Featured On: August 15, 2010

Postcards from the West

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Featured On: July 28, 2010

Stella of the Angels

(Also available as a downloadable MP3, thanks to Miette's Bedtime Story.)

I lost focus so I went to a fortune teller. I picked the first one within walking distance who took credit cards. She asked me to hold out my hands, and as soon as she touched me, I got a hard-on. Within ten minutes we were fucking on the sofa.

"You've got a really strong love line," she said.

I moved in that night. That was three years ago.

*    *    *

(Did she see it coming? I always wondered, and I never knew.)

*    *    *

Her name was Stella Luna, like the children's book. That's what it said on the sign in her parlor. Her real name was Stella DeAngelis, but she changed it. "I thought Luna sounded more mystical," she explained.

"More mystical than, 'From angels'?"

I asked if she came from a long line of psychics, and she laughed. "My daddy was a plumber." But she also had an uncle who made a good living betting on horses, and legend has it that her grandmother predicted the assassination of JFK, in vivid detail, including the phrase "grassy knoll." She claimed she saw the face of the third gunman, and could have picked him out of a police line-up. "But who knows?"

*    *    *

"You're going to struggle a while," Stella told me, as we laid naked on her sofa, she finally reading my palm. "Because you're a seeker."

"What do I seek?"

She ran her finger along my palm but didn't answer.

"What do I seek?"

"That which you don't have," she said finally, and got up to pull on her clothes.

"That's obvious. That's everyone. That's tautological."

"I don't know what that word means."

*    *    *

She knew the future but she didn't know that certain truths follow from their atomic propositions.

*    *    *

"You're going to go home and pack a bag of things and move in with me," she said.

"Is that a prediction? Or just something you want?"

She smiled and kissed me. "It's your destiny."

*    *    *

I went home, packed a bag, and moved in with her, which was a shitty thing to do, because I'd lived with a woman at the time, a woman who told me often that she loved me.

"I'm moving out."

"What? Why?"

"It's my destiny."

I paid an extra month's rent and let her keep my share of the deposit, and since she was justified in saying all of those bad things about me, I never tried to stop her. I still think about her sometimes.

*    *    *

Stella and I took a trip to Vermont, after I'd been living with her for a few months. We rented a car and took turns driving up the coast through the rain. Halfway through Connecticut, she said, "Pull over. I want to fuck you."

I stopped the car, and she unbuckled my pants and climbed on top of me, somehow squeezing her lithe body into the space between me and the steering wheel.

"That was great," I said, and she laughed and wiped the fog of our breath off the windows.

Up ahead, a tractor trailer had jack-knifed and killed twenty-two people—the largest single auto accident in Connecticut history.

"Did you know?," I asked her.

"I just wanted to fuck," she answered.

*    *    *

"Do you believe in predestiny? Are our futures written?"

"Of course." She looked at me like I'd questioned the roundness of the Earth, or gravity. She didn't understand why this idea put me into a three-day sulk and got me wondering about suicide. "Do you ever think of killing yourself?," I asked her.

"That's stupid."

*    *    *

"What do they say?"

She looked at me impatiently.

"Nothing about sinking ships, right? Nothing about death at sea? I couldn't bear knowing I was going to drown."

"When I read your palm," she explained, "I am reading your palm."

"That's tautological."

"But when I read the cards, I am reading the cards. And the cards are reading you. Do you understand?"

"No. I mean of course, yes, but, no, not at all. Why does a random shuffle of cards offer meaning about my life?"

"Right? Why does a random shuffle of events, or a random shuffle of jobs, or a random shuffle of girlfriends, offer meaning about your life? Exactly."

"So what do the cards say?"

She looked at them quietly for a while. She didn't like telling my fortune. Or maybe she just didn't like my fortune.

"You're going to struggle a while," she finally said.

"That's vague."

"The cards are kind of hard to read tonight. I'll look at them again tomorrow."

"I want my money back," I told her.

"Then you should have paid me." She kissed me sweetly on the cheek. "Let's go to bed."

*    *    *

She held a bag in her hand and she told me she was leaving. She gave me an extra month's rent, and said I should keep her share of the deposit.

"What? Why?," I asked. But she didn't answer.

"I've loved you," she said. "I'll always love you."

"Did you see this coming?," I asked.

"Did you see this coming?," I asked. "Because I didn't see this coming."

But I was shouting at the door. She was already gone.

*    *    *

We were lying on the sofa, and she was kissing my hand. "What am I seeking?," I asked her. We were both so relaxed, the way lovers are. "I don't know," she answered. "What are you seeking?"

"I don't know," I told her. "I don't know."

Featured On: July 19, 2010

The Margarine Manifesto

Part One: Counting My Blessings

In no particular order:

1. My apartment
2. My neighborhood
3. My city
4. My education
5. My quirk
6. My steady reliable income
7. My family
8. My friends

Part Two: Setting the Scene

I considered making toast for breakfast. Instead I ate half a chocolate bar and had four cups of coffee. I'm still in pajamas.

Part Three: Panic / First Response

In order:

• Sleep in
• Take a long shower
• Go for a walk
• Indulge long email threads with old friends
• Take the subway somewhere you've never been
• Read job listings in other career fields
• Flip through the dictionary, learn new words like feasance and outre
• Write a manifesto

Part Four: The Woods

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promissory notes to keep
And I have promissory notes to keep.

Part Five: Panic / Second Response

In no particular order:

• Take a class
• Get a dog
• Leave the city
• Leave the country
• Move to the country
• Enroll in grad school
• Get a houseboat
• Get an Airstream
• Get a horse
• Hike the back country
• Join the army
• Join the Peace Corp
• Join anything
• Start a magazine
• Start a novel
• Start a memoir
• Start a religion
• Finish something
• etc.

Part Six: Things That Sometimes Hold Me Back

In no particular order:

1. My apartment
2. My neighborhood
3. My city
4. My education
5. My quirk
6. My steady reliable income
7. My family
8. My friends

Part Seven: Capitalism

Capitalism is the system by which we (the capitalists) take whatever amount of initial wealth we are dealt (the capital), and then, by hook or crook, make our best effort to multiply this wealth through the opportunities afforded to us.

If one's wealth is zero, then no amount of opportunity will lead to more wealth: zero times anything is zero.

If one's opportunity is low, then no amount of initial wealth will lead to more wealth. Pursuing a poor opportunity (i.e., a multiplier < 1) may in fact lead to less wealth—even if it is the best opportunity available at the time.

The model is complicated by the fact that greater wealth leads to greater opportunity, and lesser wealth to lesser opportunity.

Part Eight: On Margarine

I considered making toast for breakfast. The making of toast presents a choice. One may:

1. apply butter to one's toast
2. apply margarine
3. leave one's toast as is

Butter is a bad choice, because it contains saturated animal fat, which leads to heart disease; and because it contains lactose, which is hard to digest.

