is written, but I'm trying not to give away the ending to the video before you watch it.) Rather, my friends and I spend so much time working on comedy, that we don't know what not to film.
Go back to the incomplete Olde English bio page and click the intro link. Enjoy it, it's a lot of fun. But please--don't enoy it so many times that you use all our bandwidth and I have to explain to everyone, for the tenth time, why the stupid website stopped working. Seriously though, enjoy. In moderation.
1. What had I really wanted? I thought--We live in fantasies like wet shells: sometimes the sea comes in with the sound of the universe. Soon it would destroy us."
2. We had none of us thought about her. Had my son thought about her? What was it like to be in love? There was something kicking far inside; a horse, fallen down a ravine. I put my head down to hear her breathing. There was a distant drum.
3. My mouth was still on hers. I was not sure if you sucked or just blew. It was like being beneath water; a rose with petals flaking. I thought--I should have done this earlier, then I might have saved her. But we are so ashamed. My wife said "But who took the bulb out?" I said "It doesn't matter." My wife said "Why" I wanted to say--Our concern is not with the dead but with the living. But I could not take my mouth too long from hers.
4. My second son said "Where are you?" My eldest said "What's happened?" I thought--He will always be asking--What's happened?
5. My wife said "Is she dead?" I said "Yes." I sometimes wanted to frighten them. We were in the underground shelter with the world gone. The entrance and the exit had fallen in and the air was not expected to last much longer. Outside the earth was contaminated by fire; soon it would seep down into the well. I wanted to say--All this is quite natural; don't panic. I put my mouth back. It tasted like daisies. I wanted to say--This is how we pass our time. In the shadows a dog squats over the body of its beautiful mistress. Even when there is no hope, you go on trying. This is a good occupation. There are sometimes miracles.
An excerpt from one of my mid-semester critiques:Your performance in this course has been very strong so far this semester. In class, you can always be counted on to have read the text carefully and intelligently and to have developed your thoughts about it, in a way that is helpful to our discussions. (Try, though, not to miss any more classes--you have already been absent for almost a fourth of our meetings.)
4.07.2003 I was just locked on the roof of my building for half an hour, which was interesting because:
A. it's snowing heavily, and
B. we're not even allowed on the roof.
I ended up on the roof because I live in a row of dorms that are connected in pairs of two. So because I didn't have my dorm key, and because the front door of the adjacent dorm was propped, I thought I would be able to get into my building by crossing between the two buildings. I've done this before. It's crafty, it involves some danger and great heights, and it is significantly more exciting than its logical alternative--waiting for five minutes at the front door until someone else comes along.
Ironically, I ended up doing just that--waiting for someone I know to come along with a key--except I did the waiting forty feet off the ground. I know and like a lot of people at Bard, which made all the more impressive the seemingly endless stream of people I didn't know or didn't like who passed by on the path below while my limbs slowly lost feeling. Every few minutes I'd take a break from my sniper-like position to beat on the roof door with my fists. It's a glass door, so I could monitor how long I had been on the roof by how much snow had collected on my head. By the time I was rescued, I looked like Paul Newman. Though unlike Paul Newman, whose face I know exclusively from salad dressing labels, my face, cold and wet and red, showed absolutely no trace of Paul's obvious sense of self-satisfaction.
What had I really wanted? I thought--We live in fantasies like wet shells: sometimes the sea comes in with the sound of the universe. Soon it would destroy us.
