My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, here’s my end of a conversation I had earlier with my friend, Kim. My half of any conversation is generally always written in text. I don’t necessarily capitalize everything properly, but I always try to stick with proper grammar and punctuation.

Kim and I are talking about a lamp she recently gave me, the predicted circumstances of my death, and how my death will affect our pact to marry if we’re still single at forty.

nothing romantic was going on in this room until that lamp. apparently, I needed a boost. :-p It’s the lamp! Perhaps the lamp is like Dumbo and the feather? exactly. like, 22 years ago. face it, we’re old. we’re close. Celeste explained to me today that I’m going to die at 39 when we go to Spain. I’m going to be drunk on sherry and trampled by bulls. after the juice incident, when I was in the icu, she said I didn’t have to worry because bulls are going to kill me. so, today I asked when and how. she says she’s never wrong. so, let’s get married IN Spain, then you get to be a widow. We’re going to be there a week, then I die. We can get married on day 2. Not murdered, just drunk and trampled.

So, right now, I’m at the hospital waiting to hit the O.R. for a fresh trache. Usually, I don’t have my computer, this is a first. The NeuroSwitch recently became Mac OS X native and wireless, so here we are, live blogging.

I’m here, listening to my grunge/rock/folk mix. Kim Gordon’s singing right now, her voice sounds the way sex feels. I’m here, not nervous, I’ve become unaffected by this particular experience. I like my set of doctors and nurses, I adore the drugs, it’s really not an awful experience anymore.

I’m a little melancholy right now, but that isn’t new. I’m thinking about friends I want to see later. If I died in that O.R., whenever I actually go in, I wonder if they know what they mean to me. There’s this woman I love, I’m thinking about her. I’m thinking a lot about her. I miss her right now, but I always miss her to a degree. Being with her is the best thing I’ve ever felt, better than any liquor, better than the drugs I’m about to get, better than I have the skill to write sometimes. I’m thinking things I won’t write here, things that are just for her.

I’m thinking about my life, and how odd I’ve become.

He looks at her while she’s sleeping, sleeping next to him. It’s barely light out, the sky is pale grey mixed with soft orange, a melancholy rain tickles the ground outside of his bedroom window.  It’s dusk out, peaceful, and she looks so beautiful in the fading light.  Her eyes are closed, her breathing is easy, and looking at her, he wishes time would stop. He wishes time would leave them alone awhile, would just let them be together in that perfect dusk awhile longer.

Time doesn’t listen to wishes, it doesn’t listen to prayers. Time moves as fast or as slow as it wants, and it never stops, it just washes over us until we drown in it. Looking at her in the almost-dark, holding her close, he feels time rushing by. He loves her, madly and deeply, deeper because he feels the tide of time rising up until one day it will consume everything.

To me she’s like sunlight through green leaves. She’s like brandy and opiates.

She’s all bright stars and moonbeams. She’s like all my favorite songs.

To me she’s everything beautiful in the world. She’s everything I don’t deserve.

Day three in New York isn’t entirely conducive to compelling writing. It just isn’t. Kim is off to visit some friends in Brooklyn. My assistant, Katherine, and I go to the top of the Empire State Building, eighty-six floors. The view is gorgeous, but I have a head full of reverie. This isn’t new to me, I often feel lonely around people. I get lonely and contemplative. I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. So, I’m there at the top of the Empire State Building thinking about being lonely, thinking about why I am the way I am.

There’s this woman back home, and I’ll be honest, I’m totally mad for her. It took me far too long to tell her so, and I wonder where we’ll go next. I’m looking down at the city, thinking about seeing her again, thinking about being closer to her. Given the last three years, given what happened in those three years with my last relationship (it went quite wrong), it’s difficult to want someone so badly and admit it. It’s also a little difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that she could feel the same way about me.

I start singing an Elliott Smith song, silently to myself. Part of it goes, the part I’m thinking about, “you’re still here, but just check to make sure. all you aspired to do was endure. you can’t ask for more, ask for for more, knowing you’ll never get that which ask for…” It’s a line that I don’t want to be true for myself, but sometimes it fits too well.

I’m mostly really nervous about the next evening, about seeing Ira Glass and Anaheed, his spectacular wife. I haven’t seen them in almost a year, I’m worried we’ll go to dinner and they’ll suddenly realize that I’m not at all interesting. I worry that I’ll suddenly forget how to carry on any manner of conversation. I’m neurotic. it’s, unfortunately, my way.

Aside from the reverie, we have a nice lunch in Bryant Park with some friends from This American Life. I wonder if they notice I’m a little out of it.

That evening, Katherine and I walk down Times Square. The lights are bright and pretty, the opposite of how I feel inside. I wonder if I’ll be able to fall asleep, or if I’ll sleep and have bad dreams.

