The Way It Really Is, Part I

The world is made up of many nations with many different types of people, all of whom work together for the betterment of themselves and of humankind as a whole. Nations trade with each other with their mutual interests in mind, knowing that what is good for them is only good if it is good for the other as well. These interactions are always embarked upon in good faith and with utmost sincerity. The leaders of nations accept their duties with modesty and the deepest sense of personal conviction and responsibility. Theirs is a mighty task: to look after the interests of all the people, primarily their constituents but also the interests of all people everywhere on earth. People rich and poor, black and white. People of all creeds and habits and inclinations.

Imfomation Society

Mr. Pride, our alcoholic art teacher in high school, told stories about the Ku Klux Klan chasing him around the South. You'd go into his office, one of those offices adjoining two classrooms. Next door was Mrs. Nevers. Mr. Pride had a bottle of Maalox there full of vodka. Maalox and vodka. White, chalky vodka. He'd take a pull and pry the plastic bottle off his lips, momentarily reluctant, and loose upon the small room the antiseptic tang of alcohol mixed with the faint, sweet blandness of antacid.

This was 1985. One day Mr. Pride told us, "Chillen, you is livin' in a imfomation society. This world is turning into a imfomation society. Iss all gonna be 'bout computers an' communication an' imfomation an' computers talking to other computers an' everything. Git used to it! Git ready fo' it. You best be gettin' on dem computers an' such. Imfomation."

The envoys from the rebel army entered the grand hall of the old imperial palace and took their places around the table to discuss with the president not only his complete abdication and the dissolution of his cabinet, administration and coalition-led parliament but the absolute effacement of the national identity and the overturning or subjugation of millenia of national culture: art, literature, music, architecture, dance, cuisine, folkloric crafts, pagan and modern religious rituals and holidays and the like; these being named as a partial, representative, list only, not to the exclusion of other stipulations to be made at any time at the discretion of the rebel leader or an authorized deputy.

The president was late. He arrived and paused briefly in the doorway to bow and offer his most heartfelt apologies. Gentlemen, he said. I am at your complete disposal.

I worked with her one summer but I'm not gonna remember her name. She drove a blue Mustang convertible. An invisible boyfriend.

She was that type of still-hot Puerto Rican girl soon promised to a life of childbearing, child-rearing and eventual matronly misshapenness. She wore her hair in a trashy mid-'80s bouffant.

Not going to remember her name.

I peered above the magazine to the TV to find that all hell had broken loose in some fucking stock car race. Wheels and side panels had sheered off to glide above the fray.

It's getting dangerously close to the point where the best life to live really may be a life of torpor and indulgence. Wireless Internet access, TiVo, FreshDirect, video games and Netflix, coupled with older and still-improving conveniences such as cable TV, processed and frozen foods, microwave ovens and laptops, are making the case louder and stronger than ever before that we should stay home in the half-dark, sinking deeper into our armchairs and sofas at a glacial yet inexorable pace, in geologic degrees.

I went out with Shelah for a rushed meal at that dangerously precious Flatiron foodie joint, Craftbar. Fennel pollen and sweetbreads in vanilla. We had the foie gras and the scallops and the sturgeon and would you believe it was very, very good. We went to the new Bill Murray which is also the new Jim Jarmusch. Murray is now so deeply entrenched in his aloof and recondite persona that he acts – and here I mean acts the way a protein catalyst acts upon the body, not the way a player acts upon the stage – as a black hole upon all surrounding narrative, feeling, context.

Desire - impossible to sate – is nothing but funny, reverse hunger.

They met by the folds of the mighty, dusty curtain that sectioned off the eighth floor ballroom of the Marriott hotel for the imminent annual convention of a minor association of pension-fund administrators and recordkeepers. Neither of which were they.

He was looking for an elevator. She was looking for a bar.

They went to a place called Albert's where she drank thirteen greyhounds with a straw.


I picked up the pieces of whatever dream I was dreaming and got out of bed.

The girl with her back to the wall, to the what do you call it. Token booth. Back to the side of the token booth. The cop, crowding her, his legs spread a little , his feet splayed as though to brace her. He had out a pad. A ticket pad. She was a little turnstile jumper and her eyes were filled with tears. She looked off to the side, through invisible bars his body conjured to the two-way stream of bodies moving freely. He pointed the ass end of his pencil to her chest in order to reprove her and she slowly turned her head back 'round again.