Margarine is a bad choice, because it contains hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is high in cholesterol and is associated with cancer; and anyway, it tastes a little funny.

Dry toast is a bad choice, because it is not very satisfying, and one only eats breakfast once a day, so it should be satisfying.

Sometimes all of the choices are bad. Hence, I had half a chocolate bar.

Part Nine: Global Free Trade

The premise of global free trade is that, unfettered by local restrictions, we are free to choose from a wider set of capitalistic opportunities: if Country Y offer more opportunities to multiply one's wealth than Country X, logically one should pursue those opportunities with Country Y. One is "free" to "trade" loyalties and obligations, when presented with a better chance at greater wealth.

Thus, if one has the opportunity to flee a country, and leave the jurisdiction of one's massive debt, thereby breaking the promise to repay, for the sake of a fresh start, then this is simply holding with the premise of global free trade:

An outre solution: not submissive feasance; not irresponsible malfeasance; but legitimized non-feasance.

Part Ten: The Woods

In the deepest parts of the woods, there are no forking paths, because there are no paths. The eye looks at the spaces between the trees and, connecting them, imagines a path where there is none. We walk these imaginary paths, marching forward into the woods, unafraid, till something causes our faith to waiver; and then we wonder: Am I lost? Is this a path I'm on now? Or am I merely in the unconnected spaces between trees? Am I on a walk, or have I gone for a hike in the back country? This thing that I started, this thing that I am doing—is it something I can finish? Can I finish anything? When a path seems to fork, are any of the choices good ones? Or is there no path at all?

Featured On: July 10, 2010

Emergency Preparedness

I hear the chirp from a policeman's walkie talkie outside my window, and see a small group of them (gaggle? pack?) standing next to my apartment. And a fire truck. I can't tell what's going on and I wonder if I should be prepared to evacuate—which right now I'm not, because I'm sitting here in a towel and nothing else. I've been sitting here in this towel since I got out of the shower a half-hour ago; and I was in the shower at least a half-hour (so warm!)—which makes me realize that when the time comes to evacuate the building, whenever that is (and that time always comes, sooner or later), the odds are pretty good that I will be horribly unprepared, and quite possibly naked.

It all reminds me of the time I was evacuated from my apartment, after the building sort of exploded.

I woke that morning to an enormous thud that shook the walls of the Lido Apartments, where I lived at the time. The Lido was a relic from old Hollywood, a once-glamorous hotel turned into a five-story brick slum with aspirations to gentrify. Typical rising and falling of Hollywood dreams. ¹

On this morning something shook the building hard. This by itself wasn't too unusual, it being earthquake country; but this was a different kind of shake—not the slow, growling rumble of an earthquake; more like someone had driven a truck straight into the building. A big truck.

I poked my head out my window to see what was going on, and saw everyone else in my neighborhood doing the same—a hundred sleepy faces dangling outside a hundred windows. I thought of Whac-a-Mole. Then I remember thinking something bad was happening, something possibly disastrous or epic. ² I remember thinking I should throw some clothes on and leave the building.

Instead, seeing nothing, I decided to go back to bed.

[When the time comes to evacuate the building, whenever that is (and that time always comes, sooner or later), the odds are pretty good that I will be horribly unprepared, and quite possibly naked.]

The firemen banging on the door shouted, We needed to get out "NOW NOW NOW." But I couldn't get out, because there were four of them standing in the doorway, and they were the biggest, widest, thickest people I've ever seen. So instead I grabbed some essentials—my laptop, some chewing gum—and waited for them to disperse.

Out on the street, the longest line of fire trucks ever assembled stretched from horizon to horizon (or at least up Wilcox to Cahuenga, and down to Hollywood Boulevard). Helicopters swarmed the sky, and police held curious passersby behind yellow "Do Not Cross" tape. I strolled through it casually, weirdly unbothered, almost dissociated. I declined a TV interview and instead made a beeline for Mann's Chinese Theatre. I watched Blade II (which really was bad, a disaster of epic proportions), and wondered, every now and then, if I'd have an apartment when the movie was over, and if I should have brought, I don't know, a change of underwear or at least a jacket.

I learned the full story when I got out of the theatre: a few people had seen my building on the morning news ³ and called to see if I was OK, and I pieced together the details from their string of voicemail messages. An underground had fire spread to a natural gas line, causing a muffled explosion that blew off the manhole covers all around my block: this was the initial thud. But it turned out that my building also sat on top of a major intersection of gas mains, and if the fire had spread, it'd have blown that entire part of the neighborhood sky high. Boulevard of broken dreams.

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is. Maybe take short showers and don't sit around in your wet towel too long. Or maybe just that some people never learn.

1. The Lido was best known as the location for the lobby shots of the Eagles "Hotel California." My own favorite thing about the Lido, apart from its location and dirt-cheap rent, was the view it afforded to the luxury condos across the parking lot. Forty-eight windows shaped like wide-screen TVs faced toward my apartment, like forty-eight channels of television, and without fail, two or three of them featured women taking their clothes off and dancing. No one ever believes me about the dancing, but it's true. This was, after all, Los Angeles.

2. I can't remember for sure whether this was just before, or just after, September 11. I'm going to say it was just after, because that makes a better story. And maybe accurate.

3. Who in L.A. watches the morning news? Or any news?

Featured On: July 5, 2010

Paris

Packing

I nearly missed the plane.

I'd been "packing" for three days, by which I mean I'd been thinking about packing, and that morning even going so far as to throw an assortment of clothes and hair products onto my bed. But not into a bag. I thought the flight left at 3pm but it was actually 2pm—something I learned at 1pm. So after three days of thinking of packing, the actual act happened in about three minutes. And I was off. Off to Paris.

Phantom Ringing

At first, the hardest thing was detoxing from all the über-comm. Vacation is a departure from normal, and "normal" for me had meant, lately, the constant email, the surfing, the IM, the SMS, the BlackBerry. The connection. "Only connect." But for this trip I was leaving it all behind. If it required electricity, it had no place on this vacation.

For days, I felt the phantom ringing of my absent BlackBerry in my right pocket—vibrations without cause. The device itself was switched off and sitting on my bedside table in Brooklyn, 3500 miles away.

"Only disconnect."

Backpacking

I vacation badly—alone and without much itinerary—so a lot of time gets wasted and when I do find something to enjoy, I can only share it with my notebook. Even in urban destinations, I sling a bag with food, water, and a map, and I hike. And hike and hike and hike. I take little breaks, sips of water, a PowerBar. That first day in Paris, jet-lagged and on no sleep at all, I walked straight through from 5am till 7pm, walked the full extent of my Streetwise® Paris map, because I felt I needed to "orient" myself before I could possibly enjoy myself.

I vacation like a backpacker (but without a compass).

