I've been captivated by the Air France theme music, audible when on hold with the reservations desk or, more invasively, and more strikingly, in the cabins of their aircraft as you board or at the end, when you've just awoken from the thud of the landing gear upon the runway, when you've had a night of wine and cramped reverie, you've had just about enough and you're abstractedly gathering your luggage, which may have shifted during the flight, so be cautious, and you're preparing to deplane to a Jetway or down the passerelle to a waiting tandem bus in the cold, white morning. It's a strikingly melancholy song, slow, sung by a woman in an aching voice. It's got lyrics like "away with the sea" and "the miles that lie between us." This whole musico-mass-transportational experience, with the deep, vague sadness, the fractured beauty, and the instructions to fasten your seatbelt, or perhaps the jetlag as the case may be, it's enough to send you into a formidable state of dissociative intoxication. The willingness of this enormous corporation to use such a heartrending piece of music may well be French; it reminds me of years ago when I was in Paris and there was some kind of film festival going on. All it amounted to was something like a Euro off admission on Tuesdays or whatever; it was just an initiative to get people into theaters, smudgy with the fingerprints of bureaucrats from the chamber of commerce. But there was a little video and a theme song they played before every movie that played in every theater in the city that week. It was a montage of city scenes, I believe, but what was striking was the music. It was a song sung in harmony by young male and female voices, and its melody followed a cascade of minor chords. The lyrics were something like - translated into English - "The city of Paris invites you to the festival of cinema." But the melody was grippingly moving, and I wanted to cry every time I heard it.


I saw a beautiful, young woman on the subway platform at 72nd Street today, earnestly masking-taping a flier to a pole. I have to see what it says, I thought. I craned my head and perceived just these words, on the left side of the page beside her gloved hand:

IT IS INHUMANE

J.H. is gradually losing his mind, no longer appearing at work. He's a disembodied voice, suddenly present on conference calls, intoning glumly on some technical matter or other. No one knows quite where he goes or where he is.


I looked into the P&G Bar as I often do. Just into the picture window, you see. On my way up Amsterdam & home. Pretty inviting in there though. Today there was an old man at the bar, wearing a hat. A scarecrow type, Burroughsy figure. Wearing a cheap brown suit about as well as anybody could. I thought to myself, Is that some great old man perched on a barstool in a bar? And it was.

I walked morosely down 50th Street after work, in the light, cold rain. At the intersection of Sixth I perceived a commotion in the corner of my left eye. The walk signal was on and some were walking but in the middle of the crosswalk two figures stood in opposition. One was a white-aproned delivery man, a short guy, with a baseball cap, probably from Ecuador, wherever. One of these spectral illegals who risk their lives on wobbly bikes to bring us our cheeseburgers deluxe. He was in a protective, recoiling stance beneath a towering man in a suit and pricey shoes, a haircut you could polish diamonds. The tall man was berating the delivery man, indignant, enraged. I saw then that the bicycle lay in an inelegant heap in the middle of the street. So I guess he almost hit the guy, or did hit the guy, or who knows really. To be fair, I didn't see what happened. But then the tall man disengaged and turned around, and finding the bicycle before him he stomped on it, four or five times, with the heel of his shiny, right shoe. Didn't do much good. The old beater of a bike - streetworn delivery bike - rattled against the street a bit but didn't seem to break. Delivery guy just stood there. I scrutinized the tall man as he walked away. I wondered if he'd vent more rage, shout a curse, appeal to passersby for vindication. No one had seemed to notice any of this, by the way. I followed him from across 50th Street to the 1-2-3 stop; he went down on his side and I went down mine. When I followed him through the turnstile I wondered if I'd perceive by now an expression of shame or regret on his face but I found none as he walked up to the edge of the tracks to stand and wait.

Right as Rain

A while back I was flat on my back flipping through the channels on the teevee. I came upon an absolutely enchanting documentary on the Travel Network or Discovery or some shit. One of them, you know. It was filmed on that rich and glorious celluloid, the type they'd always use in the sixties and seventies I guess. Technicolor. I'm not too retro, nor am I sentimental much, but they really should bring that shit back. The reds are enraging, the blues like some kinda narcotic. And the sunlight, never mind the sunlight.

