Blue Moon

Red sky at morning. . . . The weather will be rough here today. I'm afraid I won't get to see the Blue Moon tonight. It doesn't come around much. It is rare enough that we have a Full Moon on New Year's Eve, but a Blue Moon. . . ! I wonder when that last happened? Good or bad ju-ju? I don't know, but it is auspicious enough. For those of you wondering, a Blue Moon is the second full moon of the month. In addition to everything else, this is the 13th moon of the year. I don't believe in magic or supernatural things at all, but there are plenty who do, and they are bound to be hoppin' and boppin' tonight. I don't know enough about the different calendars to say whether this is important to many other cultures. There are Lunar Calendars, Solar Calendars, and others based on arithmetic. There is a Hebrew Calendar and an Islamic Calendar, and I don't know what all else. I don't think anyone is using the Aztec system any longer, though that one seems intriguing.

But I don't feel terrible about not knowing these things. Bad, but not terrible. Last night on the Weather Channel, the woman anchoring the broadcast told her fellow anchor, "Tomorrow night is New Year's Eve. It makes you feel patriotic, doesn't it?" I sat for a few minutes trying to figure that one out. Maybe she thought that New Year's Eve was an American thing. At first, I thought she might be an idiot, but then I thought she probably knew something about the calendars that I don't. Maybe it is an American thing. One has to be careful. It is easy to fall down the Rabbit Hole when one begins to opine.

I have been invited to a party tonight to which I have no desire to go. It will be a good one cast in a big urban apartment with a wide, movie-set balcony high in the air with a sweeping view of the city. The company will be educated and handsome and sophisticated, though none of them so much as we, but good enough. I do not like to go out on New Year's Eve, though, do not like this silly celebration driven by mechanical time, Newtonian time, by the perfect intervals of the clock that beats us down and wears us out and is the terror of our existence.

Ten years ago, I sat on a dock near my home drinking champagne with a woman much younger than myself. We drank and snuggled against one another to beat the coolness of the night and looked out across the water into the night's clear sky. Ours had not become a country of victims yet, terrorized and terrified and staunch. All that lay ahead without our knowing. There was, of course, the Y2K scare, but sitting on the dock, that night, watching the starlight undulating in the dark breeze, we felt neither fear nor dread, only wonder. We did not have a watch and did not know the time, and we wondered aloud if the century had yet changed. And just then, as in a novel or movie (or hack blog spot), a voice came through the air, loud and clear from some infinite distance, cold and tinny like the faceless voice of a mechanical god. By a freak coincidence of nature, through a confluence of atmospheric pressures and wind direction and who knows what other factors, we heard the New Year's countdown from the city's center miles away--"Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven. . . ." And in that enchanted instant, we held one another in an eternal kiss standing at the precipice of a new century. For one Golden Moment we were gathered up, bracketed in time and space, frozen at the Fin de Siecle.

As moments must, this one unfroze, and as the night slipped away, I knew we were Janus-faced lovers looking in different directions, me with nostalgia back at the old century, her with wild enthusiasm forward to the new. I was not foolish enough to be unaware that night, just foolish enough.

So tonight, we say goodbye to the old decade, though not really. Bush and his dragoons are gone, but their influence remains as we limp along struggling with the crippling legacy. It has not been much of a century so far, I think, though that golden girl has done incredibly well. Maybe it was her century after all.

I may reconsider going out tonight. As I wrote it, standing on that chic balcony didn't sound all that bad. Even if I do go, though, I won't be there at midnight. I'd rather be home to light the fire of the new era.

No Poetry but in Things

That's not quite what Williams said. Still, things are safer than people. Nobody argues much about the meaning of things. I've not read any complaints about the (mis)-representation of, let's say, scissors. Here, for instance, is an old pair of millinery shears made in India. They don't sell them here any more. I don't know why, but I was told that they are no longer imported. They are beautiful with brass handles. They look handmade. They came in about four different sizes. I want the size larger than these. Too late. But the scissors are a romance to me, a song of the exotic which is why I love them so. There are much better scissors than these for cutting, and I like them, too. Look at some of the scissor made in Japan, for instance. They are beautiful and precise. Maybe I'll get a pair to photograph just to show you. Neither these nor those, though, are anything like the scissors we had around the house when I was a kid. And, of course, that is why I like them. They sing to me across all that made up time and space. And yet there they are. . . poetry.

Now I can hear the complaints about my (mis)representation of things.

"A Sort of Song"

Let the snake wait under

his weed

and the writing

be of words, slow and quick, sharp

to strike, quiet to wait,

sleepless.

—through metaphor to reconcile

the people and the stones.

Compose. (No ideas

but in things) Invent!

Saxifrage is my flower that splits

the rocks.

William Carlos Williams

Do any of you want to help this fellow? It is a chance to overcome your Postcolonial blues.

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Technology and Craftsmanship

There is nothing somber about the weather here just now. Bright blues and vivid greens and air so fresh that nothing could spoil. I need to baptize myself in it and be cleansed. It will take a lot of good weather to do that.

Technology is cool. There is no getting around that. But so is craftsmanship. We have plenty of one and little of the other. I went to a foundry the other day looking to get a lens plate made for a 19th century lens I bought a while ago. The lens is a big, beautiful brass thing that everyone ooo's and ahhh's over when they see it. The foundry was really more of a machine shop, but it had all sorts of equipment and machinery that I hadn't a clue about. I told the fellow who came out to help me that my father had been a tool and dye maker and he began telling me about the equipment and tools he had, some over a hundred years old. He held the lens in his thick fingers and turned it around with admiration, and said that one of the welders who worked there was a photographer. I thought, sure, everyone is, but the fellow came in and really knew things. He looked at the lens and told me more than I knew. Turns out he studied art at Ohio State and then photography at the San Francisco Art Institute back in the seventies. He had several old Petzval lenses, he said, for his 8x10 view cameras. He took me back in the shop to show me some of the work he had in a storage box in the back. He had some cool old stereopics that fit into a binocular viewer similar to the plastic one I had that contained three-D photos of the National Parks when I was a kid.

I asked about the foundry. He said it had been there since the 1930s. One of the big jobs they did was to make manhole covers. He said that he designed some of them. He liked to think he was still practicing the arts, and I agreed as we looked at some of the big hunks of heavy metal. Walking back to the office, I said I'd like to come back and make some photographs of the machinery and the tools and of the fellows in industrial aprons and gloves posed among them. He didn't say anything to that.

