i'm coming from a party at which i knew no one and cared nothing, and it's a dangerous time to be alone. tonight i proved to myself that i could live their lifestyle if i wanted to, that i could invent and paint and be the artist. but it feels like a lie. i enjoy it but something is holding me back. it's times like this when you feel that you're not in control of your life. that you are just stuck in the middle of perpetually divorcing parents, ideas that have infested your mind, that you can't get rid of. i can't forget what happened tonight, the vistas that i saw, the avenues that yawned gapingly for me to walk down. i don't know how to fit it into my life: is it a temptation? is it the true calling? if there is no god, all is permitted, but this is as much a curse as a blessing. i pass by the homeless man sheltering himself inside a cardboard box and several layers of resourceful clothing. i wonder if he notices me. i wonder if he notices anything. i feel a momentary pang of envy. i keep walking. a thought strikes me, and i start running. i don't know what it is; i just know that i need to run. it's a scary situation. i don't know why i'm running or where i'm running to. at some point i stop and i look up at the sky for direction, but there is only rain. i look back, expecting the party to be following me, but i can only see it in the distance of my mind. it hangs back like the mature individual that it is; it knows that i need to make my own decision. the question is whether the decision will not determine, post facto, who it is that made the decision. after all, what am i if not the composite of my decisions? i'm running too fast. i'm out of control. i can't figure out the world i'm running through with the speed i'm going at.
the tension is there, though. last night mikey and robert got into it and today they're on the opposite ends of the circle as the rest of us try to buffer things. the struggle isn't between mikey and robert so much as it is between them and the rest of us. they want resolution; we want comfort. i can't tell if they're getting what they want. the conversation is there, typical nonsense about classes and girls and whatnot. but mikey isn't himself. i can tell because mikey and i grew up together - an accident, we're not closer than anyone else, but it does mean that i can tell. i can't tell with robert, but he seems a bit more withdrawn than usual. robert starts shadowboxing. this isn't out of character for him, but given the events it has to mean something else. does it? it doesn't seem to mean anything. mikey pays no attention. there aren't any TV cameras; no one would find this interesting.
it's hard to believe, though. there's nothing happening except for the meaningless music blaring from passing cars. they go by so fast that you can't tell what they're saying, you know? i'm antsy. i want to be in one of those cars driving fast to god knows where. each one with a story and all i have is janice kicking dirt up with her nice shoes, her way of proving that she shouldn't be wearing them so mother will buy her sneakers. i know that janice is feeling the same way i am. i know that it's not her fault and that she'd like to get out if she could. but none of this stops me from telling her off for messing up her shoes. then things are quiet for awhile as the stream of cars ceases. there's no news here. you get the county paper every week and there's maybe one, two lines about our town. people have tried to change that, but the reporters come and see through it. i guess they're trained to. we're almost home now. janice is still kicking dirt and i can't talk to her like i want to, i can't talk to her about what we're both feeling, and i don't want to talk to her like the authority figure i deride by becoming.
every now and then i stop and look at the canyon floor that i'm plummeting towards. it changes colors depending on how the sun hits it, depending on which direction i'm going. i wonder if anyone lives there, then feel alive that i'm wondering such ridiculous things.
it's hard to explain why this is jazz at all. it's got lights. it's got dancing, new-school, hip dancing. it's even got a disco ball. but the flavor is unquestionably jazz, and it's accelerating. if we're going ten times as fast today as thirty years ago, what can the future possibly hold? i close my eyes and the image that comes to my head is a young man running across america. from new york to los angeles in three days. he doesn't stop; he only speeds up, never slows down. the animals don't understand what's going on, how man could have evolved so quickly. i don't understand either. someone taps me on the shoulder, and i turn around and lock eyes with a friend. all is understood. later, in the cab home, i don't understand. i don't remember anything. for with the speed of comprehension comes the ease of forgetfulness, and i don't know what happened tonight. i wonder how a third-person omniscient narrator would see things. we reach home and i give the cab driver a bill and get out. later i wonder what the bill was. even later i forget that i gave him a bill at all. i sleep fitfully, waiting to wake up again so i can live tomorrow. society is apparently enlightened now - we don't care about gender or race or age, to the extend where we don't even know what those things mean. but without these identifying polarizing trends in life it's impossible to make plans, it's impossible to be typecast enough, to get enough continuity, that plans are feasible. not that i can understand any of this, really. i find myself idly wondering if an external observer would view my life in fast motion or slow motion.
