The Urban Sherpa

Slow Leak from Parade Balloon

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 23:11:00 -0500

On Thanksgiving (and most other days too), I'm aware and grateful that I am both lovable and loved—and that these things are, it turns out, no cure for the human condition...

2 or 3

Christopher DeWan — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:11:00 -0500

or, Raison d'�tre, pt. 4

You ever wonder?—maybe you only get two or three good ideas in your entire life, and if you don't write them down, you forget them: they evaporate, like a hazy dream. And if you do write them down, but in the wrong place, or in the wrong way, then they were wasted on you, anyway...

But if you manage to remember them, and you spend the rest of your life trying over and over to spell them out, and you never do anything but that, maybe it's okay, because then you'll have had two or three good ideas in your life, and found some use for them...

Double-Entry Accounting

Christopher DeWan — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

He, getting dressed,
flips through his wallet
and shakes his head.
"Why am I always broke?"

She, under covers,
rolls to face him
and shakes her head.
"Because you like buying ladies drinks."

Dreaming on the Tooth Fairy

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

I haven't seen C. since I don't know when. Months—enough months that counting them seems beside the point. Someone I thought I'd see every day forever.

I keep expecting that I'll "get over her," and then I keep winding up disappointed that I haven't already "gotten over her." Finally it begins to come to me that I'm not going to "get over her," and I suppose I don't really want to, which is why it's been so hard, all these months....

Instead, immeasurable bit by immeasurable bit, the future I dreamt with her will fade away. Rather than thinking of her twenty-four hours a day and sadly, it lessens to twenty, and some of those thoughts are happy memories; and gradually, fewer hours, and a better ratio, till some day, the idea of "us" will seem faraway, wistful, a little ridiculous; and it will be replaced by some other idea of who I am and what my future holds.

For now, though, the idea has been loosened, only, not fully dislodged, and certainly not replaced—and like a loose tooth, it dangles awkwardly, annoyingly, sometimes painfully. Once it's pushed out, I'll admire it as such a surprisingly small thing; I'll tuck it under my pillow, and it'll be replaced while I sleep, one dream for another, like a baby tooth for a few small coins.

Passive Aggressive

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

My therapist suggests I might be passive-aggressive, so I cancel my next appointment though I don't tell him why...

Eskimo Kiss

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

I spent a few years in a relationship with a woman who, when she would call on the phone, I would address as "Lover." "Hello, lover," we'd say to each other. Now that we're no longer lovers, we don't quite know what to call each other. It's amazing how rarely people who are close actually refer to one another by name. It sounds unnatural.

Whether it's true or not, we all know that the Inuit have many words for snow: when a thing is important to one's culture, we find words to express its varieties of nuance.^*

Yet, we have only one word for "love."

I remember a couple years ago, I was out with a friend, and ran into the mother of an ex-girlfriend. We talked for a while, and when she left, my friend asked, "Who was that?" I remember struggling for the right phrase. "My ex-girlfriend's mom" would have been adequate, but it was so clinical, so geometric. What I really wanted to say was, "That was my former future mother-in-law."

In the end, I described her simply as "a friend."

* Whether it's true or not apparently comes down to some Bill Clintonesque logic: "In reality, the number of words depends on the definitions of Eskimo (there are a number of languages) and snow, and on the method of counting numbers of words in languages that have quite different grammatical structures from English."

How to Get Along With Others, pt. 1

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

"Just because you can use 'erudite' in a sentence doesn't mean you should!"

The Cleaning Lady

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

His apartment was too large and his schedule too busy for him to have time to dust, or clean toilets, or scrub floors, so he got a referral from a co-worker, and hired a cleaning lady. "Look at all these nice things you have!" she exclaimed upon her arrival, and promptly threw them in the trash. "There. Everything is cleaner now," she said, and indeed it was.

Drink-to-Sleep Index

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

Drink-to-Sleep Index. Expressed as a ratio, or sometimes a number: the number of drinks over the number of hours of sleep. Thus, seven drinks and four hours sleep nets an index of 1.75. Also known as the "Wreckage Index" or the "Sclerosis Score."

iRate

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

iRate. Adjective. Feeling irrepressible anger and loss when your iPod suddenly ceases to function. The feeling can be detected through a telltale facial expression, which is often mimicked (or possibly mocked) by the iPod itself.

Cold Moon

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

or, Kiss Me While You Can

I hear that my lips are shrinking, and not just my lips, but lips everywhere, worldwide, getting smaller by the day. With each passing day, the lips' fleshy plumpness is sucked out of them, slowly absorbed into the rest of the body: no longer so expansive or optimistic, our aging flesh is reduced to eating itself, and it makes us less kissable, bit by bit.

A friend stands with me while we look at the full moon, enormous on the horizon. "It's closer tonight," I tell her. "Something about the orbit. I read it on the Internet. It's as close to us now as it ever gets."

"The moon is drifting away," she answers. "More than an inch each year, it's falling away. It's getting away. Everything is slowing down."

I notice her lips seem smaller than they used to, and I decide not to kiss her, but keep looking at the moon instead.

Creature of Habit

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

Maintaining a blog is like being a nun who makes regular appointments for Brazilian wax. Who is it for, really?

Dilettante

Christopher DeWan — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

dil-et-tante. Noun. Any person who can spell "dilettante."

When I write

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

When I write, I can't always remember what I'm supposed to write about. I sit down to write, because that much I remember: I remember that I'm supposed to care about writing, and I remember too that I'm supposed to write about the things I care about; I just don't remember what those things are. So I write and I trust that sooner or later I'll stumble—probably by pure accident—upon it, upon that thing, the thing about which I care. That elusive thing. That long-lost precious thing, more precious for having been long-lost, like an old Mickey Mouse watch from childhood, valuable once found, only in the way that archeological artifacts are valuable.

But inevitably, instead, I wind up writing about the things that are near me. I write about proximity. I write about my job and the stresses of my job; I write about the women I talk to and the women I wish I'd talked to. I write about being hungry and eating badly. I write about it all without much art, because one doesn't need much art to write about artless things, or maybe because it takes so much more art to write about artless things, and I can't muster it, because I'm stressed from work, sex-starved, hungry, and over-fed. So I forget the things I wish I remembered and I spend too much time thinking on things I'd just as soon forget.

Air Pocket

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

You're going through your day, going down the street, going about your business, and then suddenly out of the blue, you get smacked with missing someone so much that you drop 1000 feet, like in an airplane. You didn't see it coming. You spill whatever you were holding. You think you might throw up. You lurch into the person next to you, and then right yourself, and try to resume whatever it is you were doing, ignoring the adrenaline and the queasiness, though your mind is now somewhere else, and you can't quite shake the feeling of falling...

Exhuming Melissa

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

Exhuming Melissa, who buried me first, years ago. Hers were the last eyes I let see through me, before I covered myself in cold soil and packed it hard. When blood still flowed through my veins, gave me color, gave me life, when I was young: the blood belonged to her.

She walks back to me wearing pointed black boots, circa 1890�older than people. "Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?" But from the knees up, she's all color and life, carpet bags and hair like the changing leaves on the cedar by my bedroom window. She looks young and lost, without spells, and I'm safe, and she's powerless. She finds my arm and we kiss. I try to remember: does she taste the way she tasted before I learned to kiss lips I didn't love? It's Wednesday.

The next afternoon she's sick and sleeping like a chestnut, warm and brown and dimpled, protected by a shell and by the absence of guilt. She wakes and we talk, about words and toes and pomegranates and the ocean, about three chords and lonely clouds, and the light of the sun on the leaves of the trees. We talk about loves lost and about tomorrow, and today, and we think of yesterday without speaking. She's beautiful and I'm proud to be near her. I have some inkling already that I'm done for. I've learned nothing.

"I can be hurt by you." I gave her that, years ago, never asked for it back, and have never given it to anyone again. She used it, never wanted to. The hand she lays on my chest is quivering. Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?

I show her my favorite places, my secrets. I'm afraid they might be irreplaceable, I might be running out, I might be offering them too freely. I realize no one else wants them. I realize the attic is empty and strewn with webs. I give her my secrets and my places. We sneak up stairways to ring old copper bells and announce, "We are here."

Find solace somewhere else. She runs down the beach without looking back, splashing salt water cold onto her legs, and she gets smaller, and smaller. I look the other way, toward the setting sun. The ocean says, over and over, "Triste. Triste."

At night, in bed, wrapped in the sweat of the sheets, breathing, I tell her she is still the true love of my life. She says she's sorry, she never thought of me that way�suddenly, like a knife, but a sharp one: it cuts without hurting. I bleed, but I don't so much mind.

I sleep dreaming of people I've hurt. I'm truly sorry but it doesn't seem to do any good. I am not enough�not strong enough to hold anything together, not fast enough to run away. Good, if it happens, happens over too much time.My failure weighs heavy; I sleep poorly.

"I hate you, I wish you were gone already, I wish you'd never come," kissing her and holding her by the hair, not knowing if our lives move in lines or in circles, or in inches, or in years.

And no end, no end, just a strand of hair on the pillow and a pair of orphaned sandals, left like broken swans, or like footprints, saying "This is where I've been. This is what I leave behind."

(Originally published 1998.)

11 (Waves)

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

a calm sea
floating
a sea of calm
a boat floating
calm
on a see
a sea of
floating
on a sea of
a calm see
a sea of calm

Hopscotch

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

or, What Was and What Is

I'm sitting in my parents' house and it's Christmas Day, or really, it's Christmas night: it's Christmas night and I haven't left the house all day, haven't showered, haven't even put on shoes. I ate and drank and gave some presents and opened some presents and then I ate some more and drank some more. I fetched a book from the shelf full of books I keep in their basement, a stash of favorite books that still I leave behind; I pick one off the shelf that's been on my mind lately, a book I love and a book I tell people I love though it's hard to read and though I don't remember very much from it; and I plan to read it again, though one way or another it won't change my opinion of it; only my memory of it.

[So I wonder if, more generally, my opinion of things is fixed while my memory of them is fluid. I think that probably is the case.]

I read the first paragraph of the book. (I read this paragraph every time I visit my parents.) It's an excellent first paragraph and it does nothing but confirm my opinion of the book. "Would I ever find La Maga?", it begins. It's a short first sentence but it's a long first paragraph; the first page only has two paragraphs, and the second page only has two; and that's the average for the book. It's slow going. When I think of this book, I think it's the kind of book I'd like to write, though I don't remember what happens in it and though it's kind of boring; and I think of it as a book that I'd never be able to write, partly because its paragraphs tend to be so long: I'd lose track of it, like I sometimes lose track of myself.

"Would I ever find La Maga?," I wonder to myself.

I don't think I probably will.

I'm looking at the photos on the wall of years past, other Christmases: the people are the same but in the photos we look like children. We were children; and we're not anymore; and the heaviness now in our eyes is the difference between what is and what was, the difference between what we wanted to be and what we are, the distance between walking a line and hopping scotch, spot to spot to spot, one step forward, left, right, a game you play with chalk and your own two feet, till the rain comes and washes the sidewalk clean...

My babysitter

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

My babysitter is coming
and I'm nervous, and
I'm 37 years old,
nervous because I have wrinkles, and
because we maybe have grown up misshapen and
disappointed each other's expectations, and
won't have anything left to say:
we'll play flashlight tag and eat SpaghettiOs and
finally talk about the weather,
like other people do.

