Wing Nuts

I observed my plane through the terminal window at Reykjavik and noticed that the tips of this particular jet's wings bent upwards in vertical fins six feet or so tall. What is this, a hundred years of manned flight and suddenly the engineers say, "Um, about the wings? We're gonna make them stick up at the ends. It's better this way.'' What?! People, it's not rocket science. Uh, actually, I guess it is rocket science. Which is the point, come to think of it. It's science. Can ya just do the math please? 100 billion hours of passenger jet travel, of takeoffs and landings and crashes, of turbulence, bad movies and barf bags, air rage, terrorism, screaming children and magazine tales of Tuscany and profiles of Renee Russo and now this? What will they think of next? It's a goddamn tube with people in it with wings attached so it doesn't crash into the ground, for fuck's sake. Make up your minds.

At the Phil Lesh show last night, right up near the stage, a tall, twenty-something guy fell right over. He went completely limp and collapsed backwards onto the floor, and lay sprawled and perfectly still as the music floated and hung above. Someone immediately knelt by his side and made gestures of attending. Others waved their arms in the air in wild crisscrossing patterns, as though signaling an oncoming train. We formed a solemn little pocket of concern in the midst of the dark crowd of thousands of drunk, stoned Deadheads.

Then the guy got up. He stood up, but I mean right away – not coming to his feet groggily or in the least unsteadily but becoming vertical like someone just blew reveille. He stood right up the same way he fell down. His friends, onlookers – gazed into his eyes with wonder and a fair amount of worry. He was taken by the arm. Asked questions. He looked around a little puzzled, the way anyone would be if they were suddenly and inexplicably the center of concern. He seemed like, What?

Then two security guards approached, not urgently but purposeful. They looked at him for a couple of seconds and led him away, and he went placidly, betraying only a trace of perplexed dismay.

The turnstile and the stairs, the thousand strangers and the stores, the streets and snow and slowly turning spheres.

I'm Still Tumbling Through the Air, 1,500 Feet Over a Train Trestle in Rockford, Illinois, in March of 1974

I'm still tumbling through the air, 1,500 feet over a train trestle in Rockford, Illinois, in March of 1974.

I'm sort of in suspension like I'm not descending but the wind is beating against my face. Against my head and balls and chest. So hard for air. I'm at about 1,500 hundred feet and below me is the train trestle and the track winding away between fields ochre, yellow and brown and the road a ribbon of gray and there, another road. The river below the trestle. I'm still tumbling through the air in 1974.

I'm still in a villa looking out upon the sea. I believe the villa may be in Italy. A cliff climbs up out of the surf at dusk. It climbs a hundred feet or so to a terrace where headlights occasionally pass around a corner in a road in front of darkened homes and a hill that rises higher yet again, and higher still with buildings fading into formlessness into the darkened clouds.

Eat Drink Fuck Sleep

Eat sleep drink eat eat sleep eat drink sleep fuck eat sleep eat drink sleep drink sleep eat eat fuck sleep drink drink eat fuck eat sleep eat sleep drink fuck drink sleep eat fuck sleep fuck fuck eat sleep sleep drink drink fuck eat sleep fuck eat eat sleep drink eat fuck sleep.

I looked out the front of the commuter train from S's this morning, the length of a car away. The opening at the front seemed so promising: unexpected light, a window onto something rare and precious. I wondered how the backward-facing commuters could be so oblivious, with their New York Times folded into halves and quarters, the sports section and the crossword puzzle. But the truth is there wasn't much to see out front. Signals and trees and vague debris. Tunnels and walls and every surface painted in graffiti. Weeds grew in between the tracks. A uniformed figure waving from the platform of a bypassed station. I was so glad to see it.

The escalators at the Gare du Nord metro weren't running and the stairs were strewn with trash, giving the place the appearance of a Third World urban hell. Old ladies paused at the feet of stairs and gazed wearily upward before hoisting their carts and climbing.

On my way to work, on Central Park North, there was some poor goose that had somehow leapt the wall and was now walking along the sidewalk. I tried to take some pictures of the bewildered and incongruous beast – nothing good, couldn't get one where it faced me. I had some imbecilic thought that it would be oh so clever to have a picture of a goose scrutinizing a fire hydrant, a goose waiting for the light to change. I wondered, too, what would become of this thing, if it would find its way back to the safe, grassy shores of the Meer. It walked out into the street. A bus pulled to its stop then pulled away slowly, waiting for the goose to go. The driver gave a little honk. Eventually the goose was on the other side of the street, standing still as cars crept up and gingerly drove around. Some guy walked out of a building on the north side and examined the scene sternly. He wore some kind of security guard uniform. "Yo!" He shouted at the goose. "N— betta get outta da street!"

