Un Monde Sans Les Hommes (ou les femmes)

This here website's real cool.

Dark Humor

1. Half-naked and sweating, his body the pale almost-yellow of his Spongebob boxers, my father pleaded, through gasps and about-to-vomit gurgles, that I call the doctor who treated him in the ER on Friday. The secretary answered, and I asked for Sherry. "Hold please," she said. And while Dad begged for Dilaudin [sic?], or morphine, or a pistol, I listened to "I Will Survive," waiting for the doctor to pick up.

2. Nick and I were watching "TV's Funniest Moments," and had just finished laughing at number 2, the Family Guy song about the ridiculous censorship of the "Freakin' FCC," which won't allow the word "penis" on television. The last commercial before the show returned started with a black screen, and a close-up traveling shot down what looked like a thermometer. Digital music announced "The world's most advanced pregnancy test" while a virtual stream of urine slow-motioned onto the end of the stick.

My Jew*

His shoes were the color of his shorts, like they'd been washed in the same dust. They matched the tan of his legs. This made his socks, a rusty magenta, stand out. If I had to give you one reason why he seemed obscenely Jewish, I'd probably say the socks.

There is something about the supremely ethnic that dissuades stereotypical discrimination. Maybe it's that the supremely ethnic satisfy most of the criteria of the stereotype that attacking the person seems about as effective as assaulting a dolphin with a Super-Soaker.

I nodded, he nodded, the poofy mushroom of his hair moving independently of his head. "Nice socks," I said. He looked at his feet as if to say, "These old things?" and nodded at me again. Didn't stop. Half-smiled. I've seen him twice since.

Late afternoons of an Indiana summer are hot. The humidity eases off its midday peak like a beached whale being pushed into the ocean by the African Children's Choir. I usually see the strange-socked Jew around five or six, mostly near the library, on a corner between the two entrances that doesn't inform me if he's coming or going.

I make a right angle with the library, the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and the Post Office. Then over to 2nd Street, past the K & S Country Market, where I grab a 35 cent Faygo from the machine outside. Last summer its only company was a half-filled Coke vendor, with regular, Diet, and Sprite. They added an Adrenaline machine in late May. Adrenaline is an energy drink, each flavor named after a situation where somebody'd be likely to have a heroic 'rush.' My favorite is "Hip-Shot," though "Bungee Snap"'s berry flavor is nostalgic, with a taste like the fence where Grandma's vines twirled.

The sun doesn't really set till after eight, and the sky is light till around nine-thirty. Between six and seven-thirty the air is thick orange, a color I like to think is exclusively midwestern. It is early August now, which means leases are changing hands. It is difficult to determine who is moving in and who is moving out. The scents of marinated meat and ripe corn mix with the warm taste of charcoal in the air. In the last thirty minutes of daylight, I go running.

Despite the immunity of being supremely ethnic, I subject the Jew to private speculation. He's here for med school. Law school. Works for his father. I imagine his mother making matzo balls while asking why he never brings a nice girl home.

What would it take to know the Jew? I've never seen his eyes; he always wears long-lensed reflective sunglasses, the sporty kind that were big in the '90s. Somehow this confirms what the socks only hint at. I wonder if he ever recognizes me, or if the nods are just polite gestures toward a stranger.

A midwestern university town is a good place to live. A transient, impermanent student body allows for the distinct anonymity of a big city, while the small neighborhoods bordering farmland house the midwest's hospitable residents whom grandmas adore. I can be aloof without seeming queer, or I can be friendly without seeming handicapped. This duality often leads to having an Anonymous Friend, a person I see often enough to know**, but have never actually interfaced with. The Jew is my Anonymous Friend.

A commonly tricky relationship move is going from Friend to Lover or vice-versa. An equally common, but less acknowledged move is going from Anonymous Friend to Acquaintance to Friend. Acquaintanceship is never a desirable level. The Purgatory of human interaction, Acquaintanceship means you don't know a person well enough to care about him/her, but you know enough to have to pretend to.

After the run I walk through the park, counting fireflies***. The temperature is down to the 70s, and back at my subleased room the AC goes off, the window up. A fan is turned on, power level one. Crunches are done with shoes still on; dinner is cooked in nothing but shorts. I spend most of my waking hours in silence, as there is no one around to speak with. Aside from summer classmates, the Jew is the closest friend I have.