Why I Blog

Christopher DeWan — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

The metaphors are all too hyperbolic, but the one that gets his attention: "It's like I was born without skin." It strikes me as trite, but it gets through to him, which was the intended effect. So I elaborate: "Sometimes I try to hold the elevator door for someone and they don't make it; the door closes. And it upsets me for the rest of the day." Really. "I consider going back for them."

Another: "The woman at the bus stop. I think of giving her my umbrella. There's a torrent of rain. She needs the umbrella at least as much as I do."

Another: "Sometimes I see a couple at a restaurant, silently reading different sections of the same paper. And I cry. I actually cry, right there at brunch."

"How does that make you feel?," he asks, like a robot.

It makes me feel like an abandoned alien waiting for the mothership.
It makes me feel like a candidate for shock therapy.
It makes me feel like I was born without skin.

"It's upsetting," I tell him.

There are people I know who say they love me and at some level I don't doubt it; but they won't ask me how I feel, because the answer—How I Feel—it's a Hudson River, a mile wide and five hundred feet deep and meandering and unstoppable; it's canyon-carving; it's tidal; and they don't want to know. They want to read about it now and then, the highlights; but they don't want to know.

That's why I blog.

It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Broke)

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:11:00 -0500

or, Vocabulary of the Apocalypse, Pt. 1

Like so many of my fellow slightly well-off, slightly over-educated, slightly lazy Americans, I always found money to be a little boring. Embarrassing, even. When asked about my "financial plan," I'd often discover that my "financial plan," top to bottom, went no further than to ensure that I could go to a grocery store or restaurant without worrying too much about whether I could cover the bill. Having achieved that1, I put the rest out of my mind.

I have a piggy bank2, so what more financial plan did I need...?

All that changed, of course, in September, when, like millions of people across the globe, I took a sudden, surprising, and somewhat obsessive interest in the economy. So many things which had once seemed beneath me now suddenly seemed beyond me: a big, exciting, tangled3 puzzle.

And since then, it's all I can think or talk about.4 I now start conversations by talking about regulation in the derivatives market, about the volatility of foreign currency exchange, about the wisdom5 of deleveraging and zeroing out the target lending rate and quantitative easing.

More accurately, I start and suddenly kill conversations by talking about these things.

Meanwhile, I hit "refresh" on Bloomberg, I listen to the Planet Money podcasts, I look at all of the Marketplace "Whiteboard" videos, I read high-level analysis for institutional investors looking for long-term management of their multi-billion dollar assets—and I bounce a check that was supposed to pay down a maxxed-out credit card.

Ah well. Even broke people need hobbies.

1. Most weeks

2. An actual one.

3. And quite possibly unsolvable.

4. Much to the chagrin of my ever-dwindling number of friends.

5. Or lack of wisdom.

Tipsy Topsy Turvy

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

or, How to Describe 2008 in 3 words or Less.

A Problem Involving Phrasal Verbs

Christopher DeWan — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Going out.
Getting on.
Making out.
Turning on.
Hooking up.
Staying out.
Putting out.
Staying in.
Doing over.
Giving over.
Settling in.
Getting by.
Thinking through.
Leaving out.
Putting over.
Putting down.
Pointing out.
Shutting out.
Blowing up.
Shutting down.
Calling off.
Making up.
Doing over.
Giving up.
Breaking up.
Walking away.
Throwing away.
Turning down.
Turning off.
Putting behind.
Getting over.
Going out.
Doing over.

(Look at us: always going places but never specifying where, exactly. No wonder we get lost: we can't keep our particles straight.)

A Look in the Mirror, Pt. 2

Christopher DeWan — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

or, A Girl Needs a Gun These Days on Account of All the Rattlesnakes

I don't think I'm one of those people who doesn't know himself. But sometimes I catch myself doing things that would be perfectly reasonable to do—if I were someone else. If only.

But, as me, they're ridiculous.

Like the other night, I did two loads of laundry at the laundromat, and paid $4.50 in quarters. I waited two hours and I read a magazine and two short stories.

I have a washer and dryer at home.

Weird, right? Not for other people, people of different circumstance. For them, a trip to the laundromat would be perfectly reasonable. The right thing to do. But for me: weird choice.

Or like kissing that girl, tonight.

Sometimes I wonder if I'd even recognize myself, if I walked by me on the street. I figure I probably would; I just wouldn't like myself very much.

Kōan of the Colander

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

I have a blue sponge in one hand and a bright yellow colander in the other, and hot water pours from the faucet. I'm trying to rinse the colander free of soap bubbles. I try and try, but I can't rinse the colander, because the colander is designed to let the water pour through. The soap bubbles persist.

Then I realize: life is like that.

I pause for a moment to contemplate this, but the water keeps pouring out of the faucet, so eventually I return to scrubbing.

Most Moving Scene Involving a Dishwasher

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

And this year's award for "Most Moving Scene Involving a Dishwasher"1 goes to Rachel Getting Married.2

1. Presented by Zach Braff.

2. Also nominated for "Best Use of Bill Irwin in a Major Motion Picture," "Best Use of Deborah Winger as a Cold-Hearted Connecticut White Woman," and "Least Nauseating Use of a Steadycam." (You didn't really think I was going to say "Least Nauseating Use of Anne Hathaway," did you?)

Mission Accomplished?

Christopher DeWan — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

A gangly Illinois politician ... once pointed out that you can fool some of the people all of the time. We now know how many “some” is: twenty-seven per cent. That’s the proportion of Americans who, according to CNN, cling to the belief that George W. Bush has done a good job. - Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker

Today, President George W. Bush held the final press conference of his administration.

Facing a battered, frightened, but still hopeful nation, a nation whose economy has proven to be rudderless, sinking, and with too few lifeboats, a nation slowly sold off piecemeal to oil barons, short sellers and mercenaries, this President counseled his successor: the most urgent threat to America, warned George W. Bush, is "an attack on our homeland."1

Compare this with Hertzberg's assessment of the threats facing our nation:

During the eight years of the second President Bush, the unemployment rate went from 4.2 per cent to 7.2 per cent and climbing; consumer confidence dropped to an all-time low; a budget surplus of two hundred billion dollars became a deficit of that plus a trillion; more than a million families fell into poverty; the ranks of those without health insurance rose by six million; and the fruits of the nation’s economic growth went almost entirely to the rich, while family incomes in the middle and below declined.

One begins to wonder: if bin Laden's goal was to humble and bankrupt the United States,2 then perhaps the threat of terrorist attack is nearly passed. Perhaps the war is nearly over. Perhaps bin Laden stands now, arms raised, in front of a cheering crowd of loyal soldiers, under a banner that reads, "Mission Accomplished."

1. In what must be one of the worst (and hopefully one of the final) "Bushisms," the President said today:
"There's still an enemy out there that would like to inflict damage on America -- Americans." Looking back on the last eight years, it is surely safe to say that Americans have inflicted severe damage upon America.

2. From bin Laden's October 2004 video: "[It is] easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there and cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses ... This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat."

Forced Entry

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Kato Kailin's been here again today. He broke a window to let himself in, ate some food from my fridge, made a mess of the living room, and was gone before I ever got home.

I think he might have napped in my bed.

I don't know what to do.

We used to be friends and now we're not. But he keeps coming over when I'm gone and it's driving me crazy.

I want to tell him he's got it all wrong: he doesn't have to be so furtive. I want to tell him to help himself to my things. I don't mind if he tries on my clothes; it's nice that we're the same size. I like that he listens to my music and that he watches my movies; I like that we have the same taste.

He'd be a welcome guest.

I'd like to see him, actually.

But he doesn't want that. He prefers this other way, this occasional, unpredictable forced entry. He prefers coming and going, leaving trails of crumbs and greasy fingerprints everywhere. Leaving traces and clues. He prefers leaving. Touching everything, and never being touched.

Six Degrees of

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

abdication, aberration, abrogation, acclimation, accusation, activation, adaptation, admiration, adoration, adulation, advocation, affectation, affirmation, affrication, aggravation, agitation, allegation, allocation, alteration, altercation, amputation, animation, annexation, annotation, appalachian, appellation, application, approbation, arbitration, aspiration, assocation, augmentation, automation, aviation, avocation, backwardation, bifurcation, calculation, calibration, cancellation, celebration, cogitation, coloration, combination, commendation, compensation, compilation, complication, computation, concentration, condemnation, condensation, confirmation, confiscation, conflagration, confrontation, congregation, conjugation, connotation, consecration, conservation, consolation, constellation, consternation, constipation, consultation, consummation, contemplation, conversation, convocation, coronation, corporation, correlation, culmination, cultivation, declaration, decoration, dedication, defamation, deformation, degradation, dehydration, delegation, demarcation, demonstration, deportation, depravation, depredation, deprivation, derivation, desecration, desiccation, designation, desolation, desperation, destination, detonation, devastation, deviation, dilatation, disinflation, dislocation, dispensation, disputation, dissertation, dissipation, distillation, divination, domination, duplication, education, elevation, elongation, emanation, embarkation, emigration, emulation, equitation, escalation, estimation, evocation, excavation, excitation, exclamation, exhalation, exhortation, exhumation, expectation, expiration, explanation, explication, exploitation, exploration, fabrication, fascination, federation, fermentation, fibrillation, figuration, fluctuation, fluoridation, foliation, formulation, fragmentation, fumigation, gastrulation, generation, germination, glaciation, graduation, granulation, gravitation, habitation, heat prostration, hesitation, hibernation, illustration, imitation, immigration, implantation, implication, importation, impregnation, imputation, incantation, incarnation, inclination, incrustation, incubation, indentation, indexation, indication, indignation, infestation, infiltration, inflammation, information, inhalation, innovation, inspiration, installation, instigation, insulation, integration, intimation, intonation, inundation, invitation, invocation, irrigation, irritation, isolation, jubilation, laceration, legislation, levitation, liberation, limitation, liquidation, litigation, loan translation, lookout station, lubrication, machination, malformation, masturbation, maturation, mediation, medication, meditation, menstruation, ministration, miscreation, miseration, mitigation, moderation, modulation, molestation, motivation, mutilation, navigation, nomination, nucleation, obfuscation, obligation, observation, occupation, operation, orchestration, ordination, oscillation, ostentation, ovulation, oxidation, pagination, paid vacation, pair creation, pair formation, palpitation, penetration, perforation, permutation, perspiration, perturbation, petrol station, pigmentation, pollination, polling station, population, preparation, presentation, preservation, proclamation, procreation, profanation, propagation, protestation, provocation, publication, pumping station, punctuation, radiation, realization, recantation, recitation, reclamation, recreation, reformation, refutation, registration, regulation, rehydration, relaxation, relocation, remote station, renovation, reparation, replication, reputation, reservation, resignation, respiration, restoration, retardation, revelation, revocation, rumination, sampling station, sanitation, saturation, segmentation, segregation, sequestration, simulation, situation, speculation, stimulation, stipulation, strangulation, subluxation, subway station, suffocation, superstation, syndication, tabulation, termination, titillation, toleration, touch sensation, transformation, transplantation, transportation, trepidation, tribulation, unimation, univation, usurpation, vaccination, vacillation, validation, valuation, variation, vegetation, ventilation, vindication, violation

Vampires Vs. Zombies (Ongoing)

Christopher DeWan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

or, the History of the Internet, According to Horror

(The following post originally appeared on the SnapDragon blog, January 18, 2009.)

