View all notes
Available query params: commented=1, untagged=1
I take a shower, look in the mirror, and think to myself that I am only twenty years old, and that it feels like I have been married for a generation. It feels like life beyond these green rooms is rushing by for other people as if to the sound of kettledrums and tom-toms. Meanwhile I am only twenty years old, and the days descend on me unnoticeably like dust, each one just like the rest.
wow. for SL: time passing section
The Young Artists Club is now a reality and my life has regained color and substance. Every Thursday evening about a dozen of us meet, in a room in the Women’s Building that we got permission to use as long as we each buy a cup of coffee. It costs one krone per person, without cake, and those who don’t have money borrow it from those who do. The meeting starts with a lecture by a famous older artist – a ‘Big Fish’ – who thereby does Viggo F. a friendly favor. I never hear a word of the lecture, because I’m too preoccupied with having to stand up and thank them when it’s over. I always say the same thing: Let me thank you for that excellent lecture. It was very kind of you to come. Usually, to our relief, the Big Fish declines our offer to stay for coffee. Then the rest of us pass the time, chatting cheerfully about everything under the sun, but rarely naming who brought us together. [...]
aaaahhhhh
[...] And I realize more and more that the only thing I’m good for, the only thing that truly captivates me, is forming sentences and word combinations, or writing simple, four-line poetry. And in order to do this I have to be able to observe people in a certain way, almost as if I needed to store them in a file somewhere for later use. And to be able to do this I have to be able to read in a certain way too, so I can absorb through all my pores everything I need, if not for now, then for later use. That’s why I can’t interact with too many people; and I can’t go out too much and drink alcohol, because then I can’t work the next day. And since I’m always forming sentences in my head, I’m often distant and distracted when Ebbe starts talking to me, and that makes him feel dejected. [...]
[...] Come here, she said gently, leading me to a sink. Wash your hands. See if you can do it yourself. When I raise my head, I see myself in the mirror, and I put my hand over my mouth to hold back a scream. That’s not me, I cry, I don’t look like that. That’s not possible. In the mirror I see a worn-out, aged, stranger’s face with gray, scaly skin and red eyes. I look like I’m seventy, I sob, clinging to the nurse, who leans her head in on my shoulder. There, there, she says. I didn’t think of that, but don’t cry. When you start getting insulin it will be much better. You’ll get more meat on your bones and you’ll look like a young woman again. I promise. It happens all the time. When I’m in bed again, I lie there looking at my toothpick arms and legs, and for a moment I’m full of rage at Carl. Then I remember that I carry my share of the blame as well, and my rage disappears.
The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms. And the drone and hiccup of a clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of the gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love seat.
enjoyable opening
[...] the whole shuffled pathos of a refugee existence—non- consecutive issues of Good Housekeeping, black-and-white snapshots of Enid in the 1940s, brown recipes on high-acid paper that called for wilted lettuce, the current month's telephone and gas bills, the detailed First Notice from the medical lab instructing co-payers to ignore subsequent billings for less than fifty cents, a complimentary cruise ship photo of Enid and Alfred wearing leis and sipping beverages from hollow coconuts, and the only extant copies of two of their children's birth certificates, for example.
the 'hollow' hits me like a brick every time
Chip's problem was a loss of confidence. Gone were the days when he could afford to epater les bourgeois. Except for his Manhattan apartment and his handsome girlfriend, Julia Vrais, he now had almost nothing to persuade himself that he was a functioning male adult, no accomplishments to compare with those of his brother, Gary, who was a banker and a father of three, or of his sister, Denise, who at the age of thirty-two was the executive chef at a successful new high-end restaurant in Philadelphia. Chip had hoped he might have sold his screenplay by now, but he hadn't finished a draft until after midnight on Tuesday, and then he'd had to work three fourteen- hour shifts at Bragg Knuter & Speigh to raise cash to pay his August rent and reassure the owner of his apartment (Chip had a sublease) about his September and October rent, and then there was a lunch to be shopped for and an apartment to be cleaned and, finally, sometime before dawn this morning, a long-hoarded Xanax to be swallowed. Meanwhile, nearly a week had gone by without his seeing Julia or speaking to her directly. In response to the many nervous messages he'd left on her voice mail in the last forty-eight hours, asking her to meet him and his parents and Denise at his apartment at noon on Saturday and also, please, if possible, not to mention to his parents that she was married to someone else, Julia had maintained a total phone and e-mail silence from which even a more stable man than Chip might have drawn disturbing conclusions.
silence thing: eve inspo
"He and his wife just had their fourth child. I told you, didn't I, they built that enormous house out in Paradise Valley—Al, didn't you count eight bedrooms?"
Alfred gave her a steady, unblinking look. Chip leaned on the Door Close button.
"Dad and I were at the housewarming in June," Enid said. "It was spectacular. They'd had it catered, and they had pyramids of shrimp. It was solid shrimp, in pyramids. I've never seen anything like it."
"Pyramids of shrimp," Chip said. The elevator door had finally closed.
The weather wasn't doing him any favors. He raised the shades and beach light poured into the classroom. Summerlust came wafting off the bared arms and legs of boys and girls alike.
just a fun image
Melissa's accusations had cut him to the quick. He'd never quite realized how seriously he'd taken his father's injunction to do work that was "useful" to society. Criticizing a sick culture, even if the criticism accomplished nothing, had always felt like useful work. But if the supposed sickness wasn't a sickness at all —if the great Materialist Order of technology and consumer appetite and medical science really was improving the lives of the formerly oppressed; if it was only straight white males like Chip who had a problem with this order—then there was no longer even the most abstract utility to his criticism. It was all, in Melissa's word, bullshit.
this is kind of annoying but worth thinking about?