But back to my original point, or what I imagined it to be when I began writing this. As cool as technology is, there are a lot of people doing it. But there aren't so many craftsmen any more. My house was built in the early part of the 20th century, and the details of the interior are of that time. I have tried to find people who can do the same sort of work when I make repairs or minor changes, and it is both very difficult and very expensive. You have to own Full Sail or Hard Rock to build a new house with that sort of craftsmanship. Watching "This Old House" can fool you.

And you can go on and on: old hand made boxes and chests and iron works, the interior of ships and furniture. . . .

The new iMac I bought my mother is way cool. I hooked her up with Hulu.com on that big old screen and she loves the technology, too. Now I want to get one for myself. Old movies like "Legong: Dance of the Virgins" would look really good on it.

Stuff

OK. I'm going to tidy up a bit before the New Year gets here and tie up some loose ends. First of all, my comment on the Court-Marshall-For Pregnancy rule certainly played a large role in the military's reversing its position on that one. Now the focus will be on the sexual harassment that plagues soldiers in many places where they live in restricted areas and close quarters. It is difficult for me to believe that young men and women are going to have trouble with sexual conflicts like that, but I guess that is something we haven't corrected yet. The military will figure it out.

Bookstores where I live are now officially worthless. I will give up on them and order all my books online from now on. Yesterday, I called every bookstore in the county trying to find anything by Pico Iyer without luck. They were all nice and told me that they could order the books for me. Why do I need them to order a book for me? Usually, I can get it cheaper myself. And the arts section has been reduced in most stores to a single shelf of slick photos of horses or "A Day In Australia" or cheap reproductions of Impressionist paintings. All that is left to do in bookstores is to join the army of freeloaders tearing up the magazine section with a double latte.

Today, in a New York Times article about the new mosque being built in Marseilles, I saw this:

But as Western Europe is plunged into a new bout of anxiety over the impact of post-colonial Muslim immigration — reeling in varying ways from the implications of a recent Swiss vote to ban minarets altogether — some scholars see a destructive dynamic, with assimilation feeding a reaction that, in turn, spawns resentment, particularly among young Muslims.

The report quotes Vincent Geisser, who it identifies as a Moslem scholar in France, as saying:

“There is an angst over identity in Europe,” he said. “There’s a feeling that Europe is becoming smaller and less important. Europe is like an old lady, who whenever she hears a noise thinks it’s a burglary.”

I am emboldened by all this to continue to pursue my "Postcards from Nowhere" series. It doesn't make sense to me completely yet, but I know I am doing the right thing when "scholars" indict entire cultures with sleazy tropes.

Other things. I will have a different car in 2010. I will get a new outdoor grill to replace the one that went out over a year ago. I will buy new furniture for the house to supplement and replace the stuff my ex took when she left ten years ago.

And I will once again buy cut flowers every Saturday morning for the house.

Oh, and one more thing. There will be music.

A Clean and Pleasant Cafe

I'm trying to keep the Cafe open for those who need it. Not so many others are open just now. I've gone to lots of sites, and many have not posted for weeks. Pisses me off. There have not been as many visitors coming to my own site the past few days, either. The holidays, I guess. But there are some, like me, who trudge through internet streets alone looking for a comfortable place to stop for awhile, someplace to get out of the winter weather. Sure, there are bars and bodegas, but they are not the same. I try to keep this place clean and pleasant. The light is good and now there is the quiet. A clean and pleasant cafe is a different thing. There are those who might need it, who might need a light for the night.

* * * * *

Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself, It was the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y naday pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.

from "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"

Ernest Hemingway

Another Christmas

Feeling pretty certain that no one loved me but my mother, I declined all invitations to Christmas dinners. I even refused to go with her, who, as I said, I suspect still loves me, to some seldom seen relatives house for a late afternoon meal. Christmas, I thought. Alone.

I dawdled through the morning, then took a long walk in the warm and humid air that did not speak of Christmas, the streets quiet, the houses looking worn. Where were the kids with their new bicycles and outdoor toys? No one was about. I walked and walked peering into the grey and colorless day.

Morning gave way to afternoon, and following a shower, I dawdled some more. Then, realizing with a start that my mother would soon be leaving for dinner, I hurried to her house to set up the new iMac computer I bought her for Christmas. But the afternoon hurried by, and she had to leave before I was finished, so I poured myself a glass of wine and continued updating programs and setting up accounts, and then I watched a good portion of an episode from "The Outer Limits" on Hulu.com.

I noticed that the light coming through the window had begun to fade, and I was hollow and empty the way you can get from drinking without eating on a day that simply drifts by, so I decided to eat an early dinner alone. But little was open on Christmas day in my sleepy southern hamlet. Decent people gathered with families and friends carrying out the long tradition of cooking meals and watching football and basketball and holiday movies on T.V. The Avenue empty, nobody about, I stopped at the one hive of activity among the shuttered shops, a good Turkish restaurant where you could sit and smoke a bowl of rich, dark tobacco from large, ornate nargiles. It looked inviting.

I took the last of the sidewalk tables, and the waiter brought me a Turkish beer that left a faint but not unpleasant taste of tar on the back part of my tongue. "I'll have the Doner Kebab," I told him, a typical dish of sliced lamb flavored with a tomato and yogurt sauce served over rice, with shaved carrots and chopped red cabbage and onion and baked tomatoes and peppers. Christmas dinner, I thought, remembering holidays spent in other places, other countries, when I still made the most of my vacation days.

All around me, the cafe was full of people from anywhere but here speaking everything but English. Asians, and Indians, Arabs, Persians, and Turks. A swarthy man with a scar like a lightening bolt cut into the side of his face walked by my table, paused a moment, then turned to look my way. I felt a shock of disbelief as if I were making him up, like something from a novel I may have read by Bartle Bull, "The Devil's Oasis," or "The White Rhino Hotel," or "A Cafe on the Nile." Behind me, I could hear a conversation carried on in double consonants and pharangeals and reduced of vowels. A family stepped in front of my table, two men with thick beards followed by a woman in the traditional tunic and hijab, two boys and a girl at her side. The little girl turned to me, as had the man with the scar, and stared as children do, straight and deliberately. She was heartbreakingly beautiful with those dramatically dark eyes that are so startling, the ones you see in those photos of school girls by Vanessa Winship. My camera!, I thought, but I knew it was useless. I was a foreigner, an Orientalist with a hunger for exoticism, an American alone. Right here in my own hometown.