The Golden Globe nomination for Alan Ball's new HBO series, True Blood, reminds us of two things: we like vampires, and there wasn't a whole lot of great television in 2008. Stuck somewhere between gothic and camp, True Blood makes a point of being neither serious enough to be affecting, nor silly enough to be fun. It certainly hasn't been able to do both at the same time, like its more adroit predecessor, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

What does any of this have to do with the Internet? That depends on how closely you subscribe to a reading of history sometimes popular among fans of the horror genre: All hitherto existing society is the history of struggle between vampires and zombies.

The theory, roughly, goes like this: symbolically, the vampire is powerful, often majestic and seductive, usually solitary. Zombies, on the other hand, are mindless, slow, driven only by appetite, and move in hordes. A period that is dominated by powerful individuals—dictators, charismatic CEOs, iconoclasts—will also be a period that glorifies vampires. A period that celebrates the masses over the individual will fixate on zombies.

It's a theory that probably won't hold up to much scrutiny, and I'll ask you not to give it much.

Buffy premiered on the WB in 1997 and played on that network for five years. (The show itself rose from the dead, for two more seasons on the UPN network, finally wrapping up in 2003.) This same period coincides with Wesley Snipes' Blade movies, and the creation of the Underworld film series—both of which lend credence to the idea that vampires were in the zeitgeist, though neither franchise is an especially proud addition to the vampire genre.

More to the point: this time period is, almost exactly, the first rise of the Internet, during which brazen, single-minded startup companies, led by egomaniacal corporate execs (who often worked—and played—till dawn) drove the NASDAQ index nearly in stride with the Buffy series: the NASDAQ's peak came weeks after the TV show's Emmy-nominated episode, "Hush," and the index's lowest point came in mid-2003, just as Buffy and her gang were leaving Sunnydale (and television) forever.

If you've read this far, then perhaps you're willing to consider what has happened over the period since then: vampires have gotten dumber (30 Days of Night) and tamer (True Blood); zombies have gotten faster (28 Days Later) and smarter (I Am Legend); and the web has shifted toward "crowd-sourcing" and the "smart mob."

The age of the intelligent zombie is upon us.

Tomorrow, pt. 2

Christopher DeWan — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

I'm going to cry tomorrow, when Barack Obama is sworn in as President of the United States.

I wonder what that means: that my idea of success for my own culture is wrapped up in the election of someone who is not like me. I wonder if I'm a racist against my own people, or if it's a symptom of self-loathing.

But the fact is—the fact that Barack Obama is not white is such a small part of the larger, idealist whole that I don't even think about it, and I won't be thinking about it at all, while I'm weeping in pride and joy and hope for the nation I call home.

Stella of the Angels

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

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 told me. "What are you seeking?"

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

Making Quiet

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

OK, OK. Don't freak out.

You're worried, and getting panicked, because it's been days now, weeks�and you can't hold an idea in your head. Certainly not an idea that anyone would want to read.

Don't freak out. You are fine.

Nothing is broken in your brain.

You don't believe in "writer's block." You don't actually believe that you can't hold an idea in your head.

You do believe that inspiration is easier sometimes than other times. Sometimes, the world seems more interesting to you than other times. Sometimes, it seems more willing to share its secrets, or sometimes you are more curious to find them, than other times. Sometimes you need to rest, you need to focus elsewhere, and you can't be so generous as to give your ideas away�though you wonder if "generous" is the right word:

Your intention in writing is sometimes generous, but the fact is, at least some days, it has nothing to do with generosity. You do it only to quiet the noise in your head; and at least on those days, the "generous" thing to do is not share these thoughts with others, because other people have enough things to deal with on their own, without also having to deal with all of the noise in your head.

You realize then that, whether you are writing or not writing, what you're actually trying to do is lessen the noise, for yourself and for anyone who wants to listen. You feel this as an actual responsibility: to help spread the quiet.

So that is what you are doing.

Ravel / Unravel

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Somewhat unique in the English language, the word "ravel" has the same definition as the word "unravel":

ravel: 1. to disentangle or unravel the threads or fibers of (a woven or knitted fabric, rope, etc.).
unravel: 1. to separate or disentangle the threads of (a woven or knitted fabric, a rope, etc.).

Additionally, each word also means its own opposite:

ravel: 2. to tangle or entangle. 3. to involve, confuse, perplex. 4. to make clear; unravel.
unravel: 2. to free from complication or difficulty; make plain or clear; solve. 3. to take apart; undo; destroy.

If there is (as some scientists suggest) a single unified theory that is capable of expressing all of the complexity of the universe in one simple formula, then this is it:

ravel = unravel

Houseplants

Christopher DeWan — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 23:11:00 -0500

I bought houseplants.

I've never been especially good at decorating (though I prefer to say "I'm minimalist"), so I take comfort in the easy style and color choices that come from buying plants—the green leaves, the terra cotta pots. Plants require a kind of mindless nurturing and I appreciate that.

I bought a small tree that it turns out is called a "money tree," and it supposedly brings financial good fortune, but so far, I'm not sure. It sits in my bedroom window, where it seems slightly conflicted, leaning toward the sunlight, leaning away from the cold, though they come from the same direction. It thrives quietly: it doesn't grow much in height but gets more robust in volume—as if it's getting richer.

Encouraged by this success, I bought a palm tree, which stands in the opposite corner of the room. It fills out that entire part of the room, and in return, it asks for little: it seems happy with its small share of light and its too occasional watering, and I worry about it only because it seems to collect such thick layers of dust that I actually dust off its leaves every now and then, so it won't suffocate.

Struck by the easy passivity of my two trees, I invested in a new set of plants—practical edible herbs: basil, sage, thyme, oregano. They are smaller than the trees, and more rambunctious. They are children. They always want something: they want to be told stories, they want me to play games. Sometimes they tell me I've given them too much water, sometimes not enough. They are inconsistent.

I went traveling for a few days, and, as if to punish me for leaving, some of the plants died. A plant dying is not like an animal dying, because when an animal dies, it is markedly different than it was when it was alive: a fish floats; a rabbit gets cold and stiff; a dog's tail stops wagging, and it stops greeting you at the door when you come home.

A plant is more private in death: it might appear to be dead but still contain life hidden somewhere under the soil, so that through water and penitence, it might be revived. Or alternately, you might continue to pour water into its barren pot for weeks before finally conceding that the plant has left you forever.

Lately I've noticed that some of my plants have taken on new character—a white sort of fuzz on the underside of some leaves—and when I touch them, the fuzz comes to life, scampering and then taking to the air: a small swarm of tiny white flies is eating more of the basil than I am. I spray at them with soapy water, as I'm instructed to do, because the aphids (as they're called) can't stand the taste of soap; and it drives them airborne.

Now they're flying around my room, homeless and confused, so the air is filled with skittish white flecks of half-brained dust—and I realize that, having desired to decorate my life with other life, and having brought it into my home, I've gotten more than I bargained for...

Magazine Stand

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:11:00 -0500

The lowest form of capitalism is selling writing about shopping.

Manners

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:11:00 -0500

The bartender asked me what I wanted to drink, but I told her I didn't want anything. I was tired.

She came back a minute later with a half pint of whiskey and sat it down next to me. "On the house," she said.

I drank it. It would have been rude not to.

This is where I am

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:11:00 -0500

This is where I am: walking across the bridge, beside the trains and above the trash barges, five hundred yards from either side, away, away from everyone and their noise, till everything is just a disappearing din, most of all, myself.1

1. (The old pond,
A frog jumps in:
Plop!

News clip from a seaside town

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:11:00 -0500

A local man, caught in a riptide, was carried out to sea.

An unidentified stranger swam to his rescue.

Both drowned.

Shiva the Destroyer

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:11:00 -0500

We were on the train and we were going toward important places, and that is what allowed us to disappear into ourselves, and pass by station stop after station stop, staring into books and newspapers and windows and each other, as if we were nowhere, as if we were people without souls.

The man shuffled onto the train announced by his own stink, a sticky vinegar that attached itself to the inside of the nose. He shuffled his feet and he shuffled his cardboard cup, mostly empty but with a few coins, like a broken toy tambourine.

He spoke too quietly to draw us from our reverie. It was the stink, rather, that drew us, and pushed most of us to inch away from him without looking, nor hearing his mumbled words: "I am Shiva," he said, "Neelkantha of the blue throat, eye of fire, skin of tiger, greatest among gods, destroyer of worlds." He chanted this quietly and made his way among us, while we withdrew from him without looking up.

Not listening to him or even hearing him, we never imagined that his words were true, that he was indeed the great deity incarnate, nor that our failure to love him or care for him was a final act of disastrous consequence: that we had failed so exhaustively, failed in our very humanity, and, undeserving of it, would live to see it stripped from us, while we, unaware, listened to our headphones, read our magazines, and recoiled from the stink of the misfortune we'd helped to create.

The Margarine Manifesto

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Part One: Counting My Blessings

In no particular order:

My apartment
My neighborhood
My city
My education
My quirk
My steady reliable income
My family
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:

My apartment
My neighborhood
My city
My education
My quirk
My steady reliable income
My family
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:

apply butter to one's toast
apply margarine
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?

Excuses, Excuses

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Sorry. You know how it is: busy at work, sleep deprived, bills to pay, weather, out of town guests, out of town, on a deadline, low blood sugar, taxes, family emergency, waiting for the cable guy, dog ate it, change of medication, low on rope. Etc.

In absence of my reflection

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:11:00 -0500

In absence of my reflection,
I remember myself incorrectly.

Urban Renewal

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:11:00 -0500

These last couple weeks I've been in such disrepair: it's actually seemed like my brain shut down its thinking and feeling processes, to protect me from myself. (The clinical term for this is "neurosis.") So I guess I've been really pretty seriously unhappy, though I can't think, this time around, that it was actually cued by anything. (The clinical term for this is "depression.") And from this numb unhappy place, I'd occasionally retreat into half-articulated fantasies of escape—moving to Canada to take up organic farming, etc.—fantasies I haven't entirely put out of my mind. (The clinical term for this is "psychosis.")

I feel like I'm finally switching back on, powering up, slowly coming back to life.

(I've learned that I can gauge my psychic energy by how many camera-phone photos I take while walking: when I snap pictures, it's a sign that I'm taking interest in the world; and when I stop taking them, then it's a symptom I've disengaged. The last one I took was a month ago...)

Tonight I wandered through the Manhattan streets, wandered aiming to get lost—such a simple joy, to get lost and to get filled with a renewed sense of wonder, to see some of the things I've been missing, to feel the air in my lungs, to feel the light on my eyes, to feel my heartbeat and the heartbeat of the world around me—to feel renewed, to feel wonder.

The city is endless and wonderful, and though sometimes it feels as though it steals everything from us, other days it seems to give everything back, and more.

Snakes

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:11:00 -0500

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 twining 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.

Life Raft

Christopher DeWan — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:11:00 -0500

I remember, as a kid, I'd sometimes lie on my bed and pretend it was a life raft in the middle of a stormy ocean. Underneath me were miles of cold water and monsters, but I'd batten down on my raft and I'd be safe, alone and insulated: the ocean that surrounded me and threatened me was also a moat that protected me from intrusion.