[A friend tells me, "I think the compass needle is going to spin a lot in the next few months for you."]

Quel Chemin?

It's easy to forget: while visiting Paris, we tourists visit the Louvre, the Orsay, the Cluny, the Pompidou. But we don't want to see the Louvre, the Orsay, the Cluny, the Pompidou. We want to see Paris. Which way to Paris?

Nabakov: "The dull mad fact is that it does exist somewhere."

Tourism ushers us on a conveyor belt from one protected place to another, insulating us from the random or the sublime. But at 10am, in a room inside the Louvre full of gilded gold clocks from the 18th century, they each begin to chime, one, then another, then another. Each is encased in glass, and the room is filled with the muffled chimes of clocks built for kings, dead two-hundred fifty years. The moment—purely accidental, perfectly sublime. Welcome to Paris.

Sans Fromage

Someone I meet in Paris says, upon discovering my condition: "I have another friend who is lactose intolerant, and the entire time he was in Paris, he spent on the toilet..."

For my own protection, I start avoiding patisseries, cafes and boulangeries,with their butters, creams and fromage, and instead head to the supermarket. (Nothing says "I'm on vacation in France" better than grocery store hummus and dry rye crackers...)

When I get to the front of the line, the checkout girl scowls at my French, and then reaches into my hand to recount the change I'd given her: she corrected my grammar and my math. I leave the marché sans fromage, sans ego.

The World is Spinning

I check my email but none of it sinks in. It all feels thousands of miles away. Then I realize it (it being my life) is thousands of miles away.

Nabakov: "The dull mad fact is that it does exist somewhere."

Paris is a good town for the dead. Monuments at every intersection. Plaques mark the walls where resistance fighters died. The crypts and cemeteries are tourist hotspots. I'm in Montparnasse on Toussaint, All Saint's Day, tripping over the tombstones of Sartre, Baudelaire, Cortazar. A week ago none of this had anything to do with me, and today it's my life. It being my life.

Cortazar: "Just because the world is spinning 25,000 miles an hour, there is no reason to get dizzy."

Meetings at Fountains

A few days in a row I'm scheduled to rendezvous with people at fountains. Till yesterday, I don't know if I'd ever met at a fountain. I don't know if I could name a single fountain in New York or Boston or Los Angeles.

(On some meridian, this place is the polar opposite of Los Angeles: here nothing is less than two-hundred years old; there everything—even architecture—has a "use-by" date. I'd never say, "Meet me at the Fontaine St. Michel," but instead, "Meet me at The Gap in the Beverly Center.")

While I'm waiting by the fountain, a woman keeps looking at me and smiling. I can't tell—is it friendly? Flirty? Is she intrigued? Or am I somehow silly? God, I'd love to be here with vocabulary! When I finally stand up from where I'm sitting, she and her friends swoop in to take my seat. That's all she wanted. Now she's lost interest altogether. And I notice my butt is soaked, too.

L'Orange

Does this orange taste better
because it is a Parisian orange
(or because I am hungry)?

Regret

My longest single French conversation happened while waiting in line outside the Notre Dame cathedral. The line was long but moving quickly. It was flanked on both sides by beggars who ran a whole gamut of disabilities—blindness, amputation, disease. There was also a small swarm of vendors hawking chincy keychains shaped like the Eiffel Tower, six for €2. The conversation went like this:

Vendor: Six for €2.
Chris: Six? Porque six?!?
Vendor: C'est porque. Voulez-vous?

Why would anyone need six keychains? I spent my whole time in the cathedral laughing. How dumb do they think we (American tourists) are?!?

As I left the cathedral, I realized those keychains would make great stocking-stuffer gifts for my whole family. Six for €2 was a great bargain. J'ai voulu six.

But now, the urchins were nowhere to be found. The place had been cleared out. No one was selling anything. A lone woman played her violin, and a small crowd listened, and clapped.

The Dull Mad Fact

I'm late (again) heading to the airport—but for some reason I take the time to jot this inane haiku on my hotel stationary:

The end of the trip.
Is it sadness I feel, or
is it just fatigue?

Did I get everything out of the trip I intended? (What did I intend?) Did I find what I was looking for? (What was I looking for?)

My friend tells me, on my way out, I seemed "bien dans ta peau"—comfortable in my skin. (Clichés always sound less cliché in another language...) I suppose that is what I was looking for. I suppose I did find it. It does exist somewhere...

Welcome to Paris.

Featured On: June 27, 2010

The Movie of My Life

You ever play this game? Imagine your life is a movie, and you are the casting director. Who plays you?

It's a grossly narcissistic, self-indulgent game, which is of course what makes it fun to play. It's also nice because, in the movie versions of our lives, we're generally funnier and better looking than we are in real life.

Well, my life is so interesting that it won't be reduced to a single film. Though New Line approached me about a trilogy à la Lord of the Rings, I declined, opting instead for three distinct genre pix, which will give me a chance to offer up a different aspect of my personality to three of Hollywood's finest:

Teen Angst Drama
As you'll guess from the heading, this film will focus on my troubled teen years, and will star Kieran Culkin (Igby Goes Down) in the title role: "[Culkin] shows poise, a fatalistic self-deprecating personality, and great comic delivery of the sophisticated lines.... When life beats down hard upon him, sometimes literally, he shows an inner resilience that allows him to somehow continue. At the same time, his acceptance of the strange hand life has dealt him has a real note of sadness to it, the perfect ying-yang of the comic mask." Does that sound like anyone else you know? My thoughts exactly! Culkin's performance came to an abrupt end in The Secret Lives of Altar Boys, and he had a habit of getting the shit kicked out of him in Igby; I hope in my life story he'll fare a little better...

Sweeping Love Epic
This broad, beautifully-shot epic will be at least three hours long, will feature a tragic love story, and will make you cry. The obvious casting choice here is Ralph Fiennes, who has proven himself in this role time and time again (The English Patient, The End of the Affair, Oscar and Lucinda). Articulate and iconoclastic, he's also eccentric and tends to come unhinged. Notice too that he's wearing my signature blue shirt. I'll probably shoot this film in an exotic locale like Africa or South America (though I've never been to either), and he will fall in ill-fated love with Asia Argento, Helena Bonham Carter, or Juliette Binoche. The film will win an Oscar for Best Cinematography and will doubtless be a contender for Best Picture.

Buddy Movie
This one is problematic since I don't actually have a buddy. But I really do want to offer up my life story to Owen Wilson, for what could be his first-ever dramatic role—and I don't know if he can do anything except buddy movies. I admire him most in his first movie, Bottle Rocket, and I'd like to find a use for the jumpsuit he wore in that movie. I'd also like to use that Zoolander loft. But who should my buddy be? Hmm. Maybe it's best to work backwards, and start with Owen's own buddies: Luke Wilson could be my loyal, mild-mannered friend Pete, and Ben Stiller could play my Pakistani brother-in-law. Bill Murray will be double-cast as my expatriot-mentor-poet-friend Stewart, and also my Dad (how Freudian!). I'll bring in Drew Barrymore to play my sister, and there will be a great car chase through the streets of Los Angeles in my old Volkswagen Cabriolet. I'm not really clear yet on the story, but even now, I'm sure you can see its potential. Right?