I ate my dinner as the sun fell from the sky, the temperature falling with it, and suddenly I was huddled against myself in my shirt sleeves beginning to shiver slightly. Now it was time to go home. All I desired were my pajamas, a tall glass of scotch, the big, overstuffed couch, and a good book.

And thusly did my day pass. It was done. Another Christmas.

Already Christmas

I woke this morning thinking Gingerbread and Sugar Plums. The words, nothing more. The morning was gray. Now it is raining. Christmas Day.

Christmas Eve went by more quickly than it should. I was rushed, it seemed to me. But presents wrapped, I stopped on the Avenue for that quick drink with friends

Then to my mother's house to drink the champagne and eat the brie while grilling the wild salmon.

Gifts opened, I drove home, stopping on the little Avenue by my home. Almost silent, one restaurant was still serving drinks. A few couples here and there. Silent.

Home. Midnight. It was time for bed. Already Christmas.

The Night Before

(I get to use this with the permission of Jan Bernhardtz who sent it to me last season. I have added the words.)

What can you do with so many Christmases behind you but compare. And like all comparisons, the old ones fare better. I had a friend who worked in a home for wayward boys many years ago, a group home where everyone lived in a big old Victorian house in the same town where I attended college. I was visiting one day while they were cooking breakfast for the boys, and one of my friend's co-workers began singing, "It's beginning to look a lot like oatmeal," to the tune of "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. And the damned song stuck. Every year when Christmas rolls around, I have this bad soundtrack in my head like one of the scratchy, far away records playing in the movie "Polar Express." Once in awhile, I will sing it, too.

This year, the old town is looking a lot like oatmeal. This is noticeable. Things are beat. There are not nearly as many Christmas lights as in years gone by. The Avenue has not been as crowded. There seems to be less Christmas cheer. This is to be expected, perhaps, in a world where the word Christmas is an offense to the spirit of diversity. "Happy Holidays," people say, and indeed, that is what I sent out to my friends--Holiday Cards. A few years ago, I sent out Festivus cards. But Festivus is a stripped down, scaled back version of the Christmas decadence with which I grew up when Santas outnumbered manger scenes ten to one. Even Santa and his Elves are disappearing. And with that, the Christmas of my past. Another antique.

And so walking around doing my minimal shopping these past few days, the season seemed hollow. The mall was done up in a Holiday motif, and there was even a Santa's Village in the center, but the mall looked little different than usual. The advertisers do a good job of exciting us all year long now. I stumbled from store to store forgetting my mission as my attention was drawn to all the things I wanted for myself. I guess the whole Spirit of Giving went the way of Wall Street, too. A little for you, a lot for me.

Then, of all places and things, I was walking through my neighborhood grocery store buying food for tomorrow night's dinner with my mother. That is what we do, my mom and I, as we have done for years. My grocery store is not a hip place, just another corporate grocery that now finds profit in organic foods and sixties music. But as I was walking toward the champagne isle (yes, this season champagne has a small isle to itself), the song coming over the store speakers caught my attention. It was Billie Holiday! Oh, my! Who had thought to put that on? And suddenly, the Oatmeal song vanished. It was Christmas, by god, and loaded up with freshly caught wild salmon and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, I was caught up in the old Christmas Spirit.

Miracles. They are small, not large, and we are lucky when they happen. I will do my traditional Christmas Eve activities today, though they will seem puny compared to the Golden Era. I will do my last minute shopping and have my presents wrapped by mothers of the high school crew team. And I will have drinks at a sidewalk cafe with some people I used to know better than I do now. People will come and go from the table, a rotating crowd shopping and drinking and saying hello, and I will be sad to see how tragically old they have grown. And then, as the light begins to fade, I will go to my mother's to prepare a meal. We will turn on some Christmas special if we can find one, and we will drink the champagne and open presents rather than wait till morning as we used to do, and then I will drive homeward, maybe stopping by the Avenue for a last drink at one of the bars that has yet to close, and I will think old and sad thoughts before I go home. And I will tell myself that life is good.

And so, for the record, "It's beginning to look a lot like. . . ."

Unspoken

(unknown)

Maybe it is just me.

* * * * *

"JR is working," she said. "I'm just baking some bread."

I didn't have much experience with places that had been purposely decorated. My family bought furniture and carpet and lamps. A big faux-leather recliner might be the one thoughtfully placed piece in a room. But Sandy had transformed the inside of the little "modular unit" with batik wall hangings and candles and and objects of all kinds. The smell of the baking bread went straight to my blood.

Sandy and JR were living like adults. They were staying in town for Christmas, just the two of them, rather than going home. JR worked in a lumber yard part time while he went to school. I don't think he had to. His father had plenty of money, and his family lived in one of the nicest homes in our part of town. JR's father was a big man with a thick southern accent that sounded to me like Big Daddy or Foghorn Leghorn, a caricature of a southern boss. His posture, too, accentuated his size, shoulders thrown back, head raised so that you had to look up to really see him. By contrast, JR was smallish, of medium height and and a less-than-robust frame. He was a great basketball player, a slow but clever guard who could shoot the lights out, but he wouldn't do in a fight. JR was seeking some independence, I thought, from his father and his background, but he had some of his father's worst attributes--the haughty southern voice, the piercing, dark eyes that stared into you when he talked, head tilted like his father's.

Sandy, on the other hand, defined a certain femininity for me. She was soft and blonde and had a voice like honey. She was smallish, but not small, with a rounded figure that was not round but shapely, a sort of fertility goddess on a small scale. She had fair, smooth skin like a child's that made you want to rub it. But it was her eyes that undid me, dark brown eyes with blonde hair. I don't know what she did or how she did it, but it seemed to me that I was holding my breath waiting for them to turn to me again. Her glance was intimate. It felt like sex.

JR wouldn't be home until five, she said as she put on some music. Would we like something to drink? I don't remember if we said yes or no, but we sat down and chatted for a bit. We couldn't wait for JR, we said. We were driving back.

In the car, Mike and I just looked at each other. I guess he felt it, too. Neither of us would say it, but something seemed to float in the air, the smell of the bread, the batik wall hangings, the candles, and . . . her.