I realize now, holed up in my bedroom all alone and surrounded by a turbulent city, I'm still doing the same thing: gazing out my window like the porthole on a sea vessel, far from shore, far from anyone: alone and sometimes lonely, but safer for it. Drifting.

Work

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:11:00 -0500

work. Noun. A series of meetings about other meetings.

Aloha

Christopher DeWan — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:11:00 -0500

or, Hello / Goodbye

No blogging while traveling. Mahalo for your patience.

(But there is photographing.)

If blogging is like farming...

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 30 May 2009 23:11:00 -0500

"Fallow is the stage of crop rotation in which the land is left uncultivated."

Truth

Christopher DeWan — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:11:00 -0500

“The truth: what is oblique.

A monk once asked Kao Tsu: "What is the unique and final word of truth. That master replied: "Yes."

I take this answer not as a vague prejudice in favor of general acquiescence as the philosophical secret of truth. I understand that the master, bizarrely opposing an adverb to a pronoun, yes, to what, replies obliquely: he makes a deaf man's answer, of the same kind as he made to another monk who asked him:

"All things are said to be reducible to the One; but to what is the One reducible?" And Kao Tsu replied: "When I was in the Ching district, I had a robe made for myself which weighed seven kin."

- from Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse

Less Than

Christopher DeWan — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:11:00 -0500

It's because of the shrinking.

It was hard to notice at first. Remember, growing was like that: "How big you've grown!," the cousins whose names you never learned would always say. And you would think, defiant: "No I haven't."

But you had. You'd grown imperceptibly, day by day. To prove it, your parents would mark little indisputable lines on your door jamb in pencil ("July 21, 1980: 47 inches"), till your incredulity was replaced with a hard-to-explain, slightly misplaced pride whenever you sized up your hash marks: "How big I've grown!," you would think.

Shrinking is like that. It sneaks up on you, without any giveaway signs. The hat still fits; the pants are tighter than ever—but you know that you are smaller than you were. You know it as surely as you knew looking at those pencil marks as a child. You have shrunken. You are less than. You realize, too late, that hopes and dreams have mass; that their mass centered you like ballast; they plumped you up; and now they're gone.

Shriveling. Wilting. Shrinking into less and less.

If you know, then it's only a matter of time before everyone— friends, co-workers, the nameless cousins, the strangers on the street—realize it too. It almost doesn't matter, though, because at the rate you're getting smaller, by the time they realize, you'll have disappeared altogether.

Law School

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:11:00 -0500

law school. Noun. A pastime for privileged people who can't think of something better to do. See also, Business School.

Latent Loves (pt. 1)

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:11:00 -0500

"Drunk and disorderly conduct."
"The American West."
"Ice hockey."
"The night sky in the country."
"Lying in hot sand by the ocean."
"Driving at 100mph."
"Having a child's ignorance of the passage of time."
"Deep spiritual belief."
"Lounging in bed on Saturday morning."
"Dogs."
"Cycling country roads."
"Tawdry sex."
"The practice, not the idea, of vegetarianism."
"Disappearing into a good book."
"The smell of sage after a desert rain."
"Stage fright."
"Massachusetts rooftops."
"Foreign languages."
"Homemade sourdough."
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
"Morning fog."
"Driving nowhere in particular."
"Discovering new music."
"Breaking hearts."
"Mulholland Drive."
"Forests of pine."
"The hum in the ears the morning after loud music."
"The smell of propane in the ice rink."
"Writing meaningful passages longer than 140 characters."
"Deer."
"Optimism."
"Knowing the bartender."
"Learning new words."
"Naïveté."
"The view from the top of a horse."
"Writing as if someone might read it."
"Being lost."

New law of thermodynamics

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:11:00 -0500

An object in motion tends to stay in motion ... unless it is an MTA subway.

Demonology

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:11:00 -0500

My friends tell me I should get rid of my demon lover. The scars and blisters she leaves on me are unsightly. Her brazier is sure to burn my house to the ground. "She won't even tell you her real name!"

They don't understand anything.

I don't mind the bite marks or the scalding iron. I don't mind her sharp teeth or dirty claws. I don't mind when she curses my family in Aramaic.

It's endearing.

My demon lover understands me like no other. "Forever is how long I will understand you." When I wander alone forty days in the desert, she speaks to me—she and she alone—and everything she tells me is true.

"I understand you," she says, her head fitting perfectly on my shoulder. "We're both fallen angels."

Blog of the Last Man on Earth

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Monday, 3pm

It started with the sound of nothing, which was unusual even at that time of the morning. The power was out in the kitchen, and when I peered out the window, there was no traffic, no one on the sidewalk, no construction sound, no plane passing overheard, no hum of electricity, nothing.

There was no one. Sometime overnight, everyone had disappeared. Everyone except me.

I assumed, then, I didn't have to go to work; so I finally finished a book I'd been reading for too long. I made myself a sandwich, and then, not really knowing what to do, I went back to bed, around 3pm. I really needed to catch up on sleep.

Monday, 11:30pm

I woke suddenly, well-rested but draped in so much darkness: dark as far as the eye could see. Haha. People are still missing, or seem to be. Maybe it's an elaborate hide-and-seek.

It's so quiet that it hurts my ears. That is, in the quiet, I hear a high-pitched whine. I've been told that this is the onset of hearing loss: the pitches I hear are the pitches that I no longer can hear, if that makes any sense. I wonder, then, is deafness actually loud, a cacophony of all pitches?

I'm wide awake; it's midnight; I'm the last man on earth. It's flattering, really. And frustrating—so many things left unfinished: the report I was writing on at work, which Alex told me was quite good. (Alex is my immediate supervisor.) (Or maybe I should say was.)

Also, I had Mets tickets for next week. They were playing the Orioles.

It's harder than I expect to pass the time, in the dark; but it gives me unexpected joy—it gives the familiarity of my apartment refreshing newness. I also stub my toe, badly, on the corner of the sofa.

I walk through my neighborhood. Everything seems to be in its right place: cars are parked, trash cans lined neatly against the walls. The black outline of a nearby skyscraper blots out a patch of stars. In the dark, there are more stars than I've ever seen in the city, but I don't remember the names of any of the constellations.

Tuesday, 5:45am

I start jogging. I don't usually jog. It's funny how we behave differently when there's no one around to see: there's no one who knows I don't jog, so I can be a jogger if I want to. Central Park is covered in a light mist, and I twitch with a vague foreboding: "Don't go into the park alone!" But when you're truly alone, no one is a danger.

Tuesday, 11:21am

I keep glancing at my cellphone to see if there are any new messages, but of course there aren't, because I'm the last man on Earth. Anyway, it's not like very many people called me before.

Tuesday, 12:48pm

I'm standing in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, underneath the twine of steel cabling. The wide sidewalk on the bridge is empty. The lanes of traffic on either side are empty. The water below me is calm, but everything is so quiet that I can hear it roaring by.

Tuesday, 4:55pm

I get a guilty pleasure out of reading Cosmopolitan magazine. It's embarrassing: I'm a guy and it's not for guys, but I read it whenever I go to the doctor or the dentist. I like knowing what women are supposed to be thinking about me.

Every issue of Cosmopolitan is almost exactly the same as the last issue: it has articles on sex positions and how to drive him wild in bed. Cosmopolitan has more sex in it than Playboy. I'm surprised they manage to come out with new issues each month, since eventually they must run out of sex positions. But I guess people forget, so they don't mind reading the same things twice.

It occurs to me that the Cosmopolitan I read today in the park outside City Hall is the last Cosmopolitan that will ever be printed. I wonder, does that mean the hair style they describe will be in fashion forever?

Wednesday, 8:15am

I decide to go door to door in my apartment building to see if anyone is still around. I've lived in this building for three years and I've never knocked on anyone's door till today.
I like the people who live here. (Lived.) (Liked.) (Insofar as one can like people to whom we don't speak.) People in this building are quiet, and clean, and polite. (Were.) Sometimes they'd hold the door for me when my hands were full with groceries, and sometimes I'd do the same for them—so we were neighborly, I guess is the word.

I bring a box of Girl Scout Cookies, so that if someone does open their door, I can ask them if they want one.

You'd be amazed by the variety of doors in my apartment building. You'd think they'd be all the same, bought in bulk, at a discount rate, but in fact nearly every one is a little different. I imagine they've been replaced, one by one, over a long period of time. Some doors seem incredibly heavy. One, on the third floor, is light like the closet door in a child's bedroom. Knocking on that door is like knocking on paper.

No one is answering any of the doors. It was a forgone conclusion, but I got caught up listening to the sounds that my knocks made without ever really thinking about why I was knocking, till the paper-thin door knocked me out of my reverie.

I climb out on my fire escape and eat some Girl Scout cookies. I pour some milk to go with the cookies, but my milk had started to sour, and I throw it out after a mouthful. That was the last milk I will ever have. I might never wash that taste out of my mouth.

Thursday

Though there is no one else left in the world and therefore the status of my obligations is vague to say the least, still, I am a man of my word: I spent my morning paying bills for my cellphone and cable. I won't do it again next month, though, if this continues, since neither of these services has been working for several days.

I also decide to finish the report I started at work, the one which Alex liked so much. I bike to the office. Without traffic, without stoplights, without car doors, without pedestrians in crosswalks, biking is the purest joy: it's really like flying.

I'm quite productive, working alone. The phone doesn't ring once. When I've finished assembling my PowerPoint deck, I do a practice run of my presentation in the conference room. It goes well, I think.

On the way home, I head west and watch the sunset over the Hudson. I wonder why I didn't do this more often, before. Then I bike home, the strobe light on the back of my bike seat flickering to protect me from non-existent traffic.

Friday, Early Morning

My watch stopped and I'm quickly losing my sense of time, but I wake naturally just after dawn. Today is the day of my work presentation. I own three suits and I have trouble deciding which one to wear, but finally I pick the newest one, the one with pinstripes. I never expected I would be the sort of person to own three suits, the sort of person to have enough suits that it's hard to decide which one to wear to work. I'm not sure when I became that sort of person, but the transformation wasn't awful, like I might have imagined. If anything, the third suit was liberating. The first two suits were obligatory, but this third suit seemed somewhat for fun.

I'm proud of my PowerPoint deck: it's got a kind of structural elegance, and it deserves to be shown.

But as I'm tying my tie, I notice there's a blemish on my face, a black spot on my cheekbone, like a beauty mark. I've never seen it before. It is sudden and alarming. I can feel my heart quicken, and I wonder, should I call a dermatologist or an oncologist?, before I realize that phones are dead and there are no doctors. I am alone with my blemish.

Looking closer in the mirror, I see that the blemish is nothing: it's not a pimple or a lesion. It's a tiny spot of pure nothing, a little black hole on my cheek. I poke at it with tweezers and the tip disappears. It is unsettling, and I decide not to go to the office today.

Friday, Late Morning

I've returned to the paper-thin door on the third floor and I'm smashing it down with my tennis racquet. "Hello?," I call out, after destroying the door. "Anyone home?"

The apartment is nicely furnished, and very clean, and comfortable, and has a very fresh smell. There is a vase of cut flowers on the kitchen table, and I refresh the water in the vase, though the flowers are nearly all dead.

"Hello?," I call out again.

The view out the window is good. I wonder what she pays in rent?