Runners-up:
Campbell Scott; Mathew Modine; all of the Culkin brothers in a series.

Featured On: June 21, 2010

Time Lapse, pt. 2

Negative Space

She pulls on her clothes, refreshes her lipstick, kisses me goodbye, and closes the door, and I notice it right away—the presence of this new feeling. It has been lingering all afternoon, this feeling, like an unwanted guest, but I chose not to acknowledge it, and that in itself is a new kind of duplicity, I suppose—this lie of omission: pretending to share an intimate afternoon, she and I, while also including this other, this third, this feeling, this feeling who sits there, watching us.

Maybe she feels it, too, the presence in the room with us.

Maybe she does.

But her version of the history is different than mine. Her version is steadier and more continuous than mine. In my version, we have had a very jarring year, she and I; and the result of it is that when I am with her, I reserve a part of myself. I bifurcate. Part of me is with her, and part of me is with myself. We stroll the streets, we wander in and out of shops, we lounge at restaurants, we loll in the park, we loll in bed, same as before—except now, part of me is not there. Part of me instead stands in reserve, out of body, stands guard, to protect me from the intrusion of another jarring year.

Maybe she feels it, too.

Maybe this is what happens between people.

Maybe this is an evolution of love.

The result of it is that a distance has opened between what I am feeling and what I am saying. The result is this new negative space, the vacuum of evacuated promise, and it occupies the room like an unwanted guest, intruding on the intimate afternoons.

Featured On: June 16, 2010

Identity Theft

Here are a few biographical lines about Chris DeWan:

After some important years spent in Pennsylvania, Chris graduated from a well-reputed school on the East Coast and then found his way to California. He spent some time dabbling in the arts and in theatre, before committing to a career as a computer programmer and web developer, working for Apple Computer. An avid cyclist who has competed on occasion, he has also been known to color his hair, and sport various body piercings.

All of these things are true of me, but I'm writing them about the other Chris DeWan, Bizarro Chris DeWan, my doppelganger, whom I have never met. We came dangerously close once, probably as close as ten feet, at a party in Cupertino. I sipped a beer with my left hand, and he, like a mirror, with his right. He knew I was there. There was only a table of shrimp cocktail between us.

What happens when matter and anti-matter collide?

It's unnerving to have a double, worse than the worst Citibank "identity theft" ad—unnerving not because people unwittingly fall for the ruse, but because there is no ruse. Somewhere, out there in the world, there is another Chris DeWan—not simply a namesake (which would be inevitable), but another one of me. Presented with an almost infinite number of life's forking paths, his and mine crossed as soon as our names were etched on our birth certificates, and have continued to do so, often—even yesterday, when a friend of mine visited his blog instead of mine: "Weird how long it took me to realize it wasn't you; he works at Apple and seems sort of crazy in a funny way."

Philip Roth had Operation Shylock; I have Operation Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Of course it's all much ado about nothing. He and I will continue to live in peaceful co-existence, parallel but separate lives. We will act freely, make independent choices, and they will probably be the same. This will continue to muck up search engines until gradually, our identities according to Google have become one. I wish us both the best.

P.S. Kudos to Chris DeWan
According to Google, Chris DeWan is the Belvidere High School Athlete of the Week for golf, plays in a band, and is one of Los Angeles' hottest young indie actors. He has published photography of Glacier National Park, organizes Civil War re-enactments, and writes capsule reviews for Butterfly Books. He is a straight A student who has high expectations of himself and those around him. He is twelve years old, is in the seventh grade, and plays basketball. Congratulations, Chris!

Featured On: June 9, 2010

Furniture

Think about your furniture.

Your first coffee table was made from a pair of milk crates you found laying on the curbside one trash night. You brought them home, dusted them off, and propped them in front of a mangy easy chair, and they were good for holding coffee, unread mail, tired feet, the TV remote control.

Later, you made a bookshelf out of those same milk crates.

You had a bureau of drawers made out of plastic, made by a company better known for its trash cans and dust pans. At some point you upgraded to Ikeaware, semi-disposable pinewood furniture. This was adequate and more, too: it offered, if not permanence, at least substance.

Gradually, pine gave way to ash and birch, the furniture took on more mass, became weightier, harder to move, harder to throw away. After the passage of no small amount of time, you saved up a little money and, eventually, spent some of it on a "piece"—when furniture is nice enough it's called a "piece." You like this piece; you feel an affinity for it that is almost fetishistic. You know in your heart there is nothing categorically different between the piece, the hand-carved antique oak coffee table, and those milk crates: they're equally good at holding coffee, mail, tired feet. But the point is, over time, you managed to acquire some things that speak to you, things that make your life just a little bit better, things that appropriately express who you think you are.

Then you move to another city and leave all of your furniture behind.

Then you realize that furniture is a metaphor for everything else in your life—restaurants you like, parks, grocery stores, radio stations, friends, lovers. Unexpectedly, you find yourself combing the streets on a trash night, looking for milk crates and thinking about time, and thinking about time...

Featured On: June 2, 2010

These Are My Hands

There's a fire in my kitchen. This is a thing that happens sometimes. There are several pots on several burners and something somewhere has overflowed, and instead of simply making a mess, it has made a fire.

I might put out the fire with a towel, but I can't find one, and instead I try to dampen the flames with my bare hands, by pressing them against the hot metal burners. This is an ill-advised solution to the problem. In my own defense, I never decided to put out the fire with my hands. It just sort of happened.

Kind of like that unplanned phone call I just made. Sometimes it's like someone else grabs the steering wheel and drives into oncoming traffic. "I swear, officer—it wasn't me."

My hands have a mind of their own. My hands have Tourette's. My hands are always having an out-of-body experience, doing things I neither plan nor condone. One of these days, I'm sure, my hands will up and slap you. They'll sit down at a keyboard and plunk out a Tom Clancey novel. They'll goose someone on the subway. They'll drive the car off the road.

"I swear, officer—it wasn't me."

What scares me most is that I don't know whether or not that's true. It kind of was me. I don't know which is more me—the hands when I control them, or the hands when they control me. Which is more me—the one putting out the fires, or the one starting them?

Featured On: May 27, 2010

On the Veranda

Part of her thought if she'd been able to just let go, the sheaves of renderings would have built themselves, harvest come home. Another delusion, no doubt. She knew she'd been grandiose, and didn't have much to show for it. She had committed that most American of sins: failed to move laterally.