A Fucking Rant with Many Italics

In my largely pointless meanderings up and down the cable dial, so to speak, it has been impossible to ignore the sentiment among members of the right-leaning, conservative-biased media that Christmas is somehow under attack. Of all the idiotic, gratuitously sanctimonious things anyone could ever fucking say.

First of all: Christmas as it has traditionally been presented in shopping malls and on TV is not a religious holiday, you stupid, fucking cunts. It's a pagan festival of winter survival, of life amidst death, opportunistically and dubiously wedded to the myth of Jesus' birth and, more significantly, transformed into a celebration and bacchanal of wanton American greed, desire, commerce, materialist lust, frivolity, selfishness and envy. And frankly, there's nothing even necessarily wrong with that. Here's what's wrong. Are you sure you want all that to be Christian? What, give unto Jesus what belongs to Jesus? What the fuck is wrong with you. Morons. Does Jesus want to rule the realm of air purifiers, X-Box consoles, chocolate fondue sets, cashmere cardigans, video iPods and GPS-guided vibrators? Fine. You fucking think he'd be happy about that? You think that's how he fucking wants to be remembered, you fucks? You think he'd want his goddamned name evoked every time working, struggling Americans went ever deeper into debt to buy all this fucking goddamned shit? You think the one and only son of God sent to redeem all mankind for its sins would be down with this fucking, fucking nonsense?

You morons. Cunts. Here I am a heathen asking this question: Did Jesus teach you nothing? Assholes.

Is it possible that you're not entirely, honestly motivated by deep and sincere religious conviction here but rather by entirely earthly, petty and mean political desires? Hmmm? An urge to teach a finger-wagging and scolding lesson to the conspiratorial legions of atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims and God only knows what else in this country whom you dislike and fear and who would dare to subvert what – in spite of all our blah-blah-blah about religious freedom and tolerance and openness – underpins this grand ol' country of ours: the holy Christian mighty-right. And it is particularly interesting that you've seized upon this shallow, asinine and stupendously ill-timed issue.

Ah, fuck. Who am I kidding? You people are all such incredible douchebags of the first order that I can't even summon the energy to sustain this rant.

But I'll close with this. Religious freedom is no joke. Tolerance is no joke. It's not as easy as you may think to twist these notions into something you present as suspect, weak, immoral, threatening. The two philosophies, thankfully deeply embedded in American history and culture, have guided us through some very, very, very bad situations indeed. And the American people, for all their faults, won't cotton so readily to your cheap, tawdry moralistic histrionics. And what a sweet irony it is that businesses – big businesses – are the voices of reason here. Of course we all know they want to sell their stupid, fucking crap to as many people as possible, and therefore make as much money as possible, and that's why they all say Happy holidays instead of Merry fucking Christmas. But of course, they also happen to be right. When they give their official PR line, "We believe in openness and tolerance and we would not want to exclude or alienate any of our valued customers, blah-di fucking blah..." They are fucking right. One of the great things about this country, in fact – maybe just a sort of happy accident, I don't know – is the affinity of tolerance and openness with the idea of the open market – capitalism does not favor Christians, Jews, blacks, whites, anything. It favors consumers. And you, my proud, defensive, hideously misguided right-wing foes, are on the outs in this matter.

You infernal cocksuckers.

I remember the bric-a-brac in her bathroom, the candle on the toilet tank, the unhappy mess of toothpaste and brushes and soap on the sink. A burnt orange towel I always used that seemed to always be a little damp. An odor everywhere of slightly dirty perfume. Unmatched dishes piled in the sink, tables and chairs obstructing bookcases overflowing with books and papers and knick-knacks and God only knows, the random detritus of an undisciplined and incomplete life.

She had a life-size painting of herself in butterfly wings in the cluttered study where she kept her treadmill and her stacks and stacks of Penthouse and Omni magazines.

Waving

My phone vibrated on my desk at work this evening. It was Jen. Hey, I said, and she said hey.

"Look out your window."

"What?"

"Look out your window!"

I got up and looked. It dawned upon my addled consciousness that she was out there somewhere, amid the barking Holland Tunnel traffic.

"Do you see me? I'm waving," she said. I began to wave robotically out my fifth floor window at the dark. I perceived shadowy figures across the street, beyond the rows of box-blocking cars. "I'm across the street! I'm waving!" I saw one figure waving as I heard this in my ear. I was waving still. Back and forth, wave, wave, wave. Crouching a bit to see beneath the blind.