Then I notice—and I can't believe I didn't hear it earlier: there is water running. The shower is running in the bathroom.

"Is anyone there?," I ask again. "It's me, from upstairs."

I turn the knob of the bathroom door, and push the door open with my tennis racquet. Steam pours out and fogs my glasses; I can't see a thing. "Hello?"

I pull back the shower curtain. There is no one, just hot water pouring down into the drain.

The showerhead is very nice—one of the overhead ones that pours the water out like rain.

On my way out, I borrow a stack of DVDs from a bookshelf, and bring them back to my apartment.

Sunday night

There is a scene in the movie Amélie where the main character (a French girl named Amélie) has the television on in her apartment with the sound turned down. She looks over at it and notices a news clip: a horse has escaped its corral so it can run, side by side, with a team of bicyclists. Amélie watches in wonder and decides to record it on her VCR. Later in the movie, she gives the videotape to another character, who also watches the scene with silent wonder. I doubt either one of them could explain why it was wonderful, but it was, and they knew it, and it made them happy.

I felt the same way about the movie Amélie. I couldn't explain why, but when I saw it, it made me feel happy to be alive.

Monday morning

I decide perhaps I'll learn French. I practice saying, Sans toi, les émotions d'aujourd'hui ne seraient que la peau morte des émotions d'autrefois: "Without you, today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterday's." I don't really know what it means, even in English.

Evening

Something strange happening with time. I don't mean in the sense that "Time flies when you're having fun," or in the sense that, in absence of outside obligations, we lose track of days, like children in the summertime. Whatever is happening, it is alarming in a way that it never was when I was a child in the summer.

I blink my eyes and a week goes by. Anyway, I think it's a week. It might be longer or shorter. There's no way to know.

It happens in the midst of a day, too: sometimes I'll sit at my kitchen table in the morning, flipping through a magazine I've already read, and then, twenty minutes, the sun will begin to set.

But then twilight lasts for days.

So something's not right, but there's no way to measure, and no one with whom to compare.

When I look in the mirror, I think I look much older than I remember. But then as soon as I concede this is the case, I seem much younger.

I'm losing track of things.

And I'm not sure when I stopped eating.

Thursday or maybe Sunday

Of course I wasn't watching the DVD of Amélie. Electricity had been out for days, weeks, who knows how long? Instead, I stood the DVD box on top of my television, and I watched the box. I stared at Amélie for hours, days, who knows how long? And she stared back.

"Hello," I said.

"Bonjour," she replied. And proceeded to tell me, in detail, in French, everything that had happened in her movie, to the best of her memory. I don't know French, so she would stop periodically to recap in English.

"Thank you," I said.

"De rien," she replied. "It's nothing."

It was, without a doubt, the best movie I've ever heard.

Some Time Later

I find that the people I used to know are beginning to blur in my mind. I remember a funny story, something I did once with a guy named Adam. I laughed out loud when I remembered this story. Fun times. Then I realized, "Oh. That wasn't Adam." And I couldn't remember who it was.

Since no one has any further use for street signs, I've begun to paint them over with the names of the people I knew. I walk around during the day with a can of green paint in one hand and a can of white paint in the other, and I gradually re-map the city: Jonathan Street. Caroline Boulevard. Adam Lane. Before I forget.

I rename Broadway after my mother, whatever her name was.

Middle of the Night, I Think

I had a nightmare that everything that's happened recently was in fact only a dream. In the nightmare, I woke up, and the world was still full of people, same as it ever was. My alarm clock chimed and beckoned me to another workday, and I was filled with great emptiness.

Then I woke from the dream, and the night was still, and the city was empty, and everything was as it had been.

I went to the bathroom for a glass of water, and noticed the black hole on my cheek had grown, now big enough to fit a finger.

Later

"What do you want?," Amélie asks. "What do you want to do? Ce qui vous veulent faire?"

"I want to write a manifesto."

"Bah!" She wrinkles her nose. "Your life is a manifesto."

My life is a manifesto. "Ma vie est un manifeste!"

Daytime and Tomorrow

I have more paint now. I roam the city, and one by one, I'm painting over all of its billboards.

Left to our own devices, maybe we all become artists.

I am painting enormous murals, scenes I remember from my life. As I paint, I remember everything, everything I ever did, everyone I ever knew. I remember long forgotten years and feelings of communion; holding hands at the junior high dance; the encouragements of my second grade teacher; the mobile of ceramic swans hanging over my crib. I remember sweeping forests sprawling far as the eye could see, rolling oceans, endless plains. I remember mustard gas and sinking ships, bullets and bayonets and the sticky warmth of my own blood; I remember rounding Cape Horn, scaling Everest, building the Pyramids brick by brick, walking light-footed on the Moon. I remember the center of the galaxy, the center of the universe, the sound of vacuum. I remember the Big Bang, like a gasp of breath, like a baby's laugh, like the anticipation of an orgasm, like the spasm of fear that comes alongside true love, the true fear of loss; and I remember, before that, the bottomless silence—like the silence I hear now.

It is all right.

Panchito's: The Worst Mexican Food on the Planet

Christopher DeWan — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Panchito's, the Mexican restaurant at 105 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village in New York City, doesn't seem like the sort of place that would inspire superlatives: the entire block is given over to sloppy, unassuming restaurants of all ethnicities—Indian, Ethiopian, Middle Eastern—aimed presumably at the students of nearby NYU.

But it turns out that Panchito's is exemplary in more ways than one.

Panchito's is, first of all, the largest restaurant in all of Greenwich Village, laid out on a scale so large that its cavernous dining rooms could fit a dozen or more Village-sized trattorias and bistros.

The menu immediately greets you with a second superlative: Panchito's, it turns out, is home of the "best margarita in New York." Fine print later goes on to clarify, the margarita is actually considered one of the top six best margaritas, though by whom is anyone's guess. (The menu itself is a contender for another superlative—Worst Graphic Design—though that's a contest that will be waged bitterly through all of Chinatown before the label can be definitively applied.)

You order one of these margaritas. It sets you back $10, and when it arrives at your table, it's lukewarm. A lukewarm margarita defies a law or two of physics.

A small bowl of stale unsalted corn chips eventually finds its way to the table. You shouldn't judge a book by its cover and you shouldn't judge a Mexican place by its chips. Still, there's no denying: these chips are bad. The comparison with cardboard is obvious but unavoidable. The chips are accompanied by a small plastic ramekin of vinegar and sugar that they call salsa.

You didn't actually realize it was possible to make bad salsa, till now.

The entree arrives. It is served without silverware, till someone notices and brings a miniature knife and fork, like for children or dolls. The plate of food is the saddest looking plate of Mexican food you've ever seen. The menu, which bragged about "three different kinds of beans!," didn't warn you that the beans would be overcooked into a crunchy powder, nor that they'd be lacquered in an inch of (is that Velveeta?) cheese. Two tacos remind you of the cafeteria at summer camp. One of them literally has a few slices of unseasoned, sauteed flavorless white mushrooms and a chunk of unmelted cheese. The rice (the best thing on the menu, by far, if you can find it under the cheese) has a single green pea in it—for flavor? for nourishment? an accident?

"Is everything alright?," the waitress asks, pointing at the mostly ignored pile of food. "You want more chips?"

"Yes!" But—somewhere else...

Microblog Killed the Internet Star

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Who has time for blogging, what with all the Twittering, all the links posted to Facebook, all the quotes posted to Tumblr, all the photos pushed up to Flickr?

The age of easy Internet publishing—so easy that you can do most of it from your telephone!—is also rendering the act of actual writing to be somewhat difficult, extraneous, and neglected—at least writing anything more substantial than 140 characters. It is something now reserved only for the vast expanses of leisure time we have on international flights, long weekend getaways in the country, and time spent safely off the Internet, in refuge from the steady stream of microthoughts parceled out with thumbs into small portable devices. That is to say, rarely to never—till we forcibly wrest ourselves away from the chatter for a few elusive, peaceful moments of restive thought and creative repose.

Maybe tomorrow.

(Maybe I'll tweet about it.)

The Rapid Acceleration of Things

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:11:00 -0500

or, Microblog Killed the Internet Star, pt. 2

I'm thinking about the rapid acceleration of things.

Also, I realize there's a certain set of writers who fixate on the "rapid acceleration of things," by which we mean "culture," by which we mean the things we consume; the values by which we evaluate them; the ground beneath our feet. I realize there's a certain set of writers who aim to write about these things, though these things shift rapidly, so are, by their nature, hard to write about, hard to understand—like trying to write graffiti on the side of a moving bullet train. And I realize that though I have an affinity for these types of writers, I'm not sure I've ever been one of them, nor am I entirely sure I want to be—because at some level, anyone who writes about the "rapid acceleration of things" is writing about shopping, really. Aren't they?

But here I am, caught in the act of noticing my own very thoughts shrinking, shrinking, the way we're told an object will shrink as it approaches the speed of light: the faster my thoughts get, the smaller they get, too. Look even at the short history of this blog, an ongoing exercise in concision, now so successful an exercise that the blog posts are, most days, non-existent.

It used to be I was interested in novellas, feature articles, essays; gradually then short stories, reviews, prose poems; then further devolution—dictionary definitions, haiku, one-liners. Pithyisms. And now this. Now, nothing, or nearly nothing. Now an ever-growing amalgam of single sentences, 140 characters posted here and there, the accumulation of which adds up to ... what? Like the accumulation of the day's acts adds up to what? Yet at the end of the year, or the decade, or the lifetime, it has added up to an accumulation, at least—as if we ourselves are the sum total of the habitual thoughts that we hiccup day after day; and maybe that is all we are...

They say that media alters the way we think: the printing press caused us to begin to apprehend the world as if it were a book, taught us to "read" the world. Film affected our understanding of space and time, to the point that now, when we dream (the deepest recesses of our subconscious), we edit scenes together as if it were a movie, with montages and jump cuts and fades and soundtracks and action/adventure.

And now, this vast headless beast, the Internet—what does it do to our brain? The lines that once connected one idea to another (like turning the page in a book, like wiping from one scene to the next) now explode and link off in a hundred different directions. There is no one path, but a hundred paths, each one halfway followed, each one holding our interest only till the next explosion carries us off in another direction; and we, the voyager, are barely contiguous, but rather a string of breadcrumbs, a traceroute, an audit trail: we become simply a log of what we have seen. We are the storyteller, chronicling link after link after link, feeling after feeling after feeling; but we are no longer the story. We are the narrator but no longer the protagonist. We are the current flowing through the grid; but—What do we light up?, and Why?, are questions that we no longer ask, questions we cannot answer in 140 characters. And maybe not at all...

Am I Invisible?

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Then why do people keep walking into me on the street?

Life is a Fellini Film

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:11:00 -0500

And vice versa.

Mixed Up

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Other, better writers have already waxed poetic on the making of the mix tape¹, so I'll keep my words here brief.

What I like most about making a mix tape is not the opportunity it provides to rediscover long lost (loved) songs; nor to marvel at how aptly pop music expresses my innermost feelings²; nor the process of trying to imagine which songs you will like, trying to imagine your reaction upon hearing them.

No, the best joy in making this mix tape is simply how I get to think of you, hour after hour—how I hold you in my mind, and how I'll continue to do so now, forever, every time I hear these songs...