HISTORIAN: the words - ethos and schema - persist from a day when we could only do this two levels deep. then everything took off - we discovered the generalized device that would allow us to nest arbitrarily deep. we've been looking for a device that would allow us to nest infinitely deep, but we haven't found it. every now and then someone suggests that we should stop looking. so far no suggestion has passed but as a historian i live under the daily worry that one of them will and i'll be legislated out of existence. when i stop dancing, the zoo takes over. i need active energy to stay in the dance club; i need active energy to stay in the zoo, too, otherwise i'm just in the plane, but because the schema is higher-level i need less of it. HISTORIAN: when the schemata became universal, not just for the rich, darwin's theory of evolution, long since proven to be antiquated and irrelevant to today's society, kicked in again. people who could not sustain the mental effort to delve into the lower-level schemata never met the people who were there, or at least not in the right way. they were out of place. eventually this became a class system, as the people in the lowest (or highest, as they naturally put it) schemata began to realize that they could use the subtle societal codes fitting with it to convey information. information that was inaccessible to the rest of the people, even though they were physically in the same place, because they weren't thinking in the way necessary to decode it. the conclusion was inevitable: the people on the outside slowly became irrelevant, and once this happened rapidly fell off the earth. i don't know where they went; i'm a historian, not a theologian.
it's hard to say whether it's actual death that we're headed for or merely some sort of inescapable relativistic prison. but i'll stop this letter when we get there; i'll have no choice. i can't say anything that no one else has said before, because once i'm in a position to i'll be in the same boat they are in. who knows what boat that is, whether it's death or not, but it's there. as the ride continues, i will feel unable to move in the same way that i know i currently feel unable to talk. the sedating effects of the environment are setting in. i could talk, but it would be so utterly out of place that i know i never will. i am writing to you, cordelia, to explain why i left. i want this. i want the slowness, i want the feeling of torpor. i want to feel like i am not a part of anything. i want to be wrapped in this cocoon. soon i will not be capable of regretting it, so expecting a change of heart is naïve. i love you, my dear. i know i will always love you. i cannot cry, but if i could do so i would be crying, because i know that you love me too. but i must leave. it's not relevant that you will regret it.
it's getting closer to some goal; it is getting more urgent since it is getting closer but less urgent as it realizes that it will succeed. it's in a very roundabout way, though; slow and steady, i suppose. i wonder if i will ever figure out what the motivation of the vulture is. in this movie theater which i have been in a hundred times before, something is different. not something important; they have repainted the walls. i wonder if they have removed the atmosphere. it's difficult to tell; i think that perhaps i am too old to detect it at this point. i'm not sure what i'm doing here. i think i'm here because it's the only place i feel won't betray me. nothing bad has ever happened to me in this movie theater. i can hide and watch the vulture and not have to worry about succumbing to symbolism. the vulture is reaching its goal and getting more frantic. it begins its dive, but you can't tell what it's diving towards. i refuse to read anything into this. it doesn't mean anything about my own life. i stare at the ceiling and deflect the moment until it has passed and the vulture and i are both content again.
it has been several days since we've eaten. we've gotten rid of all the hunger in the early stages, though, so by this point we are used to it; a brilliant strategy, since it will allow us to attack denver without feeling the weakness. it should be routine, and it is. i wonder if there was a time when this methodical slaughter, this methodical search for the keys and pillaging, was not so methodical.
i parry for a few more minutes, but she knows where this is going. she gets there before i do and i can see her in the distance, trying to figure out whether to wait for me or not. she may be the superior pathfinder, but i have the superior vision. we play this game without thinking about it. she knows how to play. it has been a long time since i've met someone who knows how to play. i've gotten used to getting there and finding nothing, and finding an opponent who doesn't even bother to show up. or sometimes only a skeleton. i wonder always whether they have shown up and starved to death waiting for me, or whether they have merely not bothered to put their flesh and blood into it, whether they are chronic tokeners. i assume the latter because i couldn't bear the former. and that's why i can't tell her. i feel her getting thrown into a bin. type b. she doesn't deserve to be categorized. is she powerful enough to stop it? she is. but am i powerful enough to do anything? no. not now, anyway. i don't know what will happen.