The title was "The Man Who Skied Down Mount Everest." It's about this Japanese guy who climbs Mount Everest, and I only knew it 'cause of the title at first, but I guess he was gonna ski back down. Lots of shots of the entire expedition trudging through Nepalese villages, sherpas with their burdens, prayer flags flitting in the wind outside misshapen stone monasteries, meals eaten around the Coleman stove. You know the drill. And the guy, he's the focus of the whole thing, everyone gives him a little extra elbow room. Little mountain urchins run up to him in wonder. The narration is from his diaries of the whole experience and its syntax is mesmerizing. He's got a sort of modesty in the shadow of the mountain's majesty, and of the audacity of what he's proposed to do. But there's always a sense of the tragic, futile beauty of his whole endeavor, sometimes crossing into narcissism, sometimes into nearly despairing self-doubt. Lots of deep scrutiny into the enterprise.

Eight people die at one point.

I was astounded and enraptured. And there was something about the whole experience of watching and listening that was really turning me on, pushing some button in me that was queerly familiar, pleasurable and terrifying all at once. The narration was in this absurd, stentorian accent, British but not really, the sort of voice that might emanate from some rich, perverted recluse, some fallen noble who's never left his Xanadu. At some point I realized, of course, that this was not the actual voice of the Japanese guy - though it did seem strangely appropriate to his exploit and persona. Then, in a second, I realized. It was Hal from "2001: A Space Odyssey." I looked it up on IMDB and in fact it was the voice of the very same person, Douglas Rain.

He does ski down but I won't tell you exactly how it ends, except to say it's beautiful.

She pointed to a painting in the window. I don't think her boyfriend looked.

It was a painting of young Frank Sinatra.

He was black, she white.

Today on "60 Minutes" Lara Logan asked Pervez Musharraf if he "liked" Benazir Bhutto. Are Americans all regressing to the third grade? Does everything have to be couched in preadolescent, cutesy terms? Musharraf smiled awkwardly and said, well, it's not a question of like or dislike, it's not personal, it's not like that. Have seven years of George Bush subconsciously dulled all our intellects, so we actually produce and desire the level of rhetoric that he favors, that hokey moronic talk? Then in the next segment, Steve Croft asked some mafia killer, "Do you like guns?" Jesus Christ. It's as though we're trying to evade responsibility for the woefully adult things that take place in the world by making the language we use to describe them more innocent.

Do you like ice cream? Do you like terrorists? Do you like scrapbooking? Do you like global warming? Do you like girls? Do you like waterboarding?

I struggled to fall asleep last night, my head bright with weird imaginings. I was John Edwards on some talk show, declaiming on the Iraq war and his principles compared to Bush.


There are people in public life who commit the cardinal sin of mistaking personal virtue for moral authority. Bush and his coterie of course. Condoleeza Rice with her treadmill, goddamn her. Up at the asscrack of dawn. How can she be wrong when she is sweating? This seems to be a tendency in the righteous, religious right. A temptation. Bush himself - he quit drinking, now he thinks he has the upper hand that allows him to invade countries and murder people by the hundreds of thousands. But Elliot Spitzer does it too, according to a recent New Yorker article. Apparently he drags his ass out of bed and jogs at 5 am each day, even when all he wants, like the rest of us, is two more hours' sleep. Careful what you do with that credit, boy.

The master contemplated his puppet from across the sidewalk and through the scissor legs of the public, who stalked by, oblivious. Up the street the headless accordionist was playing the same old ditty to a new gaggle of mothers and children. What an imbecile, the master thought. Still, there was something not quite right with his own condition. The puppet bore a guitar. Should it be a saxophone? The master smoked and pondered, in the shadow of Notre Dame's arse, of its flying buttresses and clover windows.

This was the territory of postcards and magnets, of sodas and ice cream and pale, doughy panninis to be pressed. Tourist Paris in the dead of winter, the sun pressing in vain against the entrapping sidewalk gray.

We resolved to walk along the Seine.