1. Now mix CD, now mix playlist, now Muxtape, now just a file transfer—not even an object at all, except in our hearts, where it is and will always be, plain and simple, a "mix tape")

2. Am I so shallow? Yes, I am.

When Harry Met Daniel

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:11:00 -0500

The Urban Sherpa Interviews Daniel Radcliffe

Daniel Radcliffe is tired.

He is sprawled out on a chaise lounge in London's Claridges Hotel. "I'm knackered!," he laughs. "I don't even know what's going to come out of my mouth."

Radcliffe has good reason to be tired: while he's promoting the recent installment of the Harry Potter franchise (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince), he's also begun principal shooting on the final set of Harry Potter movies.

"Sometimes it feels as though I've been working on this for my whole life. It'll be really nice to finally kill Voldemort once and for all, and get on with things." He stares out the window with a faraway, dreamy look in his eyes. "You know, Ron and Hermione are off to university this week? But not me."

"You mean [Harry Potter co-stars] Emma Watson and Rupert Grint?"

"Right. Of course." He gives one of his famous shy smiles. "Sorry."

Radcliffe fantasizes about going away to a university and having a normal life—but a "normal life" may be impossible for the charming millionaire who has spent his whole adolescence in the public eye, depicting a beloved hero, growing up alongside him, their fates always intertwined. "Other people lined up for their copy of Deathly Hollows to learn what was going to happen to Harry Potter. I read it to learn what was going to happen to me."

He plays absent-mindedly with the promotional broomstick that Warner Brothers left in the hotel room. "You can imagine, growing up like this... Everywhere I go, it's 'Oh, look, Harry Potter.' I'm not ungrateful. But sometimes being the Chosen One is its own burden.

"I wonder sometimes what my life would have been like, without this—" he gestures to his forehead, to the location of Potter's famous lightning scar. "I wonder what I would have become. Maybe a cricket star. Or maybe a tosser. Who knows?"

He snaps out of his sulk at the chance to talk about his turn in Peter Schaffer's Equus: "I was naked!," he exclaims. "Waving my magic wand! Seriously, it was a brilliant experience, a great chance to prove to people that I'm more than just 'The Boy Who Lived.' Even my friends, sometimes I think they wonder: 'Sure, you survived the Killing Curse. But can you act?' Hopefully, I showed that I can. Professor McGonagle came opening night—"

"You mean [Harry Potter co-star, Dame] Maggie Smith?"

"Right. After the show, she kept going on about how I'd grown. It was really affirming."

The Potter series has given Radcliffe a chance to act alongside the greats of the British stage. "They've all been so supportive. I've learned so much. But most of all, I don't think I could have done it without my parents. The bravery and sacrifice of James and Lily Potter is a real inspiration."

"But surely you mean your real parents, [literary agent] Alan Radcliffe and [casting director] Marcia Gresham?"

Radcliffe shoots a look and snarls something in Parseltongue, before recovering his charm. "Yes. Of course." He stares out the window again with a grim and distant look, as if remembering fantastic wrestlings with evil, flying battles pitched among the clouds, powerful magicks that Muggles will never know. "It's been a very, very long day."

Stockpiling Status Updates

Christopher DeWan

(in case the social media sites go down again)

is a waster of so much time.
jots Post-It notes in his head.
is hungry more often than not.
goes through consecutive days wondering, "What did I do yesterday?"
could smile more.
has bad habits that he wants to break, and has other bad habits that he doesn't want to break.
wonders if he's doing it all wrong.
doesn't feel like going home.
realizes that exhibitionism is a manifestation of insecurity.
wants to circumnavigate; instead wanders aimlessly.
feels the terrible press of so many things undone.
could be nicer.
wants to be happy when he's old.
might have forgotten how.

That Kind of Crazy Afternoon

Christopher DeWan — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:11:00 -0500

The summer has been really lousy. It's rained a thousand days in a row. Some people got really excited about the weather this summer, because it never really got too hot. That killed me. People got excited because they never had to use their air conditioners, but they couldn't go outside, either, because it rained like a monsoon every single day, I swear to God it did, so no one really got to enjoy their summer, but at least they didn't have to use their air conditioner.

One thing about me is, I sweat a lot. Summer comes and I start sweating and then I don't stop till October. And what's funny is, it doesn't matter whether it's eighty-five degrees or ninety-five degrees, I sweat just the same. I wear an extra t-shirt to mop up all the sweat, and then I use a handkerchief to mop it out of my eyes, and then I have to change shirts a few times a day, too. Like that tennis player who no one can remember his name, even though he was really good. He was going to be a tennis star except he sweat so much he'd get dehydrated. It got so he started covering his body in talcum powder, to stop the sweating, but it wasn't enough, he'd still get dehydrated and cramp up, and eventually he had to retire, even though he was good enough to beat just about anybody. Sometimes I wonder if I have a medical condition like that. I've been using my air conditioner all summer, just to stop my sweating, and I'll probably use it till October.

But this week wasn't like that. After a million days of rain in a row, this week the sun came out and there was this cool breeze and it was really nice, for a change. Everyone and their uncle came out of their apartment then, you can bet they did, to go outside in the beautiful weather. Everyone called up their boyfriend and their girlfriend to go for a walk, and even the people who didn't have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, they called up someone nice too, because just about everyone outside was holding hands with someone. That's what kind of nice day it was—the kind of day you want to be holding hands with someone, even if that someone isn't really your boyfriend or girlfriend, just so you can pretend for a little while, to make the day even nicer.

That's the kind of day it was yesterday, and I went up to Central Park so I could enjoy it. Maybe if you haven't lived in New York, then I should explain how there's just so much of it, block after block of streets and sidewalks, and more streets and more sidewalks. Boy, is it big. Sometimes it can be a little disorienting, even if you've lived here a long time, because everything is on this grid of streets and sidewalks for what feels like a hundred miles in every direction. Every corner there's the exact same stuff—a deli, and a little diner, and maybe a restaurant. I mean, some of them are nice and some of them are lousy, but after a few blocks, they all look the same. Then there are high buildings everywhere, so you can't always see landmarks, unless you recognize that particular deli or that particular diner, which sometimes you do, but just as often, you don't. That's why it's so important for people to get out of the city. Sometimes it just repeats itself too much and it's exhausting.

I think that's why people go to Central Park. It is literally a breath of fresh air. People always say "It was a breath of fresh air," and I puke when I hear it, but in this case, it's literally true. It is a big breath of fresh air. And it's so goddamn big. This park is bigger than some cities. That's not even an exaggeration. Central Park is bigger than the whole city of Boston. I'll admit, it's pretty nice to be able to get out of the goddamn stinking subway crammed full of all those people and then be in a whole city-sized park full of fresh air.

Except, today I got out of the subway and I couldn't move, there were so many goddamn people. I just wanted to go down to the lake and watch the rowboats and the ducks, but I couldn't really even do it, because there were so many people. It killed me, because here was all of this nature and supposed peace and quiet, but instead everyone crowded around this one phony bastard doing magic tricks and telling jokes into a PA system. Some of the tricks were pretty good, and he was athletic, too. I mean, at one point, he completely jumped right over this little girl, and she didn't even know he was going to do it. That was pretty impressive. But this just isn't the venue for that sort of thing, that's all.

I tried to climb through to the rowboats but I couldn't on account of all the people and the way they parked their baby strollers side by side across the entire sidewalk. Anyway, by then, I didn't really want to see the rowboats anymore. I just wanted some peace and quiet and to enjoy the goddamn day. And would you believe it, as soon as I got out of earshot of that magician, didn't I find another crowd of people around another guy with another PA system? Maybe that's what people like to see on a beautiful summer day—some phony bastard talking into a microphone, instead of lakes and trees and instead of relaxing. I guess they think it makes them urbane.

I was in one of those moods where I didn't want to be around people, so I made my way toward the zoo. I thought it would be nice to see the gorillas because at least the gorillas seem to enjoy some peace and quiet. I heard a story once about how a mountain gorilla in a zoo found an abandoned kitten and adopted it, and when the zookeepers tried to take the kitten from the gorilla, she protected it and wouldn't let them get anywhere near it. She just cradled it like a little football and kept walking away from the zookeepers and took care of it like it was her own baby. And then the zookeepers, who are supposed to love animals, they took the kitten away from the gorilla, and she bawled her big black eyes out, and they gave that kitten to a goddamn pound. Hypocrites.

There was never a point where I wasn't surrounded by crowds, and where I couldn't hear some moron on a PA system. It was kind of funny in a way. The trouble was, I couldn't concentrate too hot with all these people around, and then a funny thing happened: I was having trouble breathing. I really was. I thought I might puke, so I went looking for a bathroom, but there was a line full of people and baby strollers, and I decided to just sit down. I really wanted some water, but the water from the fountain was so warm and bad and the goddamn zoo wanted four bucks for a bottle. So I sat down at a table in the cafe, and I was near the gorillas, but I never did see any, not a single goddamn one.

Packing

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:11:00 -0500

I'm packing for that trip I'm about to take. I want to be prepared. I put everything I can imagine needing into a suitcase: I bring extra socks and floss and shampoo, even though I know they'll have it where I'm going. I bring long pants and short pants and a few pair of shoes, and two books and three magazines, and then I sit on my suitcase while I try to zip it closed. It's bursting at the seams. And I realize that everything in it, every single item, is there to insulate me from experiencing anything new why I'm on my trip.

Sugar and Stones

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:11:00 -0500

I am an ant, but I forget sometimes, and I think that I'm a spider. A spinner. A schemer. An eater of ants.

Each day I walk with the others. I yoke myself with a stone or with a gob of sugar, and march lock-step along the line. I follow those in front of me, till somewhere, someone takes my gob of sugar or my stone, and sends me on my way. And for that, I am happy, or I think I am.

But at night, I dream I am a spider. I spin elaborate plans, perfectly symmetrical and beautifully engineered. I perch at the center of my web, ready to seize the moment when the mindless drones, the worker ants, myself, march like a slow red tide into my web. I am patient and a planner. I shall thrive.

Another day of sugar and stones, then exhaustion, sleep, and more dreams. Now I'm a pitiless bird, watching from a mile high the march of the thin red ants, the methodical spinning of the spider; I am circling passionless and free, and carried higher and higher by the gusts of wind and the tilt of my wing.

Another day, burrowing tunnel to tunnel, onward and upward, outward and downward, outward and upward. Up is down and down is up. Slow march under hard sunshine, endless expanse, and so much weight carried, so much weight. My brethren fall, and I crawl over them, as others some day will crawl over me. "Where are we going?" and "Why?": we have no use for questions.

Tonight I dream I'm a blue-eyed boy, squealing and laughing in the field; a boy with messy hair and sometimes bloody in the knees; a boy who, for ignorant sport, hurtles rocks at the birds, sets afire to the spider web to watch the wisp and hear the crackle; who wipes clean the anthill with a curious swipe of the foot, and erases, on a whim, whole fields of serfs, whole armies of soldiers; demolishes roads and kingdoms, ends empire, and ends empire's dreams, dreams I never understood or shared or even glimpsed, though I toiled to build them; dreams now gone in the swipe of a shoe; and from this dream, I do not wake; and it is how I'd have wanted it.

