August 2002
31 August 2002 | Ending
This is not an Oblivio post in the usual sense. Instead it is a request for assistance.
I have lost my apartment and must find another. It is a long and painful story how this happened, and perhaps at some future point I will tell it. For now, though, I ask my readers, particularly my New York readers, to help bring this story to an incongruously happy ending.
What would such an ending look like? I believe it would resemble either a studio or two-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, the latter of which I would share with my good friend Claudia.
A few things to note:
Manhattan is unlikely because of its staggering rents. Preferred Brooklyn neighborhoods include Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, etc. Also, given that I work one day a week in Brooklyn, I’m ruling out Staten Island, New Jersey, and the upper reaches of Manhattan (Washington Heights, Inwood, etc.).
I can afford up to $900 for a studio, $1600 for a two-bedroom.
I have arranged temporary housing for September, but could move tomorrow if I found something nice.
Deep breath.
28 August 2002 | Story
I’ve been corresponding with a young woman, a college student, who is both brilliant and suicidal. She plans to go to law school if she doesn’t kill herself. She hasn’t said this exactly, but that is the gist.
I am loathe to lobby for one choice over the other. Suicide makes as much or little sense as anything else (particularly law school!), and besides, it’s her call.
Many would disagree, but that, as my correspondent has pointed out, is a lot of crud. The ties that bind must be self-applied—and always are, ultimately.
Recently I asked her a question.
I’ve long believed that we each have a story, often unknown to us, that we try all our lives to prove true. As I see it, this is the key to understanding a lot of otherwise inexplicable behavior.
If I’m correct, what would your story be?
Note: It can usually be summarized in five words or less.
Note: This is a scary question.
Her response took the form of a meta-proof, a thing that embodies its thesis.
After some serious thought, I’ve decided that my story would be this: I am a lost little girl.
And yes, that scares me… but there’s nothing I can do about it. I wish I knew what the right choices in life were, but I can barely keep myself afloat as it is.
It wasn’t until I received her response that I realized what my own story is.
I am alone.
24 August 2002 | Gansuthi
I spied a bokhali, gentle as a gansuthi
In the produce aisle.
Simply by the way she knonsayed
The collards, I knew she did not khar.
Fool that I am, I winked.
She, believing I was onsaying,
Mokhrobed me and snorted.
Do I khale?
Yes, I khale.
Each night I gobran, issuing
Zogno-like nonsense.
People, I have gobrayed
And am khanti. In my own bed
— my own bed! —
I asusu.
And all because of a bokhali,
Gentle as a gansuthi.
*
The above poem was inspired, if that is the word, by Gail Armstrong’s Call me irresistible…. If you know what’s good for you, you will read Gail’s piece before turning to the lexicon below.
*
asusu: to feel unknown and uneasy in a new place
bokhali: a woman who carries a child on her back
gansuthi: the first grown feather of a bird’s wing
gobran: to shout in one’s sleep
gobray: to fall in a well unknowingly
khale: to feel partly bitter
khanti: to be wounded without bleeding
khar: to smell like urine or raw fish
khonsay: to pick up an object with care, as it is rare or scarce
mokhrob: to express anger by a sidelong glance
onsay: to pretend to love
zogno: the sound produced by a mixing of mud and water if you thrust your hand into a crab’s hole
23 August 2002 | Shovel 8
Whatever it was, I was supposed to not only know what it was but be doing it, because apparently everyone else knew and was doing it—he was aware of that and accepted it and anyway that wasn’t the point. The point was, how often and to what degree.
Honestly I had no idea what he was talking about, but given the tenor of the conversation, which I can only characterize as manly and “on-the-level,” it seemed best to nod in agreement whenever agreement seemed called for, rather than claim innocence and risk being thought an idiot or liar or perhaps both.
This then is how I came to admit that I periodically stole from him, the same as everyone, using the obvious method, whatever it was, although in moderation.
21 August 2002 | Flesh
Discovered today that my readership has gone up twenty percent since I stopped writing so much. I’m not so sure I’m happy about this.
Among other things, it reminds me of the old saw that women are attracted to men who treat them badly.
Regrettably I think there’s some truth to that old saw.
However, I want to assure you that our relationship is based on a very different model. You are hungry and I feed you. Or rather, I try to feed you. And in the process am fed.
Actually, the hungry person is me. I feed myself.
I’m not entirely sure where you come in, but suddenly there is twenty percent more of you.
It is only marginally relevant, but this reminds of a Jewish saying: There is always enough food in the house for one more meal.
Every time I think of this, I have the same reaction: What bull. Eventually one runs out of the last thing on hand, baking powder or something, at which point no more meals.
Is the author suggesting we eat our own flesh?
If so, our flesh will run out in the end, the same as anything else.
Nothing doesn’t run out.
15 August 2002 | Murmurs
I have this document where I keep fragments of things. I call it “ideas.” Periodically I return and read through it from the beginning. Most of the pieces I write emerge from these fragments.
Mainly I change things; I read through the fragments and make small changes, a few words here or there. This is what happened just now. I found a little fragment I liked okay but that didn’t seem quite right. Too many commas, too broken up and stuttery. Is the word staccato? I don’t feel like looking it up right now, but I think the word is staccato.
So I removed a few commas. That made it better. Then I realized that it was a quote from Beckett. I had changed a quote from Beckett. I put back the commas.
I don’t know: perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again. (It will be I?) Or dream (dream again), dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs.
Oblivio has been overhauled. Among the highlights:
- Table hacks, be gone! Layout is now handled with cascading style sheets. Hoo-ha.
- Inspired in large part by Mark Pilgrim’s splendid series Dive into Accessibility, I’ve made myriad
heart-breaking compromises of my design aesthetic accessibility-related changes.
- Movable Type, pound-for-pound the best personal web publishing system ever, has joined the Oblivio “Production and Archival Department.”
The first two items above warrant some scintillating non-technical elaboration, which I plan to attempt later. For now all I can say is that everything was much harder to do than I imagined, despite the fact that I was already imagining everything would be much harder than I imagined. I mean, I began from how hard I thought everything would be, multiplied this by the usual you-know-things-never-go-as-planned factor, then multiplied this by a no-seriously-it’s-going-to-harder-still factor, and still came nowhere close to imagining the horrors ahead.
It turned out to be a case wherein I wouldn’t have dared to do the thing I did had I known what I now know, having done the thing. Certain relationships are like this, but that is different. It’s different because the reasons one has relationships are different from the reasons one overhauls one’s website.
I think.
One final note: It was hard.
05 August 2002 | Wave
Ah, a tale to tell. I thought of this just now as I said to me that this goes past the line. A grown girl I was with sent me some words out of the blue. It had been one year short of eight since the last words. This one was the one I had to kiss the most times. I am sure you can think of one of yours in this way. Now she shares a ring with a man and they have two small ones. Though I am glad for her for this, to hear her voice made so much come back to my heart. We spoke more than once and sent words. A phrase comes to mind when I think of her. To be hooked in. We were so hooked in each time. And once more this time. In the midst of that, she voiced the thought that we would write a book of a man and a grown girl who come to kiss all their lives, but spread out in time. Like in one place for one day and then not for ten years. I would like to not use the word kiss here, as it sounds so much like just one thing, but the word I want is bad in this game and lord knows the truth is kiss. But back to the tale. I told her she was nuts to think we could write such a thing as though it was not what it was. Do you see why I thought this? A thing that was not what it was. Hmm, the thing we have said to do with our hearts makes for a kind of clash from in deep. And that clash is sweet, is it not? You note this when you write of a love that is not to be so. So sweet that is and so like a wave that smacks one down.