In a review in the Times about some bigass new book on Modernism, the reviewer makes the great point that "In France, civilization is invincible and eternal." This is to contest the author's view that somehow conditions in France at the turn of the 20th century bred the types of outcast that make ideal Modernists. In fact, it is the condition of France always that creates such vigorous artistic and intellectual movements. Because French civilization is "invincible," there is no hope and therefore also no fear of ever changing it. You can assert or even do the craziest things in art, philosophy, politics, and still go to the café or have a good meal with plenty of wine. If the civilization were any weaker it would be vulnerable to the agitations of the avant garde - it might actually break down into the new forms insinuated by radicals, into some unknown which is in fact terrifying to all, not just the cozy bourgeoisie. So that's really why France is full of revolutionaries of all kinds, always clamoring, taking to the streets, crying out for change. The awesome responsibility of actually getting the exalted, ambitious things they want is never upon them. They're not afraid of winning.

We observed a couple arguing, from above. In a balcony café at Heathrow. She gestured with her cell phone and indicated it to him a few times. Like it was part of the issue. He barely said a word the whole time, just hovered, facing her. Sometimes retreating a step or two, sometimes coming closer to her face. We speculated, something with another woman. It seemed to be a bit more dire than you were late. Sometimes it seemed she became depleted and spun around as though to walk away. But where would she go without him? They were together. Finally she walked to the departures board, for no real reason but to go where he was not. He waited a few beats, too proud to follow her like a dog. But then he did, and they walked off together where we couldn't see.

Can a pot appear incongruous on a stove?


On the way to Paris I awoke all contorted, my face pressed to the flimsy plastic around the window. I tried to assess how I felt on all counts. Little sleep, bad food, booze, cold medicine. Echoes of a half-watched movie heard through tinny headphones. I decided I felt quite bad. I found that my forehead bore a film of cold sweat. I thought I was about to puke on a plane for the first time since I was a kid. I thought a while about this, whether it was likely to occur. I contemplated the scope of my misery and the consequences of losing control. There were no airsickness bags. I considered the terrible prospect of erupting helplessly into a convulsion, coughing and choking bile and airplane food onto my lap, my shirt, the floor, the seat in front of me. The humiliation. It’d be substantial. Less if I had something better to puke into than my hands. But this would require acknowledging the degree of my malaise, and so make it more real. Finally I turned and asked Sara for something to vomit into, and she produced a small and then – as if on second thought – a much larger Ziploc bag. Immediately I felt better, gripping it loosely between my fingers and my knees. And suddenly I felt the soft jolt, and heard the groan, of tires meeting tarmac, and we were taxiing in, and I was alright. And an hour later as we sat and waited for our flight to London, I was hungry.

I lay in bed last night begging for some rest, my head beginning to my body dream resisting. The sour presence of the grippe at the back of my throat, my nose leaking, breaths shallow and unsatisfying.

Our windows were pelted last night by wave upon wave of sleet. It would ebb and flow, not like the tides but patchily, like the moods of an irascible child.

It was Jim R.’s last day today. “Not big on long goodbyes,” he proclaimed in his e-mail. It had a terse dignity I have to say. And of course there was the volley of effusive reply-all best wishes, exclamation marks everywhere, the whole nine. He made his rounds at closing time. We made small talk about I can stay on his farm in Ireland, he’ll put me to work, ha ha. There was the handshake. “Happy travels,” I declared lamely. “I’m not that big on long goodbyes,” he said as he walked away sideways. “Goodbye,” we said.

Saw two women on Fifth Avenue today. One was wearing a knee-length, black, North Face winter coat and I realized the other one was too. I was thinking that’s pretty weird, they’re wearing the same coats. And then I thought, they got the same eyelashes, too. The same pale skin and slightly round faces. And eyes. Same eyes. Same dark hair. And then I noticed they were wearing exactly the same navy pants and the same black leather boots. Must there be some mistake? They were adult identical twins, dressed exactly the same. It got me thinking about twins. At its extreme, it is two versions of the same person manifested in the world. One person with two bodies. You figure these two, they live together, probably sleep in the same bed.

This is quite a thought once you think on it.

Down among the rats and roaches and the paper cups, the dusty, oily dark around the subway tracks, were strewn six or so compact disks, gleaming, holding unknown worlds of data. One of them was cracked.

