April 2004
28 April 2004 | Theory
I told her that the woman of my dreams is always called either Sophia or Tessa and always has been, despite the fact that I’ve never known anyone named Sophia or Tessa.
Maybe that’s why, I said. Maybe I hold onto these names because they aren’t associated in my mind with an actual person.
She wondered what I would do now—meaning: now that I’ve met someone named Sophia. I said I didn’t know. It’s kind of confusing, I said.
Anyway I don’t know why I told her this, because the whole thing was a lie. I’ve never given a name to the woman of my dreams.
Does she know this? I imagine she does but doesn’t want to let on she knows because that would reveal that she can read my mind.
This is one of my theories: she can read my mind but is pretending she can’t. The reason she’s pretending is because if I knew the truth, there’d be no point in me saying anything. She could simply look at me and know my thoughts.
But it’s not just this. She needs me to talk to study me. That way she gets to compare my thoughts with my words and really see how I operate. For this reason she’s loath to do anything that would inhibit me from talking, including, foremost, letting on that she can read my thoughts.
Such is my theory.
My other theory (I have two) is that in assuming a human form, she has assumed human limitations. This would mean, among other things, that she can’t read my mind any more than I can read hers.
I prefer this theory over the other.
It’s taken me a long time to recognize how bad my memory is. Part of the problem is that I forget how much I forget. There’s an obvious paradox in this. To know that your memory is bad means remembering, if nothing else, this fact. However it does not mean remembering, in the extreme case, any actual instances of forgetting. I know this because the extreme case applies to me: I have trouble remembering the specific times I’ve failed to remember. What I remember instead, as a kind of placeholder, is the fact of my forgetfulness.
23 April 2004 | Prunes
Late in life, my paternal grandfather developed Alzheimer’s. The disease advanced swiftly. Within a few months, he could no longer recognize a single person, not even his wife. In broken, incoherent sentences he would tell the same story over and over, unaware that he had just finished telling it. It was a story about prunes, about how as a young man he had lost weight by consuming a tremendous quantity of prunes, both whole prunes and prune juice, and how, confident now of his appearance, he had won the heart of my grandmother.
I never saw him happier. The disease melted the sorrow from his face. Suddenly his eyes, which I had never noticed before, sparkled. He was free.
He says he can’t heal because he can’t feel time. By time he means the difference between himself in the past and himself in this moment. It’s this difference he can’t feel. Time is the difference between moments.
21 April 2004 | Person
The interesting part was coming home in a state of shock and noticing what that was like, how mixed up my thoughts were. To figure out what to do, I had to ask myself what a person in my situation should do.
Not me, a person.
This morning I played a game with myself I often play. I thought, “You can have any woman in the world you want, but you have to decide in the next 60 seconds and the decision is permanent.” As always, I ended up with a choice between two ex’s. Isn’t that amazing? Why do famous women not interest me? I must be a freak.
Who would you choose?
*
I’d have to pick one of my many perfect childhood babysitters. Or maybe I’d just choke. How the hell do you run through the gamut of all possible women, and commit to one, all in 60 seconds? The answer is Diane Lane. Of course if I were serious about it, I’d probably pick an ex-girlfriend too, because you gotta go with what you know. Maybe I’d pick Atlanta Danna. I don’t know. Has it been 60 seconds yet?
*
Recently I considered Jessica Lange. I like Jessica Lange. But how old is she now? 50? Also, not knowing Jessica Lange, it would be a crap shoot.
Plus there’s the problem of what would happen if this actually happened. Isn’t Jessica Lange married to Sam Shepard and don’t they have kids? What happens to Sam and the kids?
Okay, Jessica Lange is 54, I just looked it up. I’m going with one or the other ex.
*
Jessica Lange with a time machine.
Diane Lane without the time machine.
*
Ah, I didn’t think of a time machine. Should be allowable. Still I don’t think I’d choose a woman I’ve never slept with. What if things don’t fit? That can be sad.
Also, I don’t know who Diane Lane is.
My final choice is K in the fall of 1994, right before I broke up with her the last time. I would have picked an earlier K, circa 1988, but that one still had her lesbian phase to go through.
*
Please google Diane Lane right now. Good god, man. No wonder you have so much trouble playing this game.
Also, if you’re going to include readiness of the love object, the game falls apart. The whole thing involves stealing women from the present dimension and carrying them off to one in which they reside with us. If this were possible in this dimension (mutual desire, “readiness,” etc.), the game would be unnecessary.
Actually, I think the fantasy element of the game—why it begs to be played—consists of escaping the real world difficulty of commitment. If only one could be forced to stick with one’s choice of mate, rather than having to reaffirm it periodically over a lifetime, through re-observing (if not re-inventing) who they are. It’s not who you pick that’s important (which is obvious from the fact that we reset and play over and over again), but the ironic joy of making irrevocable decisions over and over again….
18 April 2004 | Iris
Waiting for the train, I like to pace. Sometimes I sit and read, but more often I pace, pacing but a short way, perhaps the distance between three or four poles. The reason I don’t pace further is that I like to remain within range of the optimum place to get on the train, given where the exit will be at my stop. I don’t understand people who don’t do this. What is it like to get on the train in a particular car and never consider the consequences of that choice, down the track?
Today, pacing, I noticed the tiles around the words Eastern Parkway. The subway walls in New York, if you don’t already know, have tile mosaics that spell out the names of the stops. These mosaics were created long ago, by forgotten people, and are routinely, numbingly, beautiful. The individual tiles, now faded, resemble irises; they have the same patternless pattern of colored flecks.
My eye was drawn to the S in Eastern. I noted how its curved edges were constructed from broken fragments of tiles. Once, long ago, someone stood on this spot and cemented all these tiny shards in place.
That’s all. While pacing I noticed some tiles and stopped to investigate. Then the train came.
17 April 2004 | Post
I’ve been saving the things that people have written to me since I pretty much stopped writing. Today I received a good one. It began, “I’m trying to figure what’s going on—is it my computer or have you just stopped writing?”
My current favorite is, “Even when you were beaten up, you posted.”
I suppose there are different kinds of beaten up.