i sit down in the leaves and look at the branch from a distance. it twitches with the wind, and i try to interpret the twitches. it's my job; i am an interpreter. but this is a language that i can't understand. before i took the job i thought about it for a long time. i thought about the guilt, and whether professional interpreters feel bad when they have to say things that the other person doesn't want to hear. i thought about the responsibility and about trying to convey the eloquence of speakers. i didn't consider that these questions would all turn out to be irrelevant, which is what has happened. it's rare that i get this time to myself with the wind and the lightning and the trees. it's beautiful, so beautiful that there is always someone else nearby. it's violent in its own way, in a way that i am not responsible at all for. i can tether it to me to survive, if only because i have so many harnesses to forces moving in different directions that they tend to cancel each other out and i tend to stay put. when there is a big tornado, it sucks up all the little eddies, but it is not here and so the energy is in little pockets all around. they buffet me, slap me in the face, but none of this bothers me. after all, i am an interpreter .
i know how i'm supposed to feel. i'm supposed to need to go to the bathroom and i'm supposed to make the trip painful for everyone else. after all, i'm just a kid. but i'm fascinated by the trees, so fascinated that i can't do my duty. and i don't care if anyone notices. the trees are pretty. no two of them are the same, which is remarkable considering that they are similar enough to be lumped into the category of trees. by contrast, whenever dad tries to make a statement about all humans, or even most humans, mom yells at him. i wonder what mom is thinking about. she's not thinking about the trees. she's done this before. i haven't. i've never seen these trees. i wish more people would die so i could see more trees. i wish i could save up this appreciation from when i'm like mom and tired. i don't know why she's tired. but i'd prefer to look at the trees than think about it and i can't do both. every now and then i see a special leaf. one that must be special anyway because it flits into my mind. i can't see all the leaves, but every now and then one of them gets through. i think the trees are trying to talk to me. they have more individuality than humans do. different leaves. different floating in the winds. they can't have that and not be intelligent. dad is fiddling with the radio. i didn't even notice the music was on. i guess he can't look at the trees because he is driving or because he is an adult, one or the other. it's a good thing i'll never be an adult. we get off the interstate and the trees are a lot more tame here. they don't have as much individuality. they're not running wild. they're just our pets. i want to go back to the interstate where the trees try to talk to me instead of just talking to each other because all the ones who tried to talk to us were discarded because they don't make good pets.
it's such a nice day out. the sun is glinting off the waves in a way that would be gorgeous - that was gorgeous - if we weren't going so fast. i wonder if the people on the coast watching us realize that i'm thinking or if they just think of me as that rich guy on the boat. it's not a crime to be rich. i realize it. i realize that it's a good thing to be, that she's having fun on the boat which means i make her happier which means she likes me more. i realize that i'm advantaged because of the money, that i'm never confronted by things i'm not familiar with because i had the time and opportunity to go out and figure the stuff out. i can't imagine how being poor would be better in any way. we slow down for a bit and smile at each other. she's not smiling at me because i'm rich. she's smiling at me because she's enjoying being outside on a day like this and riding in a boat. i don't blame them for being jealous, for looking at us like this. i wouldn't want to be where they are either. i want to stay out here forever, or at least until sunset. and i can. i am living my dream life, and you can either begrudge me it or come along for the ride. you might think there's a disaster at the end of this, but there's not. there's no moral to my story. it sounds like i'm building up to one, but it's not there. i am sorry to disappoint you.
waking up early has changed my life tremendously. at first i thought that it would be boring, that no one else would be up around here, and it was for a while. but then i realized that i didn't need other people to be happy. that there was a lot out there waiting to be appreciated, way more than i would ever need in my life. that i could spend my days walking around smelling the earth and talking to the sky and not have to worry about things. the moon is out tonight, and it's pretty. i know that everyone is inside watching television or having family conversations or doing homework, but i'm watching the moon, and i wouldn't trade my life for any of theirs. the moon doesn't talk back to me, but it doesn't get upset at anything i say, and it knows that i will be the same person regardless of anything. i will not run out of time. i do not have to prove myself to the moon quickly enough that it won't discard me. everyone inside - the television, the family, the student - has that deadline pressure. has to prove themselves soon or else. but the moon will be here forever. man has tried to infringe upon the moon before. neil armstrong and buzz aldrin and all of those astronauts. but they couldn't do it. they touched the surface, they planted their flags, but the moon kept growing more moon and engulfed the flags and made them part of it instead of part of us. and all the people in charge were either smart enough to realize we would never win or gullible enough to think we already had, and so we stopped trying.