I read with prurient interest the article in the Times about the kid who shot up the mall in Omaha – the article titled and positioned in such a manner so as not to appear to be catering to prurient interests. His suicide notes were perplexing and ultimately infuriating. They’re not reprinted in their entirety in the Times – the more profane passages I had to find elsewhere – but the first thing that struck me was their melodramatic quality. I love you momma, I love you dad. I love my friends, you’re all the best friends ever. I’m so sorry. Sorry for being a burden. Remember the good times. He seems to want to end it all on a sort of conciliatory, salutary note, and he expresses this in the bland, clichéd terms one might employ in a greeting card, or a yearbook message to the kid in class you only ever pretended to like. Maybe he doesn’t have the literary faculties to write something more interesting or profound, but you might at least expect it to be honest. Man, you’re about to kill X number of people in a shopping mall. A highly radical act, not defensible by any stretch but explainable, at least in some sense, by the actor himself. Even if the explanation were that there is no explanation – that’d be a start. He could have said anything. He could have cited the inherent worthlessness of human beings. He could have said he hated their mall-going, shit-buying ways. He could have said he was doing this for no reason, or that he thought it might be fun, or that he wanted to be famous (he betrays this, actually, in one sentence to his friends). But mostly it’s all self-pitying, aw-I-love-you-all, I-just-have-to-do-this-now claptrap. The words are weak and the thinking is weak – which is weird because the act itself, of course, is strong. All we get by way of explanation for what’s to come is this: “I just want to take a few pieces of shit with me.” So the murderous rampage is an afterthought to the suicide, and the suicide note is a request for forgiveness before the fact. It’s all ass-backwards. Man, if you do love anyone, if you’re telling them you’re sorry, if you expect any kind of credit for your words of atonement – then don’t do it. It’s not complicated – just crumple up the note and head back to group therapy. And failing that – if you’re going to go be a mall killer no matter what I say – at least write something interesting in your final message to the world of the living. Is it because you hate us that much that you didn’t? Or is it because you hate yourself?

A poison cloud of paranoia swept over our little enterprise, recently acquired by the big enterprise. Our software application had requested from an end user a conversational interaction on the topic of oral sex, that was clear. How to explain how such a thing could occur? And how to credibly assert that it would never, ever occur again? We spent the better part of the day battening down the hatches, playing whack-a-mole with profane insults, lascivious vocabulary, insinuative digressions within the code.

The higher-ups had a degree of concern, and a blind, clumsy authority that could annihilate us all. The mucky-mucks.

At the Channel 4 Pub on 48th Street they make a nice French dip. I’m in the mode of ordering it each time we go there from work for a semi-inebriated lunch. An echo of the career NBC men who probably did or maybe still do come here every single fucking day and order the exact same fucking sandwich from whichever Irish waitress is floating in from JFK that month plus three scotches on the rockses. It’s a no-fucking-around type place, workmanlike, with Arsenal and Aston Villa on the tube. When you order a bottle of wine, you don’t order the bottle but the varietal. Today we had the cab.

On the walk back John noted that a woman was trying to cross the street coming our way. A box-blocking cabbie deterred her and she turned on her heels and walked straight up Sixth Avenue in the opposite direction. Her life will now be completely transformed.

A pang of paranoia shot through my former team today as reports surfaced in the UK that one of their online chat bots was propositioning one and all for oral sex. All a lexical mistake, of course. Glitch in the code. But it had the project manager in question fearful for his job. He absented himself today with a quizzical e-mail to the entire floor. But the sky’s not really falling on anyone’s head, not yet, at least. I think.

The Patriots won again tonight, goddammit, but the thing about winning all the time is this: all’s there’s left to do is lose. I thought I’d say this poignant thing cuz they lost tonight but instead I’m saying it cuz they won.

Who was that drug-running dictator, Noriega? The wide, pockmarked face. The impassive air, subtly tinged with menace. He fixes salad at the salad station below my work, now. Guy looks just like him. Is that why I don’t care for him much? More likely it’s the way he grips fistfuls of salad ingredients in his surgical-gloved hand, almost defiantly, like, Fuck off, I’m not using the tongs. Gringo. My brother got paid a dollar an hour to pick these tomatoes and I’m getting ten to pick ‘em back at you.

Which I appreciate. I’m a bourgeois yada yada. But when you put the corn, the bacon, the tofu and the chickpeas in your mitt like that it all acquires the same briny, sour savor. And here I am back upstairs under the fluorescent lights going, yuck. I’ll never eat from the salad station below my work again.