"Dan's here!"

"I see you! Down there," I said. Waving.

She was waving from the southeast corner of Greenwich and Canal. Like magic, I could see her dark arm and silhouette yet hear her voice, clear in my ear. She said they were doing something, going somewhere, God only knows.

I was thinking of something to say.

"Kick him in the ass for me."

And then I saw her booted foot arc off the ground and strike the form beside her.

"See? Did you see me kick his ass?"

"Yes," I replied. "Yes!" Waving.

I walked down the middle of Canal Street today on the narrow median that's straddled by hot dog carts on summer days when the weekend Holland Tunnel jams start midday Thursdays. Today was a gray day, gray like the concrete beneath my feet walking down the middle of Canal. In fact the median was cracked; one squarish slab had buckled and been riven like a tablet. It sank like a V into the netherworld beneath the street. I imagined I was in Caracas, Santiago, Istanbul, Algiers. Some second-word place where the earth intrudes upon the infrastructure every day.

I felt much better today than yesterday, Not sure exactly why, but it helped I wrote last night. So all day today, so cheerful. All day today so strong. And yet the world stays where it is; it won't defer to your good humor – or charm you from your grief – with undue prettiness or nothin'. There was still the billboards on Canal, the broken-brick strewn lot. The lotto license on the deli wall. Our wintry plumes of breath. You have to find something there for you if you want. Don't walk, walk. A truck downshifting raspily on the West Side Highway. Leaves & trash.

Mea Culpa

Dear John,

At this stage in our relationship, such as it is, which is to say, at no stage at all really, considering recent developments that I need not enumerate, I feel it would only be proper and decent and scrupulous of me to offer you a carefully worded, nuanced, admittedly perhaps even somewhat reluctant apology.

I'm kinda sorry about some things.

It's true I convinced you to abandon your doctoral thesis – what was it? Education, Folklore and Gender Dilemma in Rural, Pre-Bolshevik Ukraine, if I'm not mistaken, or had you changed it again? Was it Literature, Nudity and Secular Authoritarianism in Late Colonial Societies? Stop me when I'm getting warm. Eating, Fucking and Shitting Through the Ages? That might have been it. Whatever the case, I compelled you to hurl your entire manuscript into the fire and disavow yourself of all learning, edification and enlightenment; of the intoxication & majesty of letters; and of the siren call of beauty, truth & reason so that you could get a job selling furniture at that place on Route 9 beside the Olive Garden and thereby fill the car up all the way with gas now and then and pay the rent at those goddamned renovated mill apartments with the shag carpeting and the gym before the middle of the fucking month for once and for this I am a bit contrite.

The day Mr. Heyward ran you around the parking lot brandishing a gun and threatening to shoot you in the face if he ever saw you again, the day you slept off your hangover on that Naugahide loveseat in the display window, I feel I am in some sense to blame as it was my 24th birthday the night before and we drank schnapps until we couldn't see. But sweetheart, a man must answer for his actions, fundamentally.

If he is a man.

Honey, it's possible I broke your dreams. I'm somewhat regretful and have more than a little empathy for you but I think I gave you what you wanted, deep down, on a certain level. And admit it, perhaps you resented that I knew you better than you knew yourself. I do feel bad, I do, that you had to labor, benighted, all our years together.

I might have made something inside of you die, my former love. I thought I was nurturing something richer, deeper; something that would thrive on regular visits to my dad and stepmother's house for dinner, rote responsibilities such as the making of our bed each morning, trips to Target, Parcheesi, brie, the renewal of license plates. The unmaking of our bed at night together to sip soothing herbal tea and read Architectural Digest. Apple-picking, pot-pourri. Baby, this was the real stuff of our very lives. None of that wordy mumbo-jumbo that kept you aloof and onanistic, emerging only long enough to push your glasses up your nose and look away. I guess I'm sorry it destroyed your soul but I was trying to create something.

I shouldn't have fucked your brother. That was too much. A strange and disloyal act, utterly beyond the pale. Yet how could I resist? He was you yet he was not you. Everything I always wanted in a man.

Dearest, by the time you read this you'll be dead. Which is to say, come to think of it, you won't read it at all. By now your veins are pulsing with so much strychnine, mercury, arsenic, rohypnol, cyanide, belladonna and benzene that it's a wonder if you haven't burned a hole right down to your very grave. Why did I do it? For you, my sweet. Liberating you from the hell which I have more or less wrought is the only way I can even hope to make things right. Consider it my ultimate gesture of kindness, a final act to undo and redeem all others.