Tomorrow, pt. 3

Christopher DeWan — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:11:00 -0500

"Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness."—Martin Luther King

In many ways, it was better when Bush was president. Being a progressive was easier: it was fueled with anger and righteousness—rightness—and the genuine need to get "their" guy out of office, before he did any more lasting harm.

A champion rose on the left, beautiful and wise: he spoke with the tongue of angels and he inspired us to put aside our despair. "Hope," he said. We had a vague memory of the feeling, but we wondered aloud if it was still possible. In the face of so much, can we still make the world a better place?

"Yes we can," our champion counseled. He saw this better world already, clearly, as if it were a place he'd already visited. He described it to us:

Where there was war, there will be peace. Where there was lawlessness, there will be respect. Where there was sickness and suffering amongst the poor, there will be care and compassion. Where there was torture inflicted, there will be swift justice. And where the voice of the people has been drowned out by the gold of the oligarchs, there will be democracy.

Inspired by these promises, we lifted him onto our shoulders and carried him to victory.

Now it's "our" guy in office. The gold continues to flow to the oligarchs; the prisoners are still nameless in foreign prisons while their torturers are free; there are still executive signing orders and redactions; and each passing day, the sick continue to languish. There is no peace.

Where there was anger, there will be anger again. But where there was hope—only hopelessness.

Now, our champion seems to wonder aloud if, in the face of so much, we can still make the world a better place. Now, we must lift him again on our shoulders, and counsel him:

Yes we can.

Wanderlust

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Wears on the sole [sic].

Map of the Great Explorer

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:11:00 -0500

After the empire had continued to grow, year on year, till the Emperor himself was no longer clear of its boundaries, let alone what was contained therein, he commissioned a renowned explorer to create a definitive map of the empire's contents. Fully aware of the scale of the undertaking, the Emperor insisted that no expense be spared: the explorer was afforded a generous budget and three full years to gather supplies, resources and crew before beginning his great expedition.

Pronouncement of the adventure was met with much fanfare: the people excitedly greeted the explorer as their newest hero—he who would stake her flag in the farthest reaches of the world, would act as her ambassador while collecting its finest trophies, would calculate and define its exact glory for all posterity. The empire was truly great, and the explorer was both an effect and a new cause of her greatness. Yet he was veteran of many adventures, and took the weight of his great task with seasoned, methodical assurance.

Before setting out on his monumental voyage, he requisitioned a great collection of maps, journals and logs of those who had traversed the empire before him. Seeking to build on their knowledge while avoiding their mistakes, he splayed their charts across his oaken table, and studied them long into the night. He copied the maps longhand so as to learn every curve of every continent; he combed them for discrepancies, charting out every known and every unknown, till he could imagine, clear in his mind and without benefit of the map, exactly each route and its possible pitfalls.

He examined too the roads and paths. As he was a traveler by trade, he understood that every road exists to connect two things which would otherwise be isolated; thus, he studied each point of departure, and each destination. He requisitioned more books—tax records, local laws and customs, the ledgers of commerce—till he began to understand the roads as a great circulatory system, the arteries of the empire, and he could imagine the flow of goods that coursed through them like the empire's blood.

And now the great explorer saw that trade is always the result of appetite, and that a map is a map of needs, pulsing to and fro, town to town and state to state. What is missing from here is sought from there. A road without people is not a road. He began to see in his ledgers longing and loss and love: he saw in them villages built from hope and villages decimated by famine and disease; saw cities leveled by earthquakes and war, then rebuilt; saw babies born, lovers wed, parents buried. He saw caravans trekking mountain roads to relieve the suffering of faraway people; saw caravans avoiding those same roads for higher profit elsewhere. From his map, he began to hear songs in a thousand languages, tales of small glories and great pains. His map had grown into an almanac that charted people's aspirations as if they were weather—here temperate, here stormy—and he saw them pass in seasons.

A road without people is not a road, so at the explorer's bidding, his agents brought him books of history, and literature, and poetry, and he read them without pause, till his great sailor's eyes began to fail; and when this happened, then his agents brought him the poets themselves, from all corners of the empire, and in the explorer's study, they regaled him with their tales of faraway lands.

But poets have a way of romanticizing things, especially when those things are far away; so the explorer sent for others, too—fishermen, farmers, whole families; he sought out soldiers and merchants and pilgrims, holy men and criminals, too, and brought them all together under his roof, and asked for each of their stories; and he listened carefully, and sometimes they would cry together, and often they would laugh, and usually come to some understanding; and then the explorer thanked them for their time, and closed his failing eyes till he could see it all clearly, and made some adjustment to his map.

At the end of the three years, the explorer was called before the Emperor. The budget for the great expedition had been exhausted, and not a single ship had sailed. By now, everyone had seen or heard tales of the parade of constant human revelry, long nights of singing and storytelling at the explorer's home. The patriotic people, having once felt so much pride in the explorer's impending journey, now felt betrayed, and in their anger and disappointment, they accused him of fraud and treason.

The explorer unfurled the map before the Emperor, a map which, by now, resembled no mass of land or expanse of sea, marked no towns, showed no roads or riverways; but which, from various angles, reflected the face of every one of the Emperor's subjects, and charted out all of their possible futures, their dreams and losses, all possible contentments and disappointments and joys, to scale. It was a map which excluded nothing, so preferred no single path over another; had no boundaries, no borders; and which would take a lifetime to explore.

Aspirin for Gangrene

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:11:00 -0500

You're new. You show up in town with a few things you stuffed into a bag. They're not essential or valuable or even all that well-planned; they're just the things you happened to bring. You arrive for no particular reason: everyone has to live somewhere; and maybe it doesn't matter where, as much as people think.

This place will do.

You walk a lot, somewhat relentlessly. You could take busses or trains, but you don't, because you don't want to miss anything. You want to see everything. You want to learn to distinguish that corner from that corner from that corner; and you do. You've only been in town a few days and already you see the sense of it.

You learn your way around. You learn the bus routes and the ways people talk, and why it's better to buy your coffee from here and your lunch from over there. You find an apartment and a way to make a living, so you go back and forth, carving out a new routine, slowly, like a river carves a canyon. There are people you begin to see regularly, co-workers, neighbors; and you see some of them regularly enough that you call them friends.

You learn some shortcuts, some efficiencies. Direct routes. The routine cuts a little deeper.

But unrest is a whisper in your ear, or maybe that's ambition, and you find another, better job; and like two points plotted on a graph, you can now connect your two jobs and call the line a "career path." You find yourself out at restaurants and bars for the second or third time, remembering the first time nostalgically. People sometimes ask you for directions on the street, and you're happy to oblige.

You meet still more people, and some of them become new friends, till you've accumulated more than a few, enough that you actually sometimes lose track. You wonder, sometimes, whatever happened to that one, that old friend? You haven't talked to them in a while.

The freshness wears off. The grocery store, the pharmacy, once sources of small pleasurable novelties—cereals and toothpastes you'd never seen, medicines with unfamiliar labels—these things are the new normal. You cease to notice the quirks on your walks—the gaslights and the cobblestone streets, the woman who hawks newspapers a little too aggressively, the fountains and sculptures and scenery, the man who needs one dollar to ride the bus.

You're discontent; you're not clear why. You think maybe it's because the color of the light in your apartment is wrong, tinged with too much yellow. You find another job, but you're not certain that it's a better one. It offers you a fresh commute in the morning, and new people with whom to small-talk. You wonder if it's like aspirin for gangrene. You sigh deeply. You take longer walks home, if home is the word you mean. The routine cuts deeper, a habitual insulation that it's easy to confuse for continuity, direction, meaning. Nothing is actually bad, but still, you find yourself packing a bag, a small one, filled with arbitrary things, and thinking of other places. It doesn't matter where. Any place will do. Somewhere new.

Getting Your Aquarium Above Water

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Today, while visiting your aquarium, we invented a few ways to improve it, which we'd like to share with you, in the hopes that they might help enhance your finances in these troubled times.

1. Monkeys

Your aquarium was sadly lacking in monkeys. As you know, monkeys make everything more entertaining, because they're funny, and they look like people. Consider having them take tickets or serve food in the cafeteria, or create an act involving a miniature bicycle, a tightrope, and the piranha tank.

2. Fish food

The average aquarium visitor is familiar with salmon, shrimp, scallops, lobster, and cod—in short, the fish we eat. Your aquarium has very few of these fish. We think that the aquarium would be a richer experience if people had deeper familiarity with the fishes you keep; therefore, we recommend opening a cafe that serves bite-sized samples of all of your fish. Remember, everything is good with the right dipping sauce.

3. Death Match

Once per week, pit a giant squid against a sperm whale and let them fight to the death. Gambling revenue will allow you to fund more programs for children.

4. Paint a beluga

Your whales are cute, smart, and friendly. But let's face it: they're white. Allowing children to finger-paint the belugas will give them hands-on experience with the wonderful creatures—literally!

5. SCUBA

Thanks to the effects of global warming, we'll soon all be living under water. Help people get used to the idea by allowing us to SCUBA our way through your fish tanks, and take our chances with the predators of the deep.

6. Dolphin Quiz Show

Everyone knows that dolphins are smart—but how smart? Pit a dolphin against a human for a special-edition underwater quiz show: "Mackerels to Mackerels."

7. Gift shop

Open a gift shop that sells overpriced plastic trinkets shipped from third-world countries, in the hopes that hapless tourists will lose their judgment long enough to buy all of it. Oh, never mind. You're already doing that. Congratulations on your proactive thinking about aquarium financing.

The Falconer Cannot Hear the Falcon

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:11:00 -0500

"Are we going to be forever hostage to the U.S. Congress?" - Bernarditas Muller, negotiator at this week's international conference on climate change, in Copenhagen

I wonder if most people, at most moments in history, look at news headlines and see in them the end of their own civilization.

It comes from all sides, it seems. The very day that NASA released a statement assuring that the world would not end in 2012 (since when does science purport to predict the future?), every other headline seems to indicate the opposite—if not the end of the world, then at least the end of U.S. dominion over it: the economy is in ruins (beholden to the Chinese and the Saudis, through unsustainable consumption, a failure of manufacturing, a terminus of natural resources, and a vicious cycle of debt). Sea levels are on the rise; ice caps are melting; the world's climate has already changed irreparably. Hate and fear have replaced reason and compassion: the social divides that keep us from coming together to resolve these issues seem to get more vast.

"The falcon cannot hear the falconer."

Yet the biggest threat to our society is that it will be forgotten altogether—society being made up, by definition, of people, who seem to be more and more forgotten each day. The biggest threat to our society is that corporate interests will entirely supersede the needs of the citizenry; and in this decade, this has already been realized. Every political agenda, every key issue inside Washington, is now entirely in the pocket of profiteering corporations.

Of this, there can no longer be any doubt.

Your elected officials do not have your best interest at heart. They are not working to make you and your fellow Americans happier or healthier. They to work to ensure their own re-election, by securing the interests of the companies that pay for those elections.

Your nation is not only for sale; it is bought, sold, packaged, and shipped.

That is the thesis here: our politicians are indecent and corrupt without compunction. They are trying to hurt us; and they are succeeding.

It is difficult to cite a single example, when every article in every newspaper seems to assert the point. Any topic—war? health care? climate change?—will do as an example.