"JR's working, huh?" I said.

"I guess so."

"That bread sure smelled good."

"Sure did."

It had been a day. We had a new place to live now. We'd bring our stuff with us when we returned after New Year. We sat back and watched the country drift by the windows listening to the engine of the VW bug. Neither of us said anything. Mike and me. We were roommates.

Just Thinking--Oh!--And Winter

The news seemed weird to me this morning. I've been thinking.

Apparently, the military now sees pregnancy as a medical condition equivalent to drug addiction and self-mutilation, something that is punishable by court martial. The general in charge of making this order said that he doesn't see the new rule being carried out to the full extent in many cases. He will consider each case on an individual basis. It will be solely his decision. He will be the one who decides.

Who knew that kids would be fucking if you put them together for twelve months of weirdness? Don't ask, don't tell won't work here. Benefits to being gay in the military, I guess.

Then there is Chocolate Girl, the Black Pearl made famous by the popular Chinese television show "Go! Oriental Angel." See? Oriental. Not "Asian Angel." Maybe it is a bad translation. Again, who knew that Orientals were prejudiced? It must be the Asians who aren't. Tibetans, I think, love everybody.

Maybe waking up at four a.m. every day is making me strange. I sit here in the dark and read what other people read, but it seems to effect me differently. My mother, for instance, always comes away with a different take on things. If I make a comment about one of the news stories I've read, she'll say something like, "Well, what do you want? A bunch of pregnant women shooting people? That's just what we need, a pregnant army. Genius, honey, genius."

I made that up. She doesn't sound like that. But the basics are there. And she, like many people, would think that the case-by-case consideration sounds reasonable. I wonder what the Oriental girl, Black Chocolate, would think about that?

But I've been provocative enough this morning. My job is to perceive, not to opine.

* * * * *

Before Christmas, Mike and I drove back to school to find a new place to live. The apartment complex we'd been living in had been sold to the University and was to become a married housing complex. We could stay there one more term, we were told, but we'd decided to rent a place together. I'd never had a roommate before and was a little scared. But it would be cheaper, and we were hanging out together anyway. And so we got into his little VW bug and cruised the hundred miles north.

The town was deserted now and strange. With all the students gone, it was just another small town surrounded by prairies and farmland, the gently rolling hills now brown and golden. Things were beautifully worn and dull, not shiny and new as they were becoming back home. It was cold and clear, and here and there we saw people walking around in jeans and flannel jackets hunched against the wind.

We had decided to rent a trailer on the outskirts of town, halfway between the university and the small town of Archer. The park was situated in a stand of oaks overlooking a big lake. We stopped at a concrete building that was the office at the front entrance. Walking the ten feet from the car to the office door, I felt that I was sealing my fate.

"Hi, we want to rent a trailer," Mike said to the woman behind a metal desk.

"You students?"

I wondered if it made a difference. If we said "yes," would she turn us away or charge us double? Her face gave away nothing.

"Yes."

"You'll have to put down a deposit and a month's rent," she said, and she began going through all the rules and regulations and legal things related to trailer park living. Eventually, she said, "C'mon, I'll show you what we've got."

The first trailer she showed us was fairly new and clean with a small living room and combination kitchen/dining room. There were bedrooms at either end. Mike and I looked around like we were trying to find something for a minute, but there was nothing really to see. We were merely trying to feel ourselves together in this new place. He looked at me. I bobbed my head slightly, shoulders hunched, my mouth and eyes silently asking and answering at the same moment.

"OK," he said. "We'll take it."

After signing all the paperwork and writing out the checks, the woman gave us two sets of keys. It was done. This was our new home.

We drove back to the trailer to see it again, parking in the little driveway beside the front door. We opened the door with our new keys and went in, each of us going to a bedroom, thinking about what would fit into the spaces, and then we sat on the floor for awhile and began to talk.

"I like being out here," I said. "It is pretty country."

"Let's go over to JRs place," he said. "We'll just say hi."

JR lived closer to town in a group of "modular homes." These were just trailers without wheels as far as I could tell. He lived with his girlfriend, Sandy, who had been the prettiest girl in our high school and who had gotten pregnant by a fellow I had hung around with some. She was a year younger than Mike and JR and me, and she had missed a good part of her sophomore year while she went away to live with her aunt in North Carolina. And when she came back, JR was all about her. I had never liked JR, but he and Mike were best friends, so I guessed I'd be seeing a lot of him.

When we got to JRs, Mike knocked on the door, and Sandy answered.

"Hey Mike," she said in a honeysuckled voice, "Come in."

! ! ! Postscript ! ! !

Yikes! I forgot to mention that yesterday was the Winter Solstice--The First Day of Winter. Equal parts Night and Day. Twelve and Twelve. Cosmic Algebra. If you were wondering about all the weirdness, there it is. That is why.

The days grow shorter. Winter.

Winter, Winter, Winter.

The Human Instinct

I'm not sure where I got this image. I download lots of photos for reference. I know this was from a Tumblr page, photographer unknown. It is the look I'm going for in a couple of upcoming projects, so strangely, disturbingly beautiful. I may have to invest time and money into doing the wet plate process. Messy. Toxic. Difficult. But what else is there to do?

I am lost right now. It happens. No plans for the holidays, I feel a certain catatonia settling in. I find it difficult to move from wherever I am. I get up so awfully early but don't leave the house until criminally late. I am independent by nature, but I'm becoming anti-social.

I've been reading "The Moon And Sixpence" from time to time. I'll finish it tonight just to have done with it. I'm disappointed in it, but last night, I came across a passage that stung me. The narrator exclaims to the painter, Strickland, a character based on Paul Gaugin:

"'Is it possible for any man to disregard others entirely?' I said, though more to myself than to him. 'You're dependent on others for everything in existence. It's a preposterous attempt to try to live only for yourself and by yourself. Sooner or later you'll be ill and tired and old, and then you'll crawl back into the herd. Won't you be ashamed when you feel in your heart the desire for comfort and sympathy? You're trying an impossible thing. Sooner or later the human being in you will yearn for the common bonds of humanity.'"

After that, I closed the book and went to bed.

