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there are travel guides. and books on etiquette. citation style guides. i was going to write a story about someone who can't escape everyone else's obsession with a self-help book. all his/her friends are chipper and hopped up on this guide to self-love and success. something about rejecting help. or being haunted by unwanted advice. or maybe it was about rejecting commodified happiness.
but lately i've been thinking about forgiveness and how there really are no rules or guides. just people who urge you in one direction or the other. those who think you need to forgive any and every fumble and flaw, and those who, once wronged, cut ties without batting a lash. but it's a trickier business than that isn't it? who deserves forgiving and what deserves forgetting?
so. if i wrote a guide to forgiveness, what would it say? forgive early. forgive often. forget rarely.
there are two of them. one in the room next door. one down the hall and around the corner. they have clean classrooms. good skin. no great skin. really it glows. there is something cool and calm about them. they radiate newness. like the weight of the blank blue-lined sheets in a fresh notebook. or the matte sheen of a drying chalkboard. it's a quiet shine. they are dependable. sturdy. familiar.
it's tempting to tear them apart. they're too smooth and neat. it would be nice to see them break just a bit. a crack here. a buckling there. i cannot make sense of them. i want to pull apart their pieces so i can see how they were built. but their surfaces are so seamless that i couldn't. i wouldn't know where to start. where to inch in and start pulling.
a few weeks ago i finished miss lonelyhearts and the day of the locust. it was one of those books that consumed me. like i'd be walking through brooklyn drunk in the early morning and i'd pull it from my purse and start reading it out loud to my random friend of the evening and bully them into listening. no really. listen. are you hearing this? so as i'm belligerently pointing out my favorite passage to two unassuming friends of mine one drunken dawn, i realize i need someone who i can actually talk to about the book. my friend agrees to read it. and he loves it but he tells me "it makes me want to fucking kill myself, but it's great." and that bothered me tremendously. sad is not bad. oh dear. that sentence sounds like it was plucked from a children's book about dealing with your feelings. but no. let's rewind. why is everyone so terrified of the darker bits of this murky planet. there's so much of it. to me it seems more natural to claw through it with your hands and gather it close to your face like wet sand all clumps and grains. shapeless and massive and tiny. i want to look at all the little molecules and see how they shine when the light hits. and that is what nathanael west does. he shoves all that wet sand right in your face. up to your nose so you can smell the beach on it and before you know it you're running your tongue over your teeth wondering how all those sharp little pebbles can feel so smooth on your skin. so sweet and hot on your feet.
i was talking to a friend who has one of those party photo websites. well it isn't intentionally that. he just happens to shoot parties a lot. and i had this thought, silly and unrealistic, but yes i was a teensy bit serious. so i asked him what he thought about going to parties with a notepad and writing poems that captured the experience and posting those instead of photos. he sort of smiled and laughed. no one loves words anymore. everyone wants to be a pretty-faced star.
overheard in the v.i.p. section of this afternoon's pool party at mccarren:
"this isn't very v.i.p., is it?"
is anyone else tired of irony? i'm sick to death of it.
i remember reading Franny and Zooey when I was about fourteen and being fascinated by Franny's instability. Basically Franny has been reading a book about the path to enlightenment and she's getting really into the idea of perhaps traveling that path herself. So everyone around her is really starting to freak out about Franny's freak out. Something about fragile had appeal. Watching things fall apart held real interest.
there were filthy hippies in the park. all drums and weed and dishevelled. they looked like someone's idea of a hippie.
the homes along the marina were ostentatious. huge windows left uncurtained so passersby could view the lavish furniture, the high high ceilings.
i ate two crepes. one savory, one sweet. the gooey cheese and mushroom was best. we scraped the thick sauce up with our forks. our cigarettes were tipped with gold.