Start with a more trivial one, though: Net Neutrality—the proposition that Internet service providers should allow equal access to all of the available content on the web, rather than offer preferential treatment to some (i.e., their own) content. The ISPs—the gatekeepers of the Internet (who, after all, take public bandwidth and then sell it to the public)—should do nothing to inhibit the competition and free market economy within that space; content creators should not be able to pay an ISP to suppress the content of other creators.

The only people who should oppose this idea aren't people at all: they are the telecommunication companies, who hope to be able to sell off prominent corners of the Internet as if they were beachfront property. John McCain—ostensibly a "free market" kind of guy—opposes free market on the Internet, opposes Net Neutrality. John McCain is also the number one recipient of donations from the telecom industry and its lobbyists for the past three years. John McCain is bought, sold, packaged, and shipped.

Tick through the laundry list of contentious issues in Washington to see the pattern: Joe Liebermann today announced that he would join a Republican filibuster against health care reform. (A filibuster, you'll remember, is where a minority party temporarily shuts down government, in order to circumvent democracy and refuse the will of the people.) Liebermann claims he's worried about "increasing the national debt and putting more of a burden on taxpayers," which, if it's true, is noble and patriotic, and he should vote in favor of the health care reform: it's been structured so as not to cost taxpayers a dime, and actually reduce the costs on Medicare. The only people who should oppose this aren't people at all: they are the industry already getting rich off of overpriced insurance premiums.

But Joe Liebermann opposes it, Joe Liebermann, the independent senator from Connecticut—headquarters of (wait for it...) the insurance industry. (When you, the uninsured mother of four, need prescription medication to stay alive, remember that this is the man who didn't want you to have it, because he needed someone to finance his re-election.)

Which brings us, finally, to climate change. Dispute the science of global warming, if you like (notwithstanding the fact that scientists do not dispute the science of it); even then, still, it is impossible to dispute that the world in general, and the U.S. economy in particular, would be better off if it were liberated from dependence on oil and other fossil fuels. It is impossible now to be concerned with the U.S. economy or with its national security, and not be concerned with its oil consumption.

But Senator Jim Inhofe opposes the curbing of oil consumption: in fact, he disputes climate change altogether, and has compared the environmental movement to the Third Reich.

Inhofe's home state of Oklahoma is the nation's second-largest producer of natural gas, and fifth-largest producer of crude oil. Want to guess who is paying for his political campaigns?

When the leaders in a democracy no longer serve the needs of their constituents, but rather are motivated to answer corporate interests, then it is no longer a democracy. The falconer has forgotten the falcon; the center cannot hold. It is no longer democracy.

My Life

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:11:00 -0500

I always want to write, and then I don't write because I'm hungry, and I eat instead, and then after I've eaten, I don't want to write because I'm full, so I sleep instead; and my life, then, is made up of mostly eating and sleeping and wanting to write and not writing.

Houseplants (pt. 2)

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:11:00 -0500

The plants don't seem to want to grow. I water them and give them sunlight, and every now and then, I re-pot them in fresh soil, but in the way that one changes the tablecloth and the place mats—for seasonal variety, and out of habit rather than out of need.

The plants, for their part, do not wither, and they do not complain. But they do not grow.

What is required to make a plant grow?

Like pets, do plants come to resemble their masters?

That New Flatware

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Where I work, they recently bought new flatware, to supplement the dwindling supply in our kitchen. The new set is tinny and disappointing, and I go to some pain to avoid using it. By "some pain," I mean I prefer using (in order) the old set, chopsticks, disposable plastic sporks, my fingers, or your fingers, before I'll reach for any of the new utensils.

I like to believe I do this because the old ones are so much better than the new ones (so, because I am a snob) rather than because the new ones are new (and so, because I'm afraid of change).

But it's so hard to know ourselves...

Escape is Everything

Christopher DeWan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:11:00 -0500

The escape is everything. The car with the top down, and a tornado's worth of wind in the back seat, and our hair is crazy in it. We dangle our arms outside the open windows and the wind tosses them like skinny kites. We're shouting and screaming and singing and laughing, and the wind and the car engine are both roaring angry gods. Everything we ever knew is in the rear view mirror, getting smaller, and the road in front of us is infinity miles long; and we've got a full tank of gas.

Epiphany of the Shopping Mall, pt. 1

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:11:00 -0500

All people are aesthetes. In the absence of art (i.e., at the shopping mall), people flock to the only art that is left: branding and advertising.

Human nature compels us to seek out the highest forms expression, and the highest forms available to us are offered up by Adidas, Sony, and Coca Cola.

We consume with the appetite of the half-starved.

Egg

Christopher DeWan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:11:00 -0500

egg. Noun. A delivery device for cheese. See also: bread, french fries.

The Strongest Man in the World, pt. 1

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:11:00 -0500

The world's strongest man wants to make omelette, but every time he tries to crack an egg, he crushes it, so he gets shell in the frying pan and yolk all over the floor. (Sometimes it's not easy being the world's strongest man.)

The world's strongest man owes $125 in library fines because he keeps tearing out pages. (Sometimes it's not easy being the world's strongest man.)

The world's strongest man hits a home run every time he has an at-bat, so baseball isn't any fun for him. (Sometimes it's not easy being the world's strongest man.)

The world's strongest man once ate a fork by accident. (Sometimes it's not easy being the world's strongest man.)

The world's strongest man can't put on a condom without tearing it. (Sometimes it's not easy being the world's strongest man.)

The world's strongest man has never forgiven himself for the accident with his puppy when he was a boy. (Sometimes it's not easy being the world's strongest man.)

The world's strongest man is tired of being called "Ox," "Bull," "Hoss" and "Big Guy." (Sometimes it's not easy being the world's strongest man.)

The world's strongest man wants to give you a kiss, but he won't because he's scared of hurting you. (Sometimes it's not easy being the world's strongest man.)

The world's strongest man worries that no one will love him for his mind. (Sometimes it's not easy being the world's strongest man.)

The Zen of Social Media

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Twitter is like a koan: it is so obviously pointless, till one day, a gong goes off, and it's the explanation for everything.

Facebook is like Twitter, but without the gong. Facebook is the sound of two hands clapping.

New

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:11:00 -0500

O, blank page. You are blanker lately than usual. I don't know what to do with you.

I got a stern talking-to from Amazon.com a few weeks ago, for not writing enough. Amazon, of all people. Amazon's not even people; it's an online megalith retailer; and it gave me a stern talking-to. Me! Would you believe? Don't they have more important things to do?

They said, in effect, they didn't care one way or the other about the quality of what I write here, but if they were going to continue distributing The Urban Sherpa to the Kindle (you can get this, for the low low price of $0.99 a month), then they were going to need more quantity.

"But Amazon," I replied. "I've been trying to go in the other direction. I was thinking I'd actually like things here to be a little better, a little more cared for."

No, they answered. None of that. No room for that. No time. It's more important for content to be new than for it to be good. Can't sell content that's old.

"A week old is old?"

So that's when it dawns on me that capitalism needs to erase history, because if we forget, then we need to buy replacements for all of the things we've forgotten. Then, further, it dawns on me that most of what I read is new, which is to say it's less than a week old, which is to say it exists in order to devalue the things that existed before, to push them farther out of my mind—which is to say, for the most part, it's all just writing about shopping.

So I need to decide what sort of writing I intend to do here, going forward...

Till then, I'd like to recommend that you try to enjoy some of the older posts. Take a look at the "Best Of," click through some of the tags, or just pull a few entries up at random. Every single one is guaranteed not to be new.

Metamorphosis

Christopher DeWan — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:11:00 -0500

Or, Destroying the Dream of my Own Translation

"Kafka's sentences often deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop—that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of sentences in German that require that the participle be positioned at the end of the sentence; in the above sentence, the equivalent of 'changed' is the final word, 'verwandelt'. Such constructions are not replicable in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text." - from Wikipedia

First, start with a phrase:

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.

Use a computer to translate it into Japanese, and then back again:

One morning, one Gregor Samsa suffered from a dream, woke up in bed converted to their destructive himself.

Do it again:

One morning, one suffering from a dream Gregor Samsa, destruction of the bed, woke up in the translation itself.

And again:

Gregor Samsa dream, from the destruction of the bed one morning, suffering a single one, I woke up in the translation itself.

You've come here, to language, to literature, looking for meaning. It's why anyone comes to anything: to make sense and order of otherwise meaningless circumstance.

1 bed one morning, Gregor Samsa one dream of one suffering from the destruction of one, I woke up in the translation itself.

Trying to pin things down with words, you've discovered that meaning moves. It evolves. It flies. it flits. It flutters.

1 bed one morning, Gregor Samsa in my own translation from the burden of 1111111 I woke up one single dream was destroyed.

Instead of meaning, you've stumbled upon the destruction of meaning; and in that, you begin to find the true meaning of meaning: that it's made by looking for it.

I, 1111111, morning, 1111111, destroying the dream of my own translation from the bed, woke the burden of Gregor Samsa.

Destroying the dream of my own translation.

i MeAnT $1000

Christopher DeWan — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:11:00 -0500

You Are What You Eat

Christopher DeWan — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 23:11:00 -0500

I'm in my parents' home. We're cooking a holiday dinner made up of some version of the foods I ate growing up, which no longer have anything to do with the foods I eat today. "You are what you eat," they say, and I wonder if that means I have nothing in common with the boy I once was, who grew up here eating pasta and roast chicken and canned vegetables. "You are what you eat," and now I eat self-righteous, prissy foods, and I don't know how to talk to the people from my home town, except about the weird things I eat.

For instance, right now I'm drinking a gluten-free beer. There's some school of nutritious thinking that says people, and in particular people of European descent, aren't all that well equipped to digest the proteins in wheat. For 100,000 years, we didn't eat wheat, and then for 3,000 years we did, and now we put wheat in everything. But our bodies are still essentially the bodies of the foraging cavemen from 100,000 years ago, so eating all of this wheat causes ... problems. To get around these problems, I've stopped eating wheat—a primary ingredient in beer. So, if I want to "grab a beer," it now has to be a gluten-free one.

"What are you drinking?"

"Ah, it's a.... It's called a 'Redbridge'...." (I'd just as soon not admit I'm drinking a special-needs beverage, so I refer to it by name—but answering like that feels disingenuous, like telling someone you went to school in "Boston" to avoid saying "Harvard.")

"Never heard of it. Any good?"

"It's alright...."

This is why my conversations never seem to go anywhere.

"Never heard of it."

"Yeah, well.... It's alright."

"You're not from around here."

That was quick. Every conversation I ever have arrives at this point sooner or later, but this was faster than usual.

The confusing thing is, I actually am from around here.

"No, I'm not from around here."

It's nice, around here. It's very pleasant—trees and rivers and rolling hills and deer. I like visiting. But it's never quite been for me.

"So, where you from?"

He's hit on the crux of it now. Nowhere's ever quite been for me.

I tell him the name of some city where I used to live, and we talk about it for a while. Yes, it's nice there. Yes, I'm a bit of a fan of that sports team. No, I missed that game.

"Take care," he says as I leave.

"I'll see you," I answer in reply. But I won't see him. Even in the incidental conversation, I get it wrong.

The Right Punchline

Christopher DeWan — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:11:00 -0500

(Try again?)

Beauty

Christopher DeWan — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:11:00 -0500

beauty. Noun. The look of an enviable future.

Lemons

Christopher DeWan — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:11:00 -0500

When God gives you lemons, throw them as hard as you can at His head.