Fish Story

I don't get it. I used to be able to fish, but now, I don't do it so well. I was never an avid fisherman. Not a fisherman at all, really, but I liked getting out to the places it could take you. When I take this fellow out to teach him, or really, just to show off, we catch nothing. I can't remember all the knots for tying leaders and hooks. The lake is full of weeds now, not like it used to be, so clear and clean, and every time we throw the line, it gets fouled so that nothing would be able to find the bait if it was starving. It is a shame, I tell myself. No wonder kids don't go out any longer. It isn't as much fun. Things have been ruined.

So this kid's grandmother comes to town, and one afternoon when the two of them are alone, he tells her he wants to go fishing. This in itself to me is remarkable. He goes to the garage and gets his pole and tackle and they walk to the water. His first cast, he catches a tree branch and has to break the line. But he is determined. He walks back to the house and gets another hook, another plastic worm, and ties it all up by himself. Back to the lake, just his grandmother and him.

I'm on my way home when I get a call.

"You won't believe what I caught!"

"What do you mean?" I asked, worried that he has some awful rash or fungus or something worse.

"I caught the BIGGEST fish you've ever seen! You should have seen it!"

"What? Where?"

"At the canal. I just threw my line in and I could see the fish coming and then I had him. It was a big, big bass."

"How big?"

And of course he unwittingly tells his first fish tale. But his grandmother confirms that it was BIG.

They didn't have a camera. And I wasn't there. Wouldn't you know it.

Well, the kid is just as cool as he can be.

I had another chance to look bad on Friday. He wanted to go skate at the ice rink they've set up in the park. He skates. I never have. It was chance to put another chink in the myth.

As it turns out, I'm a better skater than fisherman.

This morning, I got a shock. I looked at the calendar and it is December 20! Is Christmas Friday? Holy smokes, I haven't even sent cards yet. What happened?

Suddenly, I feel the sadness and the gloom begin.

Coda

It has turned cold overnight. I can hear wind shaking the tree limbs outside my dark windows before sunrise. It is a good suggestive sound. Today will be different. There will be a change. Is that what I hope for?

Codes. The philosophy behind what we think and do. Or maybe only "do." The problem is that they are open to ridicule. Any well defined code is. If yours can't can be ridiculed, you have not worked on it enough. Try harder.

Here's one that has been identified in the N.Y. Times Book Review by Leisl Schillinger:

Don’t be fooled by the trout, the dogs, the pickup trucks, the whiskey, the cowboys and Indians, and the war stories. Beneath the rugged trappings of Jim Harrison’s manly fiction hides the tensile, scorch-proof frame of the red-hot romance, whose heroes are totems of an idealized, brute masculinity. In the feminine version of the genre, the heroines typically possess awesome powers of desirability. In Harrison’s spin, the male leads aren’t much to look at (usually), yet they possess awesome powers of desire. Whether a whippersnapper of 12 or a “geezer rancher” in his 70s, the Harrison hero unfailingly sparks the ardor of any girl or woman he encounters, even when he’s sick, drunk and drugged, having his teeth pulled, passing kidney stones or dying. He doesn’t mind if a woman is a few decades older than he is or half a century younger; whether she’s a king-size Lakota divorcée pushing 60 or a “miniature” young nurse with a boyfriend. Nor does he care if she’s cruel or kind, married or single, straight or gay. Whoever she is, if she’ll have him, he’s up for the job.

An "idealized, brute masculinity." Harrison didn't say this. It is just what Schillinger finds evident in the works. She doesn't care for them much. She concludes her review remarking that whether you appreciate Harrison's work is a question of taste, "and perhaps of glands." The first part of that statement is obvious, the second part needless. Perhaps Schillinger's code could be mined, too. She has a website you might enjoy.

I'm not touting Harrison's book. I haven't read it. I don't care for the Brown Dog character. Some of the spoofing is too much for me. But Harrison is more complex than Schillinger's totalizing paragraph lets on.

The sun is up now, slipping in and out of the cloudy sky. For a moment, the leaves of the oaks across the street are fired a bright red and gold. But now the dullness has returned, the sky an old bruise. The cat lays on my feet and the gas heater fires up. I am hungry, and there is a good breakfast bread in the kitchen full of dates and nuts and raisins. I will heat it up with too much butter and drink a glass of thick whole milk, wholesome organic stuff that feels like velvet on my tongue. I have Christmas cards and Holiday cards to write. And there are presents I must buy. I think that people will be out today shopping on the Avenue. I should take some photos today just to show you.

I just remembered that tonight is Vespers at the beautiful little college chapel near my house. Years ago, the first time I went, I was swept away. The chapel, the music, the light. I felt positively medieval. Remembering it overwhelms me just now.

There was a girl once. It is shameful, you will say one day when I write about it, when I get there some years from now in my slow, slow narrative. She called me on this night ten years ago. She wanted to come to my house. Terrified, I said yes. She was late, then later, so I left and went to Vespers. Oh, I am leaving too much out. I am forced to now. If I tell you I weeped, you will not know why. But I did, trying to hide it from the people I knew. When I came home, she was there. From that moment to the turn of the century, I burned with the flames of hades and paradise. But I can't tell it now, I think. No, not yet.

For too long afterwards, I lived in a terribly adolescent state. I'm still like that with things like this song. I've posted it before. I'll post again, probably. Call it neoteny.

Orientalism Esid

No sleep. Rain. Dull gray light. Is there anyone anywhere who dreams art? Think it, sure, but dream it? I wonder what that says about things. I'll think about it and get back to you.

This guy is just killing me. Those of you who do not like my "Postcards from Nowhere" series will probably like his photos more. They are good. I think I'll write to him and ask him to stop it. I have ideas. I swear, I can catch up. What's fun for me, though, is if you Google Osama Esid, my blog comes up second on the list. I need to make a website of my photos. Posting every day is good, but much gets diluted. I am almost ready for some of my pictures to be seen as a group. But damn, I'd better hurry. Yes, I'll ask him to quit it.

* * * * *

I couldn't quit thinking about it. I'd picture some couple coming over and everyone having a drink and being excited, flirting with the other couple's husband or wife, and then the kissing and the undressing. Sure, I'd heard about it, seen in in movies like "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," but I'd never known anyone who had done it. And I kept thinking about the look in Bill's wife's eyes as she pulled me toward the bedroom. Swingers. It had seemed like a cultural joke, something greasy middle-aged couples were excited by. But now the sexual revolution had taken hold in the bedrooms of working class trailer park couples. I mean, they'd always cheated, but this wasn't cheating. This was straight up hedonism.

