...more recent posts
May 01, 2001
Mostly clear in Central Park. Have self-prescribed three walks in it a day to counteract the "work": pre-work, lunch and post-work. The Park is in a splendid state just now and its proximity to work is going some way towards eroding my irrational and long-held dislike of the place. I like a cruder form of nature, but it is preferable to the confines of the robber baron office. Whatsmore, one can't help but conjure the presence of Mr. Wilson when strolling there, is he behind every blooming thing?
It turns out that the acoustics of the office, which disallow any private utterings, derive from the fact that it was once a music room. Where we ply our keyboards they once played clavichords.
Apr 27, 2001
Spring must really be here. Today I saw David Bowie ordering take out food in a pink suit. He had a bad dye job. Many people in New York do have bad dye jobs. My theory is that it's an attempt to make ourselves more vivid in all the chaos.
I promised myself not to work in an office again. I don't remember my first day at the Institute of Irish Studies, or Morrison and Foerester, or O'Keefe and Duffy, or Puffy and Stuffy, or Mackie and Wacky, or at Girth, Mirth & Worth, but I do remember my first day at the Fund. Because it was Tuesday, this Tuesday. And because it was sheer horror. Struggling with PCs that seem designed to obfuscate the task at hand; forced to call on the computer guy who looks like every prime suspect in every British murder mystery; bleeding like a stuck pig with cramps that remind me of Paradise Lost (the serpent gnawing on the bowels bit); editing Kafkaesque documents designed to improve health care in the US (did any of these people ever go to an Act Up demonstration, why not just have a revolution?). Something in the structure of this robber baron mansion, where the Fund is housed, makes every sound travel and retains every degree of heat. Hence no opportunity to make a decent personal phone call and rank arm pits by 5pm. Lunch is served in the basement but it's too reminiscent of boarding school so I bolt for the park and an overpriced sandwich. The blossoms are insults; lunch will end. Data imput eroding the nerve myelin and the imagination. I keep wondering about the others. Are they less miserable than I am for the eight hours that must be endured a day or just inured? What presumption on my part. I hope that I can keep on presuming that there is an alternative.
Mar 31, 2001
To follow up on the visiting friend that seemed so sad. He phoned and sounded less sad. Spring has arrived in Dublin and he is teaching a septuagenarian Italian lady English every afternoon. She talks a lot and maintains: "It is not the first love that you remember, it is the last." Something to be kept in mind. Her last love involved wrestling with the lover's colostomy bag, but this didn't seem to detract from the experience. The formerly sad friend remarked on how this woman, not young, was struggling - alone - to remain mentally and physically fit against the tide of age. How his afternoons and her talk, which was becoming repetitive, was like a poorly edited Beckett play. I think that the old Italian lady planted in my formerly sad friend's mind to get himself a young lady, which might be just what he needs.
We talked also of the various diseases being endured by European animals with hooves. Of how it was so contrary to the notion of spring to be surrounded by giant barbecues of beef that nobody would consume. Of the obvious comparisons to Bibilical passages containing pestilence and blight ensuing from immoral behaviour by the citizens, and of Shakespeare, where such national events were portents of evil times and political or monarchical evil doing.
Financial advertising is making me ill.
Yes, my sock drawer is more organized than my finances. Considerably so, and the socks themselves are a delight to behold.
No, I have not rolled my 401K over to The Rock. Something they recommend when you change jobs. I'm not sure I know exactly what a 401K is and the ad does not have a provision for those taking voluntary early retirement with the finances of an infant (without a trust fund.)
The copy that seems to most induce that heady nausea and feeling of complete ineptitude in me is: "Admit it, you're rich." I'm trying to admit that I am something at the other end of the spectrum. "Admit it, you're a financial disaster."
Mar 09, 2001
The joys of unemployment are manifold (so too are the fears, but we will speak of them another day). Yes, I am finally fully unemployed, it having taken me a month to move from the idea to the actuality.
Time to take buses, a form of transport favored by those who are not in a hurry and those who injury or age has forced to take advantage of the kneeling bus or the wheelchair platform, as opposed to the treacherous bowels of our subway.
One could feel at home here, recovering from employment, riding with the lame, the halt, the blind, the aged and those prone to counting out loud or to narrating their own physical state between bus stops. My co-riders and I witnessed a beautiful evening; a female four year old's tantrum; a man with a giant head (or was it just a hat too small?) who nearly choked on his gum; a drunken boxing match on Avenue A, which was more interprative dance than violence owing to just the right amount of inebriation; the chef of Prune lugging grocery bags (more dance).
The bus is a delicious vehicle for the voyeur as one cannot be spotted doing one's spotting owing to the nature of the windows. I cannot imagine why it was decided to put windows you could leer out of but not into on buses, but I am deeply grateful. I was recently able to watch an old girlfriend's corduroy-ed bottom recede up Ninth Avenue for several blocks; it's still a fine bottom. Being a resident of Los Angeles these days, corduroy bottom was suprised at my lack of surprise when she walked into my late place of work to surprise me. I kissed her hello and asked what had been in the Jeffrey shopping bag (you should know that this is an uncharacteristic activity—shopping—for the above mentioned, something akin to seeing your favorite living philosopher purchasing People magazine) she had been carrying that afternoon. Buses give us the advantage.
Mar 05, 2001
A friend came to stay and his sadness was infectious. I had donned the end of winter blinders, the one's that can assist you in blundering through until something in the weather resuscitates the soul. But his sadness crept around my blinders and entered through the eyes. He lay on our sofa and was so sad that he wanted to sleep all the time. I tried not to look for fear of further contamination; I tried to remain frenetically active but ground to a halt. I tried to remember how lucky I am not to have lost a long relationship, but I grew fearful that perhaps we are all on an inexorable slide that the gods are polishing to a higher sheen with every passing year. We went and walked in Central Park and I wished we had Alex there to guide us as we didn't know the names of the birds or the trees and it would have been comforting to give them names. The birds are different from Irish birds. I remember realising this in Hyannis too on my first trip to America. We noted that Americans are ostensibly similar but very different from us. It reminded us of Gulliver's Travels. We had dinner with a friend and she and I talked and talked and he grew more and more silent. I began to question how good a friend I am capable of being, if one can be of any help to the sad friend. I gave him some xanax and put him on the plane. He phoned to say he had slept all the way from JFK to his bed in Dublin, not remembering how he had arrived in his bed. He sounded better. He said he had decided to drink wine rather than beer. Last night I realised that what I want to say to him is "defend against your own treachery." I want to say it to us both.