- from Bruce Wagner's Memorial

It's going to be another one of those days, by which I mean frustrating. I'm staring at the computer screen, hitting "Refresh" every thirty seconds or so—as if inspiration of any sort ever comes via the Internet.

Sure. If I hit "Refresh" just this one more time, all my problems will be solved. My Inbox will suddenly overflow with love, affection, opportunity, wealth, challenges, self-confidence, and the answers to all my still-unarticulated questions. That's going to happen. (I mean, how big would that attachment have to be, exactly?)

I hit "Refresh." And when I'm not "Refreshing," I'm typing, using similar (if slightly better-founded) logic: that if only I keep typing—spewing words as fast as they pop into my head—then eventually, like the monkey at the keyboard, eventually, I'll have to stumble on to some wisdom.

And eventually, maybe I will.

But I'm not sure it's going to happen today.

* * *

My Zen archery teacher (yes, I had a Zen archery teacher) would talk about the importance, in Japanese architecture, of the veranda. Because of his pronunciation, vee-lan-da, it took me ridiculously long to realize what he meant. Actually, it took me ridiculously long to realize what he meant, because teaching Zen archery (kyudo) to a Westerner is a somewhat futile exercise. We harbor B-movie samurai fantasies about shooting things—but kyudo has almost nothing to do with shooting, or even bows, arrows, or targets. Rather, the study of kyudo is a kind of brain-washing through storytelling—and the bow is nothing but a set of stories, which, if used properly, might break some entrenched habits, and replace them with new ones.

In kyudo, you don't pull the bow string. You open the bow.

In kyudo, you don't shoot the arrow. While opening the bow, the arrow will release.

In kyudo, there is no target. (The word we used for "target" means "that fuzzy faraway thing.") An arrow might hit the ceiling and still have been the result of an excellent shot, depending on how it was released. In self-help parlance: you are the target.

All you have to do is let go.

* * *

A veranda is a space in between—neither inside not outside, neither here nor there. When you have left a place and have not yet arrived at the new place, you are on the veranda.

In my culture, in Western culture, we are encouraged to move quickly from one place to another, always to be on our way ... somewhere. We are encouraged to aim for a target, and to hit it, and if we do this, we have made a "good shot."

But in kyudo, the ceilings of the verandas are littered with arrows that strayed very far from that fuzzy faraway place called the "target". In kyudo, one is encouraged to take off one's shoes, kneel down on the veranda, and contemplate the path of these arrows, each of which might have been a "good shot."

Sometimes it's a good shot, even if it fails to move laterally. Sometimes you have to stay on the veranda, and be patient, so that you can know where to go next. Sometimes you have to let go.

Featured On: May 17, 2010

Upon smashing a silverfish lurking on my wall

Upon smashing a silverfish lurking on my wall,
Smashing it with an old unread magazine
(because too many come),
it quickly separated into two parts—

The smudge on my wall like
an unexpected freckle,
and the bits and legs and stuff
now glommed onto the pages.

Though separated from their body and their life,
Still they marched urgently onward, somewhere,
desperately fleeing the catastrophe that had already arrived;
and I regretted killing it, because we're all the same.

Featured On: May 12, 2010

On the Farm

I had a really vivid dream that we were on the farm. Everything was cold and crisp and quiet and kind and beautiful. We were walking through the woods, and came to a field with a herd of deer, and we stood there, really quietly, till eventually, they ignored us and wandered around us and surrounded us. There were so many of them that we were scared, if they panicked, they might actually trample us, but it was worth it, just to be surrounded by all those deer. It was that same sort of feeling as walking out onto a frozen pond, and hearing the ice beneath you creak: you're pretty sure you're safe, but you're not totally sure. We stood there quietly, without speaking, just shivering, as the deer brushed by, grazing on the grass.

(Sometimes I wish I remembered my dreams a little less well, or that my real life was as interesting to me as my dream life...)

Featured On: May 5, 2010

The God of Small (White) Things

Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited

The Darjeeling Limited (like all of Wes Anderson's films, to greater or lesser degrees) is like a dollhouse made of marzipan: it's delicate, sweet, and of questionable substance that's neither fulfilling nor structurally sound. You simultaneously want to protect it, admire its preciousness, and crush it to hear the satisfying thunk of its fragility.

That's to say, then, it's everything we've come to expect of Anderson's films, and everything we love about them, and everything that drives us nuts, too. (No pun intended.)

Critics have been piling on Darjeeling Limited, eager to knock Anderson's hipster specs sideways:

Like his peers Zach Braff, Noah Baumbach (who directed the excellent Squid and the Whale and co-wrote Life Aquatic), and Sofia Coppola (whose brother Roman helped write Darjeeling Limited), Wes Anderson situates his art squarely in a world of whiteness: privileged, bookish, prudish, woebegone, tennis-playing, Kinks-scored, fusty. He's wise enough to make fun of it here and there, but in the end, there's something enamored and uncritical about his attitude toward the gaffes, crises, prejudices, and insularities of those he portrays. In The Darjeeling Limited, he burrows even further into this world, even (especially?) as the story line promises an exotic escape. Hands down, it's his most obnoxious movie yet. (Jonah Weiner for Slate, "Unbearable Whiteness.")

Weiner falls short of calling Anderson racist outright, but I won't shy from the word: parts of Darjeeling made me cringe and try to hide my own white face under my hoodie.

But I have no intention of joining the critical pile-on, either. For obvious (and probably defensive) reasons, I take issue with the implication that privileged, bookish woebegones with white skin don't have stories worth watching. And I absolutely reject his conflation of Anderson's perspectives with the films of Noah Baumbach and Sofia Coppola, which I think, for all their own whiteness, are churning full of blood and guts. Anderson's movie about Americans soul-searching in an "exotic" land becomes an essay on cleverness, true; but Coppola's version of the same story, Lost in Translation, is exquisite and heartful.

Weiner also misses the fact that there's something elusively magical about the worlds of Wes Anderson: for all their preciousness (and "unbearable whiteness"), they induce another feeling that offsets the queasiness: wonder. Anderson's gift is his ability to make us marvel (and laugh) at things that would otherwise be mundane. He reminds us there's life to be found, everywhere, and it's rich and complex—even when it's made of white confection.

Featured On: May 1, 2010

(Not) Common

or, Sunday in the Park

or, Raison d'être (pt. 2)

Kids squealing at the sprinkler. A seven year old's pirouette. Couple holding hands from their adjacent bicycles. Old man's red socks. That singer. Tree branch like a sun dial. Happy line at the ice cream cart. Toddler on a break-away. Make-a-wish fuzzball drifting through the air. Far-away church bells. Reflections in the puddle. Ripples in the reflections in the puddle. Gray-haired man holding his boy so tight it's like he thinks it might keep him that size forever. Flip-flops and red toenails, balancing, teetering, on the curb. Puppy tripping over his too-big paws. Blonde-haired man sitting on the corner of a park bench, scribbling a notebook full of words he'll never share with anyone, writing them down like his life depends on it, because (some days more than others) it does...