Over the break, I saw people from high school I'd not seen for awhile. Some were home from colleges on Christmas break, but most were still living in town. A few were married and some had babies. A number of fellows had become firemen. They liked the life, they said, with so many days off. They worked for twenty-four hours at a time and smoked pot at the station when they were there. Many had motorcycles. And as in high school, I felt odd around them as they jockeyed about. Sideburns and mustaches didn't mean much. For all of it, everything seemed pretty much the same.

And so I spent most of my time with Sherri, passions inflamed. Everything was crazy. It was Christmas.

* * * * Postscript * * * *

Dream Interupted

OK. You get a kick out of this, right? I woke even earlier today. I have a rule. If I wake up before four o'clock, I stay in bed. After four, I get up. I figure that fatigue will keep me in bed sooner or later.

I say to people I have the old man's disease, and maybe it is in my case because I don't remember getting up so early before. I don't remember getting up before dawn. But I have a friend who is very young and who has not been able to sleep for years. I work with a woman who never sleeps, she says. Stress? Drugs? Alcohol? Some trouble with the biorhythms?

I am dopey these mornings, heavy limbed and slow-witted. Since it is still dark as I write this, I am thinking of going back to bed as soon as this is posted. The three cups of coffee I've consumed will not bother my sleep. I don't know why. I usually sleep an hour when I go back to bed, and I finish dreaming. Well, of course, that gives me an idea of where to go with the narrative. The Narrative. Jesus, I kill myself, believe me. But one thing I must mention is that while I've changed some of the names of people in writing this, I have been away from it so long I can't remember what I was calling them. Tommy's wife, for instance. I think I only used a name for her once, and I can't remember it. I spent an hour yesterday going back through the posts trying to find it, but the search was fruitless. Leslie? Brenda? Let's call her "Brenda" today. And they have a child born the day that Nixon resigned. I don't think I've named her yet. Or maybe I did. Ashton. I think she is Ashton.

* * * * *

Tommy and Brenda had moved from the government housing project where they lived before. Something had happened and they lost the place. How do you get kicked out of welfare housing? They said something about some cars being broken into and something being stolen, and they said that they had not paid the rent. None of it added up, really, but when Tommy mentioned his little brother, Karl, I knew he had to have done something to queer the deal. Karl was evil, a little sociopath destined for prison. I'd always gotten along with him fine, but man, if you didn't know him, you sure didn't want him around.

The new place was a trailer in a weird sort of trailer park that looked more like an odd collection of trailers than anything actually plotted and planned. They were renting a ten by sixty trailer that was fairly new. I took Sherri over late one afternoon to see them. I don't know why I took her. Maybe I didn't think about it, or maybe I just didn't know better. Sherri's world had not been like this, had not been filled with people whose lives were broken down nor lives that were in the process of breaking. She did not know people who lived on the margins of things, in government housing and trailer parks, did not know those who could not or would not hold a job, who had arrest records and parole officers, who were drunks and addicts and worse. And even though I felt I had escaped all of that, I could not let go of everything. We still cling to the remnants of our past no matter how bad it is, for it is our past, the place of our youth and memories, the thing that formed us, the thing, above all, that makes us human.

Sherri wore that sweet smile that looked as if it had been there since birth, but I could see her eyes searching around for something familiar that she couldn't find. I watched her step carefully across the rutted lot and up to the grid metal stairs that led to the vinyl-covered door. Brenda let us in.

Inside, there was a Christmas tree decorated with shiny metal tinsel and colored light bulbs blinking on and off. Brenda gave me a hug and said hello to Sherri. "Tommy's getting up. He's getting dressed." I watched Sherri standing there, her smile more brilliant than ever, noticing as if for the first time how low a ceiling in a trailer was. "Sit down," Brenda offered, and Sherri situated herself on the low couch crossing her legs and adjusting her short skirt that barely covered her. Tommy was going to get an eyeful.

He came down the short hallway from the bedroom buttoning his shirt while we traded hey mans. I saw him notice Sherri with a little start. He sat across from us in a faux-colonial chair that popped and cracked at the joints every time he shifted his weight. And then Ashton came running out and everyone relaxed glad to make her the center of attention.

Tommy was working in the canning plant now like his step-father and Brenda's father and Brenda's two brothers. He told us a little about that, and I asked about some others we knew. They were all doing much the same thing. His sister's boyfriend was working at the canning plant, too. Donny had stayed with the union and had gotten his license as a carpenter's apprentice. Tommy's car wasn't running, so he was catching rides to work with his relatives. Sherri listened to all this talk of people she didn't know as Ashton told her about the Christmas tree, pointing to here and there while Brenda told her not to touch things.

Suddenly Ashton said, "I've got to go to the bathroom," and ran out of the room. In a minute, though, she was back, dragging her potty chair behind her. She took care to place it in the center of the room, then pulled her dress up and her drawers down and sat down to pee. Tommy was laughing as Brenda said, "Ashton is learning to use the potty." I wasn't sure what to do, so Brenda said,"Just clap for her when she is finished." Ashton was all concentration and seriousness for awhile, then she stood up smiling while we all applauded and told her what a wonderful thing she had done. I looked over at Sherri uneasily to see how she was taking it.

Just then, there was a knock on the door. It was the neighbors, people I had known from the old trailer park. Bill had been the nerdiest fellow there. He was soft and quiet and looked like something made from Playdough. He was considered an artist because he liked to draw, and now he was working in a framing store. His wife had once been the girlfriend of his best friend, but he had moved on and so out of disappointment and with the hope of somehow keeping him near, she had taken up with Bill. She was clearly the master of that relationship, and he was happy about it. After some chit-chat, they asked us over to see their trailer and we said we would stop by before we left. And then, when they were gone, Tommy and Brenda smiled and told us their story.

"They're swingers," Tommy said. "They hang around with other couples who are swingers, too, and they all swap." I looked at Brenda who was nodding with seriousness. "They tried to get us over to play Twister," she said. "It's really weird."

I couldn't get my mind around it. I could see the plastic matt with all the painted dots and tried to imagine the four of them in the living room of a small trailer stretching and bending their arms and legs around. Jesus Christ--Bill! Surely this was the first girl he'd ever slept with.

"It's her," Brenda said. "He just goes along with it." I don't know what Sherri was thinking. Things had gone seriously strange, and I figured it was time to go.