We’re all a story. We wake up in the morning. We have jobs, and hobbies. We have friends, families, lovers, and people we don’t love. We do good things, we do shameful things. We make choices, our choices affect one another. We’re happy, and we’re not. Our stories are connected, they’re collaborative, we don’t have total control over the plot that makes up life. When we die, it all adds up to a story. We get summed up in an obituary, by the people left who remember us.

Lately, I think a lot about Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith, two people who I completely admire as artists and writers. Two people whose stories did not end well. I like them because I feel like I understand them, because I see myself in them. It’s not that I said to myself years ago, “those guys are so amazing, and one day I want to be a talented, depressed, suicide to be.” They haven’t shaped me into this disaster that I am. I don’t want to kill myself because I listened to Old Age, or Between the Bars. Kurt and Elliott haven’t influenced me, but I think they mirror so much of me. I’m ending up like them, and it scares me. I can’t find a way to be happy, or content. People tell me I’m a great writer, but I don’t necessarily feel good about it. I love writing, I know I have skill in my craft. It’s just that I’m not writing the way I want. I spend so much time writing nothing because I can’t turn off the noise in my head. When I do write it’s often so dark, but I can only write what I feel. I write so I don’t drown in that darkness, because I need somewhere else to put it. I don’t like feeling these things that I put into words so well, it’s exhausting. I almost never feel comfortable, or at peace. At best, I’m a fuck up who’s good at writing about being a fuck up. Elliott has a line, “they took your life apart, and called your failures art. they were wrong though…”  I write because it’s what I adore, I think it’s something I’m meant to do, but I’m rarely proud of anything I put out. People tell me I’m an amazing person, but I’m not. I know I’m not. I’m a screw up who’s just so tired of everything. All the liquor and drugs in the world couldn’t fix me. Kurt and Elliott saw the same thing. I see the way my story is going, and I don’t know if I can write my way out of it. I’m starting to feel tired of trying. I’m tired of lonely and empty, but maybe I’m too far-gone to be anything else. I don’t know.

Maybe I’ll die having nothing I ever really wanted, and that will be the story of me. The only reason I keep trying is because it might not.

So, for day two in New York, we walk three miles from our hotel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s a long walk, but it’s spectacular. In a cab, you don’t really get to feel the city. New York city sidewalks are so alive with people. People walk by reading books, listening to iPods. There are guys selling silk pashminas for five bucks on practically every street corner. The buildings are so tall, and often very ornate. New York makes me feel small, but never lonely. We pass by Bryant Park, people are sitting outside at a quaint little cafe. Kim adds some Bryant Park gravel to my dirt collection, for some texture. We pass by St. Patrick’s Cathedral, it’s the epitome of holy-looking. We walk, and walk, and walk some more.

The Met is a gorgeous museum, home to thousands of years of art. I’d been before, but it’s nice to see again. If you’re in New York, you pretty much have to visit the Met. It’s scripture. I stroll through the Arms and Armor collection, all the swords, axes, heavy suits of plate-mail. I see suits of armor for horses, which strikes me as kind of sad. People have spent so much time and effort developing effective ways of killing each other. People fought and died under all that steel, today people kill each other with the push of a button. It all seems stupid. I also laugh at myself, at my proclivity toward turning absolutely melancholy on a dime. I mean, I’m surrounded by beautiful art, and my first thought is, “everyone who created this beauty is dead.” I do that a lot, I always feel the weight of passing time, of how everything ends.

After the Met, we walk to Central Park. I once rode through the park in a horse-drawn carriage with the legendary actor, Van Johnson, which is a long and odd story that I’ll leave a mystery, but I’d never been through the park on foot. Central Park is a little surreal, it’s magic. Manhattan is so chaotic, it’s steel, and concrete, and noise. Central Park makes all of that chaos vanish, the contrast is astonishing. Massive skyscrapers and frenetic energy, then green trees and peace. It reminds me of someone back home, how I feel around her. Walking through Central Park, the sky shifting from blue, to orange, to starry black, it hits me how much I love her, how much I miss her. I want her there with me, walking through the cool night air. I ask Kim to add more dirt to my tiny liquor bottle.

As it gets dark, we start seeing dozens of little green flashes in the bushes, lightning bugs. So much of why I like my friend, Kim, is that we both get a kick out of the silliest little things. Kim sees the lightning bugs and she’s nine years old again, she’s catching lightning bugs, giggling as they glow in her hands. Watching her, I kind of miss talking. I want to say how glad I am to have met her, how happy I am that she’s my friend and that we’re in this crazy city, on this crazy trip just like we talked about in that dive bar. I could alphabet it, but that’s not the same. So, I think it to myself and know I’ll write it later.