Featured On: April 25, 2010

Snakes

They said it was the warmer weather, and the rains, which brought the snakes to our city.

The first time we saw one, it was so out of place, we didn't recognize it. By the time we understood what we were seeing, it had already slithered away into the shadow, into the sewer, and we didn't believe our eyes.

The second time we saw a snake, we assumed there'd been a mistake: an escaped pet, an accident at the zoo.

By the third time, we were seeing them twine around each other like slippery knots. "Did you see that?," we'd ask strangers on the street. We knew something must be wrong.

We started to hear stories: snakes in the basement; in the sofa; in the shoes. They startled us in our cupboards and in our glove compartments and in our bathtubs.

We didn't know what to do.

We didn't know who to call.

Nothing had prepared us for the snakes.

Soon we were seeing them every day. They lost their fear. They held their ground and flicked their tongues.

Sometimes a child would be bitten, and a vengeful parent would find a golf club or a garden spade and smash and slice any snake she could find.

Still they came.

We found them in our toilets, crawling out of our drains. We found them resting on the bars at our favorite restaurants, on the floors of our favorite movie theatres. We found them in our babies' cribs, in our sleeping wife's hair.

One evening, after a thunderstorm, they welled up as if out of the ground. They oozed up from the subway stations and into the streets. Cars skidded and lost control. Now, the brave and enterprising among us tried to fight back, tried to make an industry of snake-killing, and they filled the city with snake blood and the writhing bodies of dead snakes amidst the live ones.

Still they came.

Before long, we had no choice but to leave the city behind, to leave it for the snakes, which filled it like a lake, poured in from every crack, flowed in and out of everything, breeding and sometimes devouring each other, filling up the ruins we'd left behind.

Featured On: April 20, 2010

This Is Your Life

You wake up a little before sunrise. You sit up but you can't see; you have a cracked pair of glasses around somewhere but who knows where. You must have been sleeping on your neck, because it feels like whiplash. Something's not right: an amber flicker on the wall, which your myopia reads as sunrise till you glean that it's the candle you left burning all night. You reach for the plastic cup of water by your bedside, and drink half before it slips and spills on the bed. You roll to the opposite corner and fall asleep.

You wake again an hour later, the sun now bright enough to find your glasses on the windowsill, next to the half-liter of whiskey that survived the night before. Outside: the small yard filling with brown leaves where squirrels find some refuge. Across the way: a symmetrical grid of darkened windows, ethereal in a morning fog, like row after row after row of Mark Rothko. You see all this, like you see every morning, through a set of wrought-iron bars. They are there, you remind yourself, for your own protection.

Your body is sore and your mouth is dry and you can't say why, exactly, you feel so bad. Winter and its too-short days. You think of recent events and how the sum total of them should add up to more than this, this vacant feeling, this deep-down boredom and disappointment. You think back to a doctor's appointment earlier this week, as he ticked down a list of test results, each one "Negative." You found yourself wishing, Please, let me have something. Please, let there be some measurable deficiency, some quantifiable cancer or lurking parasite, some infection, something. Let there be an explanation, or at least an excuse, instead of this general malaise, this incurable unwellness.

You refill your plastic cup and drink it. You blow out the candle. There's no reason to be up, yet, so you don't bother. You return to bed, confident or at least hopeful that by the time you wake, next time, things will look better. They often do.

Featured On: April 16, 2010

When Ulysses Returned to Ithaca

When Ulysses returned to Ithaca, it wasn't what he'd remembered. The streets were dirtier and narrower, the people furtive, unhealthy and short. Climbing the hill back to his palace, the road was worse, too—pocked, uneven, steeper, it seemed; and the palace itself had fallen into ruin: the ceiling was collapsed in spots, and the front door was rotting off its hinges.

"Penelope?," he called out. "Penny, are you there? It's me, Ulysses. I'm home." His voice echoed off the crumbling walls, and scattered a herd of stray cats that went into hiding under a pumpkin plant that had grown to take over what used to be their living room.

He sat down on what was left of his old throne: it was covered in moss and decayed leaves. "This is where we lived," he mused. "This is where we loved," though he'd been gone ten years without a word to her, without so much as a postcard. She'd left and left no forwarding address.

"What now?," he wondered. The master strategist of the Achaeans had failed to contemplate this—a life without Penelope.

"What now?," he asked again, and he sat back to look at the stars through the holes in the ceiling, arranging them into shapes and then giving the shapes (for the first time) names. He named them for his friends. When he'd filled the sky with "Orion" and "Perseus," with "Andromeda" and "Cassiopeia," he still hadn't found a set of stars to call "Penelope." He loved her dearly—he was sure he did—but he couldn't quite recall her shape; and he didn't want to get it wrong.

Featured On: April 10, 2010

Angeles

The First Night of the Rest of My Life

The phone rang seven times before I picked it up. The voice on the other end was the one I expected.

"What? No answering machine?" (Obviously.)

"I threw it out. I don't want people to be able to get in touch with me."

"You answered the phone." (Baiting.)

"I can't stand the thought that people can't get in touch with me."

"You've really lost it." (Without sympathy.) "Be at the Dresden Room at midnight."

I looked at the clock. 11:11. I wanted to make a wish, but I couldn't think of anything to wish for. "Make it twelve-thirty: I want to finish this Details."

On my way out, I fetched the answering machine from the trash can. There was an earthquake, a little one. The radio man said a 4.0. I didn't think anything of it at the time.

Featured On: April 3, 2010

Ghost in the Machine, pt. 2

I can't remember.

What was I watching when your careworn face showed up on screen?—reminding me, first of all, that you existed (I just hadn't thought about you in a while...), and then, only a moment later, reminding me that you didn't. You didn't exist anymore.

I really can't remember what I was watching.

Fact is, I've seen you a dozen times on TV, and it's never made an impression on me. Your craggy voice is what strikes people, and your tiny body, and sometimes they get a lucky hint of your intensity: more intensity per pound than anyone I've met.

But to people who know you, these things are already familiar, and the feeling from seeing you onscreen isn't much different than seeing you anywhere else. "I ran into Pamela the other night," I'll find myself saying to some mutual friend. "Where?", they might ask. And then I realize: Freaks and Geeks. A TV show.

* * *

That's where it was—Freaks and Geeks. I remember now. You growled something funny in that voice we used to call "emphysemic" (till we discovered this was actually true). And then you were gone.

And then I realized, you were gone.

I also have trouble remembering where I was when I learned this fact. Far away, that much is certain: I left you as suddenly and certainly as I left all of you, that whole crew. I learned it by telephone, from the woman who introduced us. I can't remember if we talked, or if it was a voicemail. I recall being shocked, though I don't know if that's a fair word: you sometimes seemed so frail that I wondered if you were dying from the moment I met you.