"Well, listen man, it's good to see you, but we've got to go to Sherri's friend's house for dinner, so. . . ."

While Brenda was saying goodbye to Sherri, Tommy walked out with me and said, "I screwed her."

"What?"

"I fucked Bill's wife. She's crazy. Every time Bill's at work and Brenda leaves, she comes over. She won't leave me alone. Brenda's suspicious."

Just then, Bill's wife came outside. She was walking over to where we stood.

"C'mon, you said you were coming over to see the trailer."

"Well, we've got to go. . . ."

"No, you said you'd come over. Come over. You said."

"Tommy was looking at Brenda who was smirking. Sherri's eyes were wider than usual."

"Well, OK, just for a second."

Tommy gave a sardonic chuckle. "OK, man, see you later."

I was not friends with Bill and barely knew her, so stepping inside the trailer was awkward. The trailer was neat as a pin, all the furniture new, Bill's paintings and drawings covering the walls.

"Are these yours?" I asked him. Yes he said modestly. There were several nude sketches of a woman.

"That's me," his wife exclaimed pointing to one of them. And just like that, she had hold of my hand pulling me toward the bedroom, saying, "Come here, I want to show you more." Bill was trying to show Sherri some of the work he had done in clay, but I could see the panic in her eyes. Suddenly, Sherri had hold of my other hand and was pulling me hard and saying, "No, we've got to go," with an anxious outrage I'd never heard from her before. And there I stood, arms extended, pulled in two directions in a human tug-of-war. And though I knew it was wrong, I was excited hoping guiltily that somehow Bill's wife might be persuasive. It was an unconscious desire, I am sure, not something I thought out, just a moment's youthful passion at the thought of it all. Sherri was undaunted.

"What whackos," I said to her as we pulled away. "I mean really. . . ." Sherri said nothing, so I kept talking. "Can you imagine that? Who'd want to have sex with them? They're not even attractive. Boy, I wouldn't want to see the couples they're hanging out with," all this while visions of the wife's willing, naked body flooded my brain. "I love you," I said. "I'm glad you're not like that."

And truly, I was. She was an angel. But now she was a quiet angel saying nothing.

In the silence that filled the car, I thought about it all. I mean, I couldn't not come over again. Tommy was my friend.

Tender Hearted Men

Many mornings I wake far too early. Today is one of them. So I get up in the dark, drink down some vitamin powders, and put on a pot of coffee. I turn on the laptop, sit at the dining room table, and open up CNN.com. If anyone walks by in the dark (and they do), they see me through the un-shuttered windows lit by the ghostly light of the Xenon screen (I know it is not Xenon, but I like saying that). I must look terrible, hair a mess, images from the internet reflecting in my crooked glasses, face frozen with that awful blankness that everyone has when they are semi-conscious, slack-faced, staring. I will have been woken by bad dreams, images of my life coming back to me, all the fears and disappointments of what has happened, the projections of horrors to come. It is true, this vision. Not mine, but the one inflicted on the passerby that makes them shudder, glad they are not the man they think they see.

This morning in this state of un-rapture (o.k., misery, affliction) I came across a review of "Crazy Heart," a movie that has limited release today in Los Angeles and New York. I'm sure they did that with Oscar hopes, and so the rest of us will wait for the film to come to our own hometown. The review is well written, nailing the cliches of the genre before gently letting the film off that hook. Here is an excerpt:

Unlike Mr. Bridges, Bad, who is 57, seems to be running on the last fumes of his talent. He drives from one gig to another in a battered truck, playing bowling alleys and bars with local pickup bands and sleeping in less-than-deluxe accommodations. He smokes and drinks as if trying to settle a long-ago bet between his liver and his lungs about which he would destroy first. The chorus to his signature song (one of several written especially for Mr. Bridges) observes that “falling feels like flying, for a little while.” That time has long since passed for Bad, who is scraping the bottom and trying not to complain too much about it (except when he can get his agent on the phone).

Drinking, cheating, love gone wrong — a lot of country music expresses the weary stoicism of self-inflicted defeat. Loss and abjection are two of the chords that define the genre. A third is redemption, which has also been a theme of modest, regionally inflected American independent cinema for quite some time.

Jeff Bridges, of course, is perfect for the part, as was Mickey Rourke for "The Wrestler." He was trained for it early in films like "Fat City," "Cutter's Way," and "Rancho Deluxe," films about anti-heroes whose tag-lines might read, "Tender Hearted Men: Lonesome, Sad, and Blue."

I fear the film, of course, a story about a broke-down man stumbling toward a bad old age. It is the kind of story a generation was raised on--Bridges' generation--about the generation before. A generation who watched all those films and read all those stories (i.e. Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane) in the seventies will see the updated version. But man, it don't look too good, as they say, in the era of Paris Hilton, The Kardashians, and The Girls Next Door. Well, on second thought. . . .

Growing up, I believed theirs was a heroic stance, the only one that made much sense in an uncaringly hostile world. Alienation and loneliness, I thought, were all you could count on, rather like taxes and death. But now, I'd rather not think so. There is, I fear, too much of the self-fulfilling prophecy at work in that.

Still, I'm looking forward to the movie, hoping to feel somehow that I've escaped, that I'll be able to say, as I leave the theater, "But for the Grace of God. . . . "

The sun is up now, or what passes for it these gray and foggy days. I will not look so strange to those who are passing by. Daylight has normalized me a bit. I will not appear so ethereal and terrifying, not as "broke down. " In a little while, I'll shower and dress, and I'll try to pass for normal.

Maybe tonight I will sleep until dawn.

* Postscript *

I forgot to mention an old film that came to mind, "Mackintosh and T.J." starring Roy Rogers. The movie was made in 1975, and I haven't seen it since, but I remember it being good. I found a copy for sale on eBay and put in a bid today. Most of the movies I remember seeing when I was in college don't hold up, but I remember thinking this a wonderfully ironic role for Rogers who plays the whole thing good and straight. I'll let you know after I see it again, though.

Christmas Spirit

It is very un-Christmas-like here, which is a telling comment, no? I mean, I have lived here since I was five, and I still think of Christmas weather as being like those images on Christmas cards. Does anyone ever speak of Chanukah-like weather? Maybe. I've lots of Jewish friends and have never heard tell of it. But it is warm and foggy here, the wetness lingering a large part of the day. Special weather, but not Christmas-like. It will be eighty-five today, I think, but it will feel warmer. One Christmas Eve a few years ago, it snowed in the middle of the day, a freak thing that never happened before and hasn't happened since. But what a day that was. I was shopping on the Avenue with a friend, eating and drinking and laughing, and it began to snow. I'm sure of it.