I dutifully read the Hertzberg in the New Yorker, as though I were submitting to a Revival litany: The invasion and occupation of Iraq have diverted essential resources from the fight against Al Qaeda, amen; allowed the Taliban to regroup in Afghanistan, that's right; fostered neglect of the Iran nuclear threat. Help me somebody. The editorial voice of the Left now, it is like a jackhammer: stubborn and tedious, but true.

I arrived at the Coffee Shop on Union Square West 15 minutes late to find my cousin Eleanor a.k.a. Winston or Winnie at the bar in rather close conversation with a corpulent Chilean named Patrizio. It occurred to me this is a big part of how she survives. She gets rich, fat, horny guys to buy her drinks.

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I passed out on the couch earlier and dreamt about the alphabet, perhaps even of organizing some abstract and shadowy things into alphabetical order. When I awoke, I had the impression in my emergent consciousness that it was remarkable even to remember the alphabet in a dream.

Came back from the Yankee game and had to rinse my palate of the cloy of that seventh-inning Lite beer with stinging, smoky whiskey. A couple of times we saw that enormous Hasid, P. and I, the same one we saw in the bleachers a couple weeks ago. That day he paraded across the walkway before the first row, directed toward his seat by a cop. Being accorded a regal deference befitting his enormous heft both corpulent and spiritual. His prayer tassel, whatever they call it, hung out his droopy pocket. Tonight P. saw him as we walked through the halls to our seats and I didn't; after the game, I saw him after the game, shuffling toward me with a vacant, whale gaze. Oddly, he wore a Mets hat. I thought I'd given him wide enough berth but he still rocked into me. His shoulder only brushed me but I had a sense of the tremendous power of inertia in his body. A sense of a thing that amplifies and reflects all the energy it encounters.

With hardly a glance we tumbled into fall.

Mom sounded chipper and alert on the phone today. Eerily herself. As though she'd popped right back from nowhere into our world of street sounds, errands and appointments. Yet she struggled for words to describe the mundanest things. I asked her what she'd been up to, right away regretting that I'd led her into this weird corner where she'd have to account for time spent in oblivion. "Well, I, I, I... you know, I've been – well – I've been... staring at the sky." She sounded resolute, almost pleased when she reached the end of the sentence, as though she'd not only remembered what she'd been doing but that it wasn't such a waste of time, all told. I made words of sanction and endorsement. She seemed to understand that Adam and Su were visiting soon and what that's all about. "We'll have to, you know, um... cut... you know, cut cubes of meat. And make them, make meat sandwiches," she said. "Yes, Mom. We'll do that. We'll do what we like."

I flossed my teeth in a big old rush as the damn toilet continued to burp and run.

I'm stricken by that soft-numb palsy of exhaustion; it's like I'm shrouded in a heavy, gauzy veil. It's tinged with intoxication to be sure but mainly it's exhaustion. In fifteen seconds I'll be in my bed, inviting what mysteries may await me in my dreams.

I passed P. on my way from the bathroom to my bed and overheard this from the teevee: Has the universe always been here? When did it begin?

In Ireland the sky was a restless, gulping maw, letting bolts of scintillating sunshine through one moment and heaving furious ropes of rain the next.

Oh-five. Oh-5ive.

I just can't wait most days to get home and spit out my gum, take off my socks and shoes. Drink a whiskey. Sing the blues.

Scenes From the Airport and the Plane

An Italian woman with a United Colors of Benetton shirt and the weakest chin.

Glamorous, sophisticated, delectable. ABSOLUT MANDRIN blends beautifully with the lush sweetness of Cointreau along with cranberry juice and lime.

A solitary figure on the tarmac. As always.

There's highly ambient music playing on the gated plane, going AaaaahhhhHhhh.

They counted us all, on the plane, and thanked us via public address when done as though we'd had a hand in the counting.

As she approaches death my mom likes to say she lives the life of Riley. I don't think I'd ever heard her say that before. But when I ask her how she's doing, what she did today. Does she need anything. "Boy, I'm just living the life of Riley." And sometimes she seems to forget the expression for a moment. She searches for it and is satisfied to finally find it. "I'm just, I'm just, I'm just... umm..." And here she'll let her voice trail off, the ellipsis landing on a period. "Living the life of Riley!"