Tumbleweed Sunday/I'm Not There

Author's Note: I am writing this late at night. Finish this whole piece. Go see the movie.

In the morning, I was sick, not from anything other than a lack of health, a full throat, a funny dream where I was overextended, holding two pairs of hands on a couch, I don't remember whose, maybe they were my children (for a thematic change of pace). There is something new about being pulled two ways in a dream, I am usually picking up my broken teeth or swimming or telling jokes, but it's always some kind inundation or another, this time it just happened to be linear instead of vertical.

Sunday morning, I had coffee and an energy bar, though I felt too sick to run, I had two hours to kill before the digestion would finish enough for any physical exertion (beyond masturbation, which I never do before working out [which isn't to characterize the hobby of onanism as having a dearth of required exertion, it just helps to have the tension in the mind when one attempts to exert himself])...(for whatever that means).

I had two hours to kill so I read Vice Magazine, which I was given by a stranger the night before, which had a section of autobiographies of four famous writers. A sentence about each:

Honore de Balzac: He was ugly, wrote the Human Comedy, named himself Honore, loved a rich woman long-distance, finally met her, she was repulsed but slept with him, led him on for years, she finally married him after realizing he ruined his own health writing and loving her, on his sickbed he cried out for the name of a doctor in one of his works, died shortly thereafter.

Herman Melville: Went to sea, wrote two respected books, wrote nothing of note for the last 40 years of his life, died a poor customs inspector of 19 years, listed as Henry Melville in his own obituary, posthumously acclaimed.

Charles Dickens: Forced into demeaning labor at a young age, wrote porn, wrote about other things, became wildly popular, bought his dream home, had a boring wife, loved his wife's sisters or maybe he didn't, buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, the highest honor.

Leo Tolstoy: Noble family, lots of class guilt, wrote a lot of great stuff, found God, tried to give away all of his things, swore to leave Russia when his wife wouldn't let him give them away, got sick in the heatless third-class section of the train on the ride out of Dodge, died of a cold shortly thereafter.

I then watched a presidential candidate on Meet the Press, I watched two candidates on Face the Nation, was scared by all their vagueness, was scared of what is happening. Everything is falling apart and it's not even Christmas yet (I think this in a debutante voice). It was only 50 out, but gray (spelled with the 'a' it seeming more like an English gray) I walked to the gym and no one was out, the city has never been so dead, it started to rain during the eight block walk, it was so empty, I waited at a crosswalk and was certain a tumbleweed would rustle by.

I took a pilates class for lack of wanting to do anything else but leave the gym, I did pilates and failed at it, sweated a lot from my cold and from postures, flirted with the desk girl who'd never...ever...

She has a round face, not wide but substantial, cheeks flushed red, sometimes from the cold, and a slightly angular nose, giving her a fierceness that was recoiled but not recumbent, something that looked like what you would find if Picasso had fashioned bank robbers. Her look, sharp, could only be augmented by her clothes, dark and mostly sable-colored, expensive, which clung to her in necessity like climbers, in some great affection toward her rambling shape, an affection that must be widespread (yes, I admit I've been reading some Hemingway).

In the eyes lay the contradiction, eyes which were soft and pitying, strange to think it is her job to welcome you, but you never want to leave this desk and get on with your day; you never want to better yourself because there you are exposed, in baggy clothes and rumpled hair, and she could be a cardinal at any sad night cathedral in the Meatpacking District if she only took the five minute cab ride there. Her eyes condemn the entire sport of attraction because you know she isn't mute (she'd be out of a job), but if she spoke it would quell the fascination by taking her off the press of some glossy page and add a dimension to her, the whimpering of reality versus the immunity of fantasy. You wished good for her, despite your intentions, but already knew she only saw angry, lacking men, who were closed like her clothes against her, you guess you might be the same way (a despot consolidating power) if you had her, to keep her from going.

I left instead and followed by going to a bar and had a few beers and buffalo wings, bummed a smoke outside the door, the bar (always full) was empty, I had a whole section to myself to watch my football team get DECIMATED by a team they were supposed to be able to be moderately competitive with. I was very short with someone who kept asking about whether players on his fantasy football team were doing well, wanted to punch him in the mouth, realized he was Jewish, felt bad because every fellow Jew is taken as a paradigm by my hyperactive sensibilities.

I watched the screen blankly as the opponents opened up a four touchdown lead. Thought to myself: I will see no one I know all day, weird, most of my friends will be gone for days and I feel weird going about a routine, I thought about how winter and this time of year makes a lot of people sad and if I'm sad sitting here alone in this bar, how it makes me ordinary, a thought...which was depressing. I switched verb tenses a lot. My mom called, she just got home from business in Angola. Yeah, I don't know either.

I went home, called 20 strangers whom I will be leading on a trip to Israel in two weeks, introduced myself (not that I feel like I really know who I am right now), assuaged fears about clothes to pack and politically divided cities, took a shower, took a nap, read half of The Bridge of San Luis Rey (it's only 140 pages), didn't really like it, watched more football, hopped on the subway, twas empty, went to the Film Forum to see I'm Not There.

The movie was about 20 minutes too long, too much Richard Gere, but Cate Blanchett was pretty fucking incredible, the movie itself, was pretty fucking incredible. It put all recent biopics underwater. The mystique was adequately built, but appropriate, it made me feel better about the world to have this story exist. I watched him make a mess of himself...in a way we'd all envy. Thought about my summer plans (the ones I don't have). Thought about subletting my place, traveling by bus around the country, sleeping outdoors where it's warm enough to, pictured myself posing by haystacks in Diesel jeans, germaphobic and incapable of building a tent or lighting a fire without a lighter, carousing drunkenly with locals, sleeping with whomever will have me, going to baseball games, getting arrested for something, being dirty, getting into a fight with someone, not speaking to anyone for days.

I am free this summer, at 27, I should be more thankful for that, especially since it's going to cost me when the people around me are successful and settling down. The movie makes you (or at least me) think that maybe I won't marry (a sweet 'if it happens, it happens' fatalism...bank tellers are fatalists, Dylan says, I'm a farmer, how can farmers be fatalists, he asks), the movie made me think that someone always knows you until they don't (happened a lot this year), made me think (in the particular way the DP shot it) of a thousand picturesque sunsets I've had and how the memories of them all were crushed by me in the twilight. Felt like it all just happened well and fell out because that's life, that being a rare exoneration. Thought how the movie felt really personal. How I should write some more lists about it. List things, I said to myself, on the walk home, twenty-four blocks in a fall jacket, though it was the day before Christmas now by four minutes, and I walked home, and it was empty, empty, empty on the streets again.