Being that we’re in Central Park and it’s dinner time, I decide that we have to dine at Tavern on the Green. I’ve seen it in so many movies, I want to experience it first hand. It’s as posh and decadent as I imagined it. it’s perfect. We sit out outside, the trees are covered in twinkly white lights, waiters bustle about serving food. It’s nice to sit and relax awhile, we’ve walked so many miles. As we’re leaving, Kim is good enough to top off my dirt collection, I wonder if anyone else has ever spirited dirt away from Tavern on the Green in a miniature vodka bottle. I doubt it.

He came with her tonight, into blissful oblivion.

Her hair tossed back, eyes closed and showing so much. Her face flushed, gorgeous.

His breath hard, fast. Him knowing where they’re going, knowing he can’t stop it.

They’re all sweat, and skin, and exquisite sin.

He came with her into that place of perfect nothingness, white hot decadence.

He came with her tonight, into blissful oblivion.

I needed a break from writing about New York, so…

Dress is one of my favorite PJ Harvey songs, it so beautifully describes loneliness and playing a role to fill that loneliness. We go out. We put on a pretty face, a pretty dress, but desperation can so often be behind it. Dress is all about the desperation bred from loneliness. That dress is pretty, but it’s uncomfortable, it’s something shiny to cover something dark. It’s exhausting to wear, but we want to be noticed, to be wanted, to be loved. So, we wear that dress because emptiness is so much worse than the weight of putting on a facade. Death is better than emptiness, loneliness, so we put on that dress and go out dancing. I find it frightening that the dress does get to feeling so damn tight, it does get filthy, nights do end empty, and after enough time, wearing that dress starts to feel pointless.

So, we’re trying to catch a cab to Union Square for our first outing into the city. We’re staying in Times Square, it’s probably too far to go on foot. We’re walking up and down the sidewalk, no takers. A woman comes up to us, she has that “I want to say something, but I’m not sure what to say,” look on her face. She walks up and says, “Hi… weren’t you on tv?” I say, “yes,” with my eyebrows. Last year, I was on an episode of This American Life. She says she loved the episode, that she’s so glad to meet me. I never know how to feel about these sightings. Part of me is always flattered, it’s definitely fun to feel like a minor celebrity. Still, deep down I know I’m just a nobody. I still haven’t accomplished anything that I consider important. At any rate, my fan says her goodbyes, and we actually find a cab.

Union Square is sort of a trendy hippie area. There’s a lovely park, and on this particular day there’s a huge outdoor market. People are selling fresh fruit, vegetables, freshly laid eggs. There are bad artists selling bad art, and some good artists selling good art. We’re walking by these vendors, a woman screams, “Johnny Depp! Hey, Johnny Depp!” Being that I don’t talk, he was my tv voice. I’ve been celebrity sighted twice in one day. We walk around the park a bit, it’s gorgeous. The sun’s hot on my face, the whole day’s ahead of me. Before leaving Union Square, I have to take care of a little project. In Kim’s purse is an empty child-sized Absolute vodka bottle. I have this person who couldn’t come with me, so I figure I’ll bring my favorite parts of New York back to her. Dirt, in a tiny empty bottle of my favorite liquor. Kim scoops up some Union Square dirt, we’re on our way.

Now, on this our first day in the city, we don’t really have a plan. We’re sort of just wandering around, taking in the city. This suits me fine. I don’t want plans, or schedules. I don’t want a list of action items. I’m in a beautiful place, I want to be lost. We walk from Union Square to Washington Square, somewhere a little more historic, less offbeat. There’s a big fountain in the middle of the square, little kids are splashing around in the water. I have this coin in my wallet from the 1800s, a fellow gave it to me a few years ago as I was leaving a movie. He said it was good luck. I have Kim toss this coin in the fountain, hoping she doesn’t put out some little kid’s eye. I make a wish and wonder if the coin could be that lucky. As we’re leaving, Kim adds a little more dirt to my collection.

We wander more. We stroll Broadway. We pass by Grace Church. It’s a gorgeous gothic building, it looks so sacred, so holy. I wonder if God’s there, and if He minds the people eating pizza on the church’s front steps. I also wonder if He minds me having Kim stuff consecrated ground into a dead liquor bottle. We walk to this trendy area of seventh and eighth street known as St. Marks Place. St. Marks is all thrift stores, coffee shops, bars. We walk to the East Village, to one bar, the Beauty Bar. It’s a vintage beauty salon, the bottles of hair-dye replaced with bottles of that liquid that makes life feel spectacular, if only for a little while. There’s a lovely woman sitting down the bar from me, we make eye contact a few times. She always smiles. I buy her a drink, give her my card. I tell her, “one day, I might be a famous writer.” It turns out that she’s also a writer, we talk a bit. It’s always interesting talking to strangers with the alphabet, and not my computer. You learn right away how smart and patient a person is, she’s both. I know I’ll never see her again, that doesn’t matter. I bought her the drink, I’m talking to her for the experience. This trip is all about creating experiences.