Fuck me like fried potatoes on the most beautifully hungry morning of my God-damn life.
- Richard Brautigan from "Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork"
Short Talk on Hedonism
Beauty makes me hopeless. I don't care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.
"Someone was saying the worst thing in the world would be to wake up alone. For a long time, I didn't care about being alone: weeks, maybe months, years even. I could imagine being alone forever, living the life of the Unibomber. I'd have my cabin, maybe a dog, a manifesto about how humanity had spurned me, how I was better off in the wilds of Montana.
Now I'm not so sure. Does this sound troublingly earnest? I have trouble admitting how much I enjoy the company of others; that there is joy, a simple & true joy, in just being with people."
He slept on his hands. On a rock. On his feet. On someone else's feet. He slept on buses, trains, in airplanes. Slept on duty. Slept beside the road. Slept on a sack of apples. He slept in a pay toilet. In a hayloft. In the Super Dome. Slept in a Jaguar, and in the back of a pickup. Slept in theaters. In jail. On boats. He slept in line shacks and, once, in a castle. Slept in the rain. In blistering sun he slept. On horseback. He slept in chairs, churches, in fancy hotels. He slept under strange roofs all his life. Now he sleeps under the earth. Sleeps on and on. Like an old king.
I start losing my mind waiting for the bus. The frantic hurry to the gate with the anxiety of one espresso kicking in & suddenly I'm slick with sweat, my shirt darkened and sticking to my back. I nervously fidget shifting from one foot to another, hands shaking. Two women behind me are happily chatting & I eye them, all their good cheer offending my visible disarray.
I called my mother to say I was on my way to her house and despite my best intentions, all the words came out in clipped jerks. She said she'd made pasta and chicken for me; the only response i could muster was an impatient "okay" uttered under my breath. Only hours earlier I'd looked forward to seeing her. I'd walked to Brooklyn Larder to buy her bread and cheese, hoping to brighten her mood.
Thinking on this stark change in attitude, I start to wonder if there is something wrong with me. My anxiety about traveling, my impatience with crowds & heat. These have translated to a strange urge to flee, to throw down my bags, & find some fresh air away from the dank bowels of Port Authority.
There are times when I board a subway card and feel trapped. A moment before I was fine but now I can't handle the space and the people bearing down on me. When this happens I forget all semblance of courtesy or my surroundings, I start to push my way on or off the car. In these dark seconds, I find myself pushing mothers with strollers, getting ahead of the eldery with their canes, forcing myself through what I no longer see as humans but just the masses in my way.
PR: Are you a "nostalgist"? What time period would you prefer to live?
VN: In the coming days of silent planes and graceful aircycles, and cloudless silvery skies, and a universal system of padded underground roads to which trucks shall be relegated like Morlocks. As for the past, I would not mind retrieving from various corners of time-space certain lost comforts, such as baggy trousers and long, deep bathtubs.
- Paris Review's interview with Vladimir Nabokov
Monday, May 3, 2010
"Newly arrived and totally ignorant of the Levantine languages, Marco Polo could express himself only with gestures, leaps, cries of wonder and of horror, animal barkings or hootings, or with objects he took from his knapsacks- ostrich plumes, pea-shooters, quartzes- which he arranged in front of him..."