[They say we're all dying from the moment we're born, but you somehow turned this on its head: living right up until the moment of death.]

* * *

"How old are you, Pamela?", we'd ask now and then. We had an idea that you'd been around forever, that you were maybe a beauty from the silent film era; the math didn't work, but still it made sense, because you behaved as though you'd been there since the Beginning. The beginning of something, anyway.

You'd cackle at the question, that signature laugh: "Even the coroner won't know how old I am," you'd say, "on the day I die."

You were wrong about that. That's the day I learned—on the day that it no longer mattered.

Maybe it never mattered.

[I think I wanted an answer because I needed to know how fragile you were, how brittle. I wanted to know how hard to squeeze when I hugged you. Your refusal to answer was your way of saying you weren't brittle at all. Maybe it's also the reason you never told us you were dying. Maybe you thought that if you told us, we wouldn't hug so tightly anymore.]

* * *

I was in the northern part of California, you know, when they buried you in the southern part. Closer than I'd been, but still not close enough. I wanted to be there. I doubt you'd have cared; you never thought much of ceremony. I expected, as always, you'd stand and watch from the wings, halfway heckling, but also mouthing our lines as we spoke them: your silent support.

I wanted to be there and I wanted to bury you with a bottle of cheap red wine, and my love.

I'm glad to see you show up on my television screen now and then, answering a door, peering into a crystal ball, pulling on a cigarette—typecast somewhere between mystic and sight-gag. You'll say something in your husky voice, you'll laugh your signature laugh, and you'll be gone. And later, I'll think, "I ran into Pamela the other night.

"It was good seeing her."

Featured On: March 27, 2010

Reaching the Pegbox

The thing is: you are not the primary agent of your life.

You think you are. After all, it's you who decides when to set the alarm, whether to add cream and sugar to your coffee, whether to take the scenic route to work.

But now and then, something happens. You stumble. The world that seemed so clear suddenly wavers in front of your eyes: a veil lifts, and you get a glimpse that things are in fact quite different than you like to assume. Your petty acts of will exert very little influence on the course of your life.

Maybe you had a near-car-accident and tasted your own mortality. Maybe your wife left you. Or maybe your sudden belief crisis was cued by something more subtle or invisible: maybe it was a song on the radio. Maybe you looked up at a flock of migratory birds, wondered where they were going, and suddenly lost faith in everything.

One thing is for sure: you are not the primary agent of your life. Other, stronger forces are at work. Some of them have names—gravity, economics, love. Some you can never and will never know. What you do know is that suddenly, everything that seemed so good is now spiraling out of control. You don't know what's what, what's important, what to believe. "If nothing holds fast," you ask yourself, "then what has value?"

You have discovered, quite organically, metaphysics.

You get the sense that your life is a tightly-strung violin, and your every act is intended to bring it into tune. But you can't reach the pegbox, and all you have at your disposal are the tiny screws on the tailpiece that allow you to make fine adjustments. Not very much control at all.

* * *

Ten years ago, I spent a week walking through the desert, thinking that I was dead—not that I was going to die (though that too was a distinct possibility), but that I already had. I became more and more convinced that I'd passed from this world, and wasn't even sure exactly when I'd crossed from one state into the other.

Death Valley is weird like that.

My brief walkabout into psychosis wasn't totally unplanned: after all, who goes into the desert except for some sort of spiritual revelation? Being dead explained many things, not least of all why, after so much effort spent, I still felt I had so little influence on the world around me:

Spirit can't touch body.

Eventually, I came back to the conclusion that I was alive—which meant there were whole other, still misunderstood reasons for my inability to affect change.

* * *

The Buddhists say that much of what we think of as reality is, in fact, illusion, and our confusing the one for the other causes us great suffering. They say that one can find happiness, but only when one stops wanting it, or wanting anything. The cessation of craving is the cessation of self: you must admit that you are not the primary agent of your life.

The cessation of craving, the cessation of self, is a kind of death.

To help remind themselves of this, they chant mantras, over and over, in Sanskrit.

Some say that God speaks Sanskrit, and that a chant spoken in Sanskrit offers truth in itself, without translation: one is already speaking the sound of truth, directly. But truth can't, won't, come in words (words being tied to particulars, to things, so the diametric opposite of omni-anything); truth, when it speaks, must speak in larger rhythms, in dialectics, in waves; and if one wishes somehow to speak truth, then one can't do it through understanding, but only un-understanding; through tearing down what we think we know; and through the mindful repetition of ... anything—a chant, perhaps, or the gravelly sound of footfalls in the desert, or the long drone of a single note from a violin. Focus on a single note, only, in relation to nothing but itself, and that note will never be out of tune. And you will disappear completely.

Featured On: March 12, 2010

The Good Samaritan of Smith Street

It was all just a big misunderstanding. It was a whole set of misunderstandings, in rapid succession.

I boarded a Brooklyn-bound F train in SoHo. It was a beautiful weekend afternoon, and the subway car was full of (more than usual) happy couples and their children. So many children. So many children, in fact, that my first impulse was to change to another car.

But the bell dinged, the door closed, and that settled it: I was staying with the kids. The kids and, at the far end of the train, a banjo player.

Goodie.

A little girl waved, and then spit up.

I waved back.

Her mother beamed at me, I suppose to thank me for helping to teach her daughter that the world is full of friendly people and not misanthropes. That old tale.

Squeals erupted from my left: a small gaggle of toddlers were falling and drooling on each other, dancing to the music of the banjo player, who was making his way toward my end of the train. The banjo player was plucking away, and the kids were having a literal hoot. They were having a literal hootenanny. So I did what any childless adult would do in this situation: I turned on my iPod. This situation is exactly why God invented the iPod: to keep your children and your banjo out of my world.

One square-dancing toddler got tangled up in my headphone cable, yanking it from my ear; and as I reached down to untangle it, the train slammed on its brakes. The child flew through the air, toward one of the subway poles (and certain death, or at least pain and a lot of crying)—and through no fault of my own, I caught this child. I guess I saved its life. Its mother thanked me, and a few of the other mothers did, too.

I was just trying to untangle my headphones.

The child (who now owed its life to me) sat down beside me, but I wasn't having any of that—this tot looked a little soggy in the diaper. I stood up and—wouldn't you know it?—an old woman with a walker boarded the train, and thanked me for giving up my seat.

"No problem," I told her, since it had been an accident. A few of the mothers beamed at my generosity, at my act of kindness, and this time, some of the fathers beamed, too.

I was getting a bit of a reputation on this train.

That's when a man handed me five dollars.

"Huh?"

He pointed to the banjo player, then exited the train. I understood that this man had wanted to give $5 to the banjo player, but couldn't get through the wall of children without missing his stop—so he entrusted his $5 to me, the most reputable citizen on the F line. He wanted me to complete the transaction.

