2029

It is a restless moment. She has kept her head lowered, to give him a chance to come closer. But he could not, she turns and walks away.

simple math

Goldman Sachs bonus pool: $23 billion. New York State budget deficit: $3 billion. What's a new 13 percent recession-year GS bonus tax between friends?

electric snowflake

Some dread from yesterday must have carried over and I'm dragging my feet. It isn't that my desk chair isn't comfortable, rather that a skullplate lowers from the ceiling and an invisible mediocre hand starts tightening the nonprofit screws into my skull. One way to describe my role would be that of a fat guy riding a bike in a snow globe. Another would be of the same guy trapped in a nagging loop of sell and explain, sell and explain, the same guy selling used cars that turn out to be concept papers for really amazing cars that (if used) would transform society, the guy selling used cars that run with amazing speed and grace but require uranium-235 for fuel, the same guy selling used cars to be driven only by the extremely poor; the cars get 2 miles per gallon and travel 2 miles an hour and the rich gather to praise themselves for providing the deserving poor with such elegant means of transportation.

Story of a new parent: He had work early today but last night his daughter was fussing, she wouldn’t fall asleep. He’d been charged with the task and he couldn’t figure out how to sit her just right so she’d sleep. She clearly wanted to but she’d been out of all day, he said, and she was just fussing. He tried setting her lying face forward, then held face up in the crook of his arm, then curled in variations between the two. It was maybe a half hour now, or an hour. It hadn’t been smart to keep her out all day. Now was time to pay for it. He kept trying different positions. Usually they could find a way to click if he just paid attention. Finally she let out a solid fart, almost like the fart of a grown person, and fell asleep.

As far as I can tell no one has yet invented an emoticon for snowflake, for an electric snowflake. It would be pretty. The flakes could sprinkle out beyond the browser or Word window in which they were typed, wending a wind-blown path, hitting the bottom of the screen and melting at first, then finally accumulating and drifting there. When enough had stuck, you could click with the mouse to gather it in piles, for throwing, or sculpting, or building.

stuck words/kool aid man

vanity project that this is i've been trying to use it as an impetus to write, as a forced discipline where if i tell myself i need to, for a few days or a week in a row i'll write every night. then things close up and i can't.

the radio silence doesn't mean i'm brimming with stuck words, more that i’m so busy or confused or dark that there aren’t extra words. mostly that i’m so busy in a journey that i don’t have time to write a postcard.

not a journey, something less intentional, a forced trip or tagging along on other people’s trips. the postcard would read dear so and so, wish you were here, not sure where that is.

potential application for kool aid man to improve the art of white people: whenever white persons (or the privileged in general) get all abject/dejected/ponderous in their art, bust through the wall and start kicking people's asses.

examples:

1) the double suicide scene in Romeo and Juliet.
2) the film As Good As It Gets (many scenes; kool aid man should probably bring a flamethrower).
3) the film or novel Requiem for a Dream (many scenes).
4) The Jose Gonzalez cover of Heartbeats.

seven months/photo album

The other day L. and my mom and I were looking through photos of the past five to ten years. Taken in cities all over the world, with friends near and far gone. The two common denominators to each photo: one, I'm holding a drink; and two, I don't remember much at all about the setting in which the photo was taken.

So it's been seven months since I had a drink. For stretches I've felt clear and easy and right. At other points (now) I crave a good beer, would kill for just one good beer or a sharp glass of wine, or maybe 5 martinis or a nice simple case of beer and a joint.

It's not that if I drank one I'd wake up under a pile of cops, or sleep my way through suburbia (delicious tense hopeless moms, fear not), or start pounding full bottles of vodka every night and end up one of those red-faced commuter jerks on the train. It's more that the act of not drinking has turned off some muting or filter and allowed a range of thoughts/emotions/memories to surface.

I'm interested in what's buried under there, even though some is shit, some is poison, some is scary. A lot of it is me, a strange me that I barely know, the past me.

I was thinking this morning that I will have earned a drink if I make it to one year. I think it would be a very nice glass of white wine, in Paris, with fish soup and fresh toasted bread.

Then I was thinking that I will earn a drink when I: finish all of Faulkner; read a modern novel in Spanish and understand it; publish a novel; complete an album of music; climb a large mountain or run a marathon or bike from here to the Jersey shore; and develop my own black and white photographs.

At that point I could have a drink, it wouldn't kill me. Even five out of the six. Maybe I could have one drink when I make it to the year, then another for five out of six, then take it from there. Or, I could go get a drink now...