And why did I write this? For me. It's a little something I wanted to get off my chest.

It started to rain hard on the way home. And blow wind. Back home I was sad to see the lights were out in the courtyard on the roof of the building next door, the weird courtyard you can see down onto, with the door onto from a building next door, like in a dream. I like to see the puddles there and the rain falling in them in a bit of light reflected from the lamps on the walls of buildings surrounding. But the lights were out and that was that.

I like the rain sound too, I like it rise, fall in the wind; I like it cut through by a car down Fifth Avenue.

There's a special sound people make when they speak with their mouths full of steak. A honking, adenoidal sound. Almost choking. Drowning in meat.

In France the premise is that human desires can and should be satisfied, day after day. Desire itself is never extravagant, nor viewed as indulgent or vain, but rather rational and manageable. Not so in the U.S. "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" was written by a Briton but it's a distinctly American sentiment, inspired by similarly titled American blues. In fact it is a reaction to America: In the midst of this bounty, this ludicrous and hideous embarrassment of riches, I am lost, paralyzed, frustrated. A man comes on the radio, and he's telling me more and more. But the French would answer that song with: Of course you can be satisfied. Have a good meal - three courses. Not too much. Enough. Have wine, just enough to begin to get drunk - the happiest period in the span of intoxication. Plus you get a coffee at the end. Then go home and fuck your wife. Or your mistress. We know, and it's OK. Buy her some lingerie from one of those hundred shops on the boulevard. Satisfied? Of course you are. And tomorrow you get to do it all over again. To reenact and ritually refute the myth of desire.

But America is the land of the all-you-can-eat. Implicit in that very proposition is the idea that satisfaction is elusive, distant, perhaps nonexistent. Satisfaction? Who knows. Keep eating. And of course when we follow the American program we cannot be satisfied. The all-you-can-eat leads you directly from hunger to nauseous, uncomfortable fullness without a pause. There is no satisfaction. You are left with a vague sense that you should eat more to really get your money's worth, trumped by the fact of your strained, distended stomach.

Where does this insatiable American hunger come from? There was perhaps a backlash against hyper-abstemious Puritanism. And then the credo of eminent domain - all-you-can-eat writ huge, territorial. But it mostly comes from the very model of the so-called American Dream. You can do anything. How much can you do? More. How far can you go? Further. How much is enough? Nothing is ever enough. Satisfaction is anathema.

French society is calculated to satisfy desire, where American society is calculated to inflame desire. In America the carrot is on the stick; in France the carrot is in the hand.

Are you at risk?

What you need to know to keep your family safe.

After leaving work I observed Halloween from a mental and emotional distance, examining the costumed hordes as they progressed gamely, station to train to station. There's something funny and what's the word. About someone who's all dressed up and waiting. All dressed up with somewhere to go. A man wearing a mask and a ridiculous, long hippie wig, its black synthetic strands shiny in the fluorescence. I scrutinized him as he – poignant? – gathered up his fake mane and took a seat beside his similarly dressed girlfriend. No. Arresting?

Women, young women, scuttled across the crowded subway halls in fishnet stockings and mini skirts with a little knowing smile, ever so slightly self-conscious. All sexy and shit. I mean. There seemed among them a great desire to dress slutty. The license you get this night to play, to regress and play, be cops and robbers, cowboys, Indians and whores.

The air outside the office was richly redolent of butterscotch. As though some tanker heading down the Hudson, God knows. A thick, cloying brown-sweet. The goddamned odors in this city, for the love of Christ.

A homeless man was bent over the trashcan of Canal & Greenwich northeast. Not bent over looking inside mind you. But propped. Perched, by the chest. Examining the ground on the other side.

Last two, three days I been trying to memorize that Dylan tune Tangled Up In Blue. Waking up in the morning to the deep-deep-deep of the alarm, already bearing the cadence in my brain: Early one morning the sun was shining. Getting up, brushing the teeth. She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe. A strangely difficult song to memorize, its language the authentic one of a single real man in the world, liable to tell you something one way or the other. She said over my shoulder we'll meet again someday. Stepping through the puddles on Canal and Hudson, animated from caffeine and work. And when finally the bottom fell out, I became withdrawn. A flurry from her cigarette, waiting for the light to change. A man and a woman push a car across the intersection. An entire car. I never did like it all that much and one day the axe just fell. A tall, hunched leather rocker with a despondent air chose a seat across from me on the L. She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me. She took off her glasses and placed them on the bar. I jaywalked across Fifth Avenue and the gypsy cabs and a man coming 'cross the other way. Her folks said our life together sure was gonna be tough.