i get to the other end of the bridge and walk out into the countryside. i was born on the bridge, a first, a symbol of peace. i don't know which side of the bridge i'm really from, but it doesn't matter to me. i am the hope of a nation; they try not to tell me but i can tell from the way people recognize me, people i don't know. it's not as hard as they think i might realize it is. all i have to do is live and i will be a success. i don't have to do anything heroic. i don't have to be brilliant to justify their hope. i just have to live. i think often about fooling their plans, but i like being alive. there are lots of squirrels in the countryside, and they're not organized the way they are in the city. i like the city and its grid, but i also like the country and its chaos. i guess that's the way i was supposed to be, but it doesn't feel that way; it's not programmed. the animals are circling around waiting for me to talk to them as i often do. but not today. i've got bigger things on my mind. they are agitated. i worry for a second that they will tear me apart, but the buzz dies down and they go away to leave me alone with my thoughts.
walking down a rainy street in a city i don't know very well, i stop to look at the gas lamps. the glow is eerie - it's filtered through the rain so that i can see all the colors of the rainbow seemingly wherever i look.
the year is 1971, and i'm hanging out on the street corner in brooklyn with my friends. we're not really paying attention to anything, just smiling, just tossing sentences around like some sort of athletic equipment.
it's been a tiring day at school, and my sister and i are walking back along a dirt road. the sun is setting - it's getting late in the year - and i'm trying not to do anything but appreciate the moment. i've been told that i'll look back on this with fondness.
driving down a mountain road way too fast. i'm worried more about being caught than i am about dying. kids like me don't die. kids who drink die. kids who do drugs die. kids like me don't die.
a jazz club in new orleans, and the rhythm is palpable. i'm sitting in the corner observing the scene,
trying to figure out which of the people are potential clients and which are just interlopers. but i
can't help getting caught up in the music of this new jazz, which isn't like the old jazz at all. it's fast. it's intense. it's about ten times as dense.
we're flying but i can't tell. it's remarkable how much our society has progressed, to the point where we can nest scenarios like everlasting gobstoppers. i feel distinctly like a person inside a dance club inside a zoo inside a plane; the dance club is coming through, but it's governed by the zoo ethos, which in turn is governed by the plane schema.
it's the slowest ride ever, but none of us come here to be thrilled. we come here to die, to snuff out our existence in the only way deemed humane, to slow down until everything stops. no one bothers to talk; talking would only delay the inevitable, and though we know how slow it's going to be, and are not impatient due to realistic expectations, we do not want it to take longer.
a vulture flies over kansas. it is not even close to clear what its purpose is. it knows, and i don't, and it's starting to irk me.
marching towards denver. we are being brisk but not so brisk as to attract attention. splitting around obstacles that are too large to go through, meeting up on the other side. it is not difficult.; we have done this before.
"you're mumbling," she says to me as i stammer out the story of my life. i've known her for three hours but she knows how to read me, she knows when i'm trying to avoid saying something, and i am. but i don't know how to tell her. i don't know how to tell her that i've betrayed everyone who's ever loved me. i will not betray her. i don't do that sort of thing any more. but the history is not good.
lightning comes down and a branch falls next to me. i try to tell whether it was seared or whether the warmth is just the tree's blood. it's not raining. it's windy and there is lightning. it's tornado weather, really, except there isn't a circle in sight.
driving 55 on the interstate looking at the trees go by, looking at the other cars go by.
it's good to be rich sometimes. i'm on my boat with her and it's times like this i'm glad i can get away. i wonder what everyone else is doing now. probably working, as it's Friday afternoon.
this is the first time in my life that i've gone through an entire day without noticing anyone else.
walking across a bridge is a unique experience. i pause at the halfway point and look down. the water doesn't even look like water up here; it looks solid, it looks like the boats that are on it are pushing their way across its surface, are running on tracks chiseled out. every day i think this to myself and wonder if it thinks the same way about us.