I am worn out with worrying and with work. Give me the respite of Christmas Spirit. Let it gather others up in its bright wings, too. I want it to be quiet and close and saturated and dimly lit. I want old Christmas specials on T.V. Yes, schmaltz. I wouldn't mind having my heart beat quickly thinking about Santa's coming, too.

* * * * *

Home was too familiar now. I'd been away and coming home was not a shock but an awakening. This was me, I thought. This had been my life. There were parts of it to which I was still attached, of course, mostly from my childhood. But the town was changing rapidly and had outgrown my childhood now. And too quickly, within days, it felt natural again and normal. I saw my father and stayed at my mother's house since she was not there much at all. And of course, I spent as much time as possible with Sherri.

She was a great girl with a big, open heart. She was working at night now as a waitress at a Pizza Hut. The manager was her best friend's boyfriend, an older guy who had a business degree. He made lots of money as manager, but he worked all the time. He aspired to much more, of course, but for now. . . . Some nights I would go to see her at work and she would give me free pizza and beer, but it was a little awkward, so I didn't go very much. Watching her work was fascinating in a way, like peeping through a window, but I was afraid something might happened for which I wasn't prepared to deal yet, and so I was always a little bit on edge.

Days, though, were ours. We went shopping for Christmas presents and held hands and ate sandwiches and drank beer at Mr. Dunderbach's. The mall was a Christmas Wonderland of lights and decorations with a big Christmas display in the middle, a Christmas Village with Santa at the center attended by his elves. It was crowded and close in the mall now, people carrying big bags and always traveling in groups. There was a promise in the air, a gayety that was like laughter.

One day, Sherri asked me if I'd ride with her to the Sunniland Center. I looked at her with complete puzzlement. Sunniland was a hospital that took care of the extremely handicapped, those whose I.Q.s were in the low double digit range. "What are you going to do there?" I asked bewildered. "I'm going to take some presents," she said. My head was spinning. "Do you know somebody there?" I asked, thinking that she might have some relative she'd never spoken of. "No, I just like taking things for the kids."

When we got there, I sat in the car and watched her carry in an armful of brightly wrapped presents. I couldn't go in. I wasn't prepared for this in any way. I felt awful about it, but ambushed, too. The day was high and bright. It was perfect. And there I sat inside the car in a bare parking lot on the edge of town thinking about what I didn't want to think about. I felt bad and selfish and worse by comparison. Sherri was rich with compassion and generosity. She did this without pomp or fanfare. She simply did it by nature. But I was incapable of such things. It was not in me. Nurture, not nature, I thought, having grown up around the mean and simple and impoverished. It was something to overcome. I knew this. But that wouldn't happen today. When, I wondered? Who knew?

I watched Sherri as she approached the door, trying to hold the packages and pull the handle at the same time, unable to do either. Some packages fell to the ground, and then a black man in green scrubs opened the door and helped her. He picked up some packages and the two of them were smiling. I watched as they disappeared inside. Then nothing. I sat in the car in the hollow of that perfect day watching the door, waiting for her to return.

The Way Back

Don't pay attention for a moment. Then two. You are too tired, too stressed. There is always too much to do. And then. . . it slips away. In a panic, you want it back. Next time, you say, I will be better. I will pay attention then.

But there is no going back, no re-dos. It doesn't matter who tells you, though, you can not help but let it slip away.

* * * * *

Driving back from the university to the place where I'd grown up, I was tethered on two ends. One hundred miles, that was all, and all the difference. Funny, though, how the drive always seemed to be uphill going back home. I drove through farmland and ranches, pretty countryside I always wanted to pause in, always wishing to stop the car and find out what there was off the interstate. And always, I drove on.

Christmas would be interesting, I thought. I've been away and now there was the coming home. I would see people I'd not seen in months. I'd have stories to tell. I was a success. And I'd see my father and tell him stories and I would visit my mother. And I would see Sherri and her family and we'd all eat and laugh and watch TV.

How it had happened, I wasn't sure, but it had happened and I was happy.

Finals

It is my mother's birthday. I have flowers and champagne. I will combine her present with the one I am getting her for Christmas. Don't worry, I am not a cheapskate. I am getting her a new iMac. I got her old one about four years ago. She will like the new one a lot. Anyway, I must get ready to take her to brunch. Here's a photo of her when she was in the hoot show.

Just kidding.

It is time to continue the narrative. I must get through college at least.

* * * * *

It was finals week. All I had to do was get through this that hung between me and Christmas break like so many blank miseries that I would surely endure. Everything was difficult, but it had to be done. All I thought was to get through it.

Each day that week, the town grew emptier and more lonesome. I knew people who did not have finals, or maybe only one or two. I had five and they stretched throughout the week. Why had I majored in zoology, I wondered? Every major was easier than this one. Fucking Jacques Cousteau. And fuck Vladi, too.

And now I could feel the shortness of the days, the blue afternoons and the long dusk that followed, then the settling cold darkness. You could hear it if you tried, could hear the dimness and the dark.

But each day, a thing was done, then another, so that toward the end of the week, I was beginning to enjoy the town and the quiet and lonesomeness. I would go home soon. But now there was this, the almost empty place with the cold wind blowing across the big plain, rattling trees and lifting leaves with a whispering hollowness.

And then it was done. Finals taken, courses completed. Before I left, I walked one time across the campus. No one was around now, just me, some ground crews, a few janitors, and here or there some other stray who, as I , hesitated before leaving, making certain that everything was taken care of, that everything was done.

Saturday Night Dead

I have been having a recurring dream lately. Or ongoing, for it is a little different each night. I've been chosen to do the opening of Saturday Night Live. I am at rehearsal, but am given no script. There is nothing on the teleprompter. I am on stage with nothing. The band seems disgusted that I have been chosen and openly show disdain. "I can do this," I tell myself, and I think about making up my own script. But I am confused. Why have they chosen me? What am I supposed to represent? I ask the cellist only to play his part to the opening song. He does a bad job and quits part way through. No one is helping.

I know what all you little Freuds are thinking. But at least in this dream I am dressed.