Of course I thought of keeping the $5. But the banjo player's shoes were in tatters, and he had actual duct tape on his instrument, and if I'd kept the $5, I'd have felt so guilty that I'd have spent $40 on whiskey, to salve my guilt—so, in the end, it was a losing investment. It was simpler just to give the $5 to the banjo player, and I did.

And he dropped it. It fell on the floor of the subway car, and the toddlers clambered for it, drawing everyone's attention to me, the donor, the Good Samaritan of Smith Street: everyone saw "my" $5 donation to this banjo player whose music I was trying to drown out with my iPod.

I could hardly bear all of the good will that I was engendering, so I got off the train one stop early. As I did, I ran into a man who asked, "Spare change?"

"As a matter of fact..." throwing him a couple of quarters and imagining the car full of beaming parents admiring me as the train pulled away.

Featured On: March 3, 2010

Fortress of Solitude

It was another routine day in Metropolis for Superman, the day he saved the single-engine jet from crashing into the city. The plane had lost power to its stabilizer and gone into a flat spin from which it surely never would have recovered, had Superman not flown in to save the day: the Man of Steel managed to grab the plane by its engine, arrest its spinning, and guide it to a safe landing in a nearby baseball field. The four passengers of the plane were grateful and in tears, while the Little Leaguers stopped their game to cheer.

Unfortunately, the force required to catch the plane in mid-air was also enough to dislodge the jet turbine, which broke loose from the body of the plane, and plummeted out of the sky and into an apartment building below. It tore through the building and killed two dozen people.

Superman, exceptional in so many ways, had never been the most thoughtful hero: decision-making while flying faster than a speeding bullet does not lend itself to introspection. Good and evil had always been for him, if simplistic, at least clear. When he received the news of the two dozen deaths—deaths which had been directly caused by his own well-intended efforts—he was devastated, and confused like he had never been before. For the first time in his life, Superman questioned his own ability to discern right from wrong—so he did what any reasonable thinking person would do in such a situation: he stopped rescuing people, and retreated to his Fortress of Solitude, there to wait and contemplate, until which time his path of action would become infallibly clear—which is to say, never.

Featured On: February 25, 2010

A Funny Thing Happened

(or, What Doesn't Kill You Makes Your Limp Stronger)

Technically, my birthday had already been over for a few hours when I stepped into the busy street without looking and got hit by the cargo van. Still, during the brief time between when it smacked into me and when I smacked into the ground—that is, during the brief time that I was airborne—I remember thinking that there is a certain poetry to getting run over on your birthday. "Thirty-five," I mused, "That's a sufficient number of years..." (I also remember thinking things that were less poetic, like, "I hope this doesn't break my iPod.")

None of this is historically unprecedented: when my father was a boy, he became famous in his home town by stepping out in front of a dump truck. He also flew through the air, and wound up spending a significant part of his childhood in and out of casts and leg braces. He made it into all the local papers (and in a way, that is how my parents first met...).

No such celebrity for me. Though the sound of the van hitting my body seemed significant at the time (like the sound of crushing a six-foot soda can, like the sound of metal burping), and though I found myself a bit farther down the block than where I'd stepped off the curb, I somehow managed to get away without a scratch. (Well, one scratch.) I expected the driver to be furious—he had every right to be, since I'd walked out in front of him. So when I hit the ground, my first impulse was to apologize. "Sorry to get all up in your grill"...

How many near-death experiences does it take to add up to a whole-death experience? Because, for a youngish middle-class white guy, I wonder if I've had maybe more than my fair share... (Then again, there's something not quite right about the term "near death"—it's a linguistic fallacy along the lines of "near-pregnant": you are or you aren't, and proximity doesn't have much to do with it...)

The fact is, when I was half this age, I was sure I wouldn't live to be this age. And when the end comes, it probably comes with all the advance warning of a speeding cargo van crashing into the left side of your body. Thirty-five is a sufficient number of years. But I'll take more. And today, I'm glad to have them...

Featured On: February 20, 2010

Romantic Idealism, pt. 1

Do I miss you, or just memories of you?

Philosophy teaches us that nothing is real: all sight and sound and smell and everything we experience is apprehended through the mind, and therefore, they are ideas. All our sensations must become ideas in order for us to feel them.

If that's the case, then what I miss right now is the idea of the sweet smell of your breath, and not the smell itself...

Featured On: February 15, 2010

Sounds of Silence

Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park

Cinema is inherently voyeuristic: we, the viewers, are always on the outside, peering at something to which we should not be privy, while on the inside, the characters who occupy the world we watch seem unaware of our presence.

In the case of most Hollywood blockbusters, it is easy to forget that we are voyeurs, because our window offers us a view of the impossible—places we could never possibly be: inside a jet fighter, or amidst a zombie army, or bumbling through a romance with a witty supermodel, or in a galaxy far far away.

Gus Van Sant's recent spate of vérité-style films offer instead a glimpse into places we might have been, if only we were so unlucky: lost in the desert without food or water (Gerry), hiding under a table in the library of Columbine High School (Elephant), or living out the final week in the under-furnished mansion of a reluctant rock'n'roll hero, before his suicide (Last Days).1

Add to this list one more place we don't want to revisit any time soon: the mind of a teenager—in particular, the dreamy, lyrical, emotionally-detached mind of a skateboarding teenager named Alex, growing up in a broken home in Portland, struggling with belonging, and involved in an unfortunate and grisly incident one night at Paranoid Park. The film recounts the events before and after that incident, but it jumbles the order, skews the point of view, slows things down, speeds things up, repeats a scene several times but reveals something new each time. "I'm writing this a little out of order," says Alex of his own pencil-scribbled narration. "Sorry. I didn't do so well in creative writing."

Van Sant, an American auteur who is best known for his (excellent but entirely conventional) Good Will Hunting, has since been diligently reminding us that the medium of film is one of sound and image and time, more than one of plot or character or dialogue. The most memorable moments of his recent films are the ones in which nothing is said and not very much seems to happen: the crunch of feet on the desert gravel; an ad hoc song plucked out on an acoustic guitar, performed for no one; the silent grainy home-movie footage of one skater after another, jumping off a ramp and reaching—Icarus-like—for the sky. These scenes may seem wistful, or indulgent, or narcissistic2; but then, the most memorable moments of our own lives are probably the same.

1. Van Sant calls these three his "Death Trilogy," and indeed, they are beautiful, elegiac, fictional snuff films.

2. Marshall McLuhan suggests that Narcissus would never have become so enamored of his own reflection if he had understood it for what it was ("Narcissus as Narcosis"). Instead, perhaps he was enraptured at the discovery of one so similar to himself, and could not avert his eyes. The same might be said for Van Sant's long, longing gazes upon his subjects.