There is a definite difference between loneliness and solitude. Without reaching for a dictionary, I'd say intent is the dividing line. Loneliness falls upon a person, whereas solitude is his choice. The line is sometimes blurred, and staying in, reading, on a Friday night seems more like a capitulation to circumstance than a conscious choice.

There are many lonely people. The boom of virtual lives, of networking web sites, indicates a noticeable lack in interaction, not the other way around. They are empty plates on which we spill drips of ourselves trying to create desirable personae.

The Jew seems to be a complete person. I feel entirely removed from him, unable to identify in any way. I've never seen his favorite movies, never heard his favorite music, never listened to him explain his favorite books. I can't predict his tastes, whether right or wrong. Maybe this is what draws me to him.



*Most of this is made up, and, admittedly, incomplete.
**As in, during conversations when said person is mentioned, though you've never conversed, and have no biographical information w/r/t said person, you will inevitably say, "Hal? Goofy guy with mushroom hair? Yeah, I know him."
***Actually, I try to follow one firefly for fifty blinks.

Try Not to Take it So Hard

My teeth are sore in the mornings. Sometimes I remember dreams; starving, thirsty, my mouth unable to open. When nervous, I clack my teeth together, try to feel every protrusion as they slide into every groove. The tops are mostly flat.

Every dentist for the last five years has tried to sell me a mouthguard to wear while sleeping. No thank you, I say, that's all from when I was a kid. Honestly, as far as I can remember, my teeth have always been like this.

Mom says when I was young she could hear me grinding my teeth in my sleep. Molar on molar. The canines have remained untouched.

Is this nerves? I am frightened by the lock-jaw dreams. I wake up stressed, ill-rested, my face like the wrong end of a punch.

I was a paranoid child. Anxiety attacks occurred weekly, if not daily. We once ran out of gas on the way to soccer practice. No more than a half-mile from the Citgo, I wept in the back seat.

In fourth grade I asked to be sent home often. In junior high I would close my eyes and clench my hands, digging my nails into the palms, trying to feel what had just gone numb. Anxiety was a floating feeling; my limbs were skinny balloons. Eventually I learned how to stop the attacks through distraction. Nights now, when I feel one coming, the lights go on, a book is opened, no matter how tired I am. Eventually I pass out, and in the morning the pages are wet with drool.

For most anxious people, the very hint of a panic attack gives them the howling fantods. They have a strange thought, of something that, after several bad incidents, they now associate with panic. Then the fear of having a panic attack takes over. At that point, they're lost, stumbling to a corner to babble and hold onto the walls. Squinting eyes, touching the counters, reminding themselves that everything around them is real.

My panic attacks most likely started when I was eight. I can't say for sure when the first was, but my guess is the night I realized I was going to die. A world lit professor sophomore year of college told me the mid-20s are the years when most people understand the finality of their own mortality. So I was a little early. No real surprise. I'd gone fishing and learned how to ride a bike before my older brother.

I usually freak out while thinking about dying. It's like one of those shots you see in epic movies, where the camera focuses on a single leaf, then an entire forest, then a whole state/country, then a continent, the earth, the galaxy, infinity. It's like my head tries to fit the image of eternity inside. Everything explodes, and the attack lasts as long as it takes to glue the pieces back together. But I end up grinding away the top layer of my teeth.

Dostoevsky says that man is a constructive animal. We build staircases of knowledge, all going up, all without a destination. The closer we get to finishing our staircase, the more often we branch to the side, or double back on ourselves. For some reason, D says, man always avoids finishing his project.

Nietzsche believes that man searches for a meaning to his life. Nietzsche also says there is no meaning. Even a fly believes he is the center of the universe. When we die, we are forgotten, and eventually no one cares. I think this truth is what keeps us building our staircases forever. Who wants to finish at the door to that kind of knowledge? We tell ourselves everyday that we matter, that we exist for a reason. We invent gods and morality and laws; we procreate and do everything we can to survive. The inevitable question is Why? Nobody wants to hear that the answer is No Reason.

I'm not trying to be pretentious or didactic. I don't think I know any better about life than others. I want a purpose just as much as most people. I'd like god to come down and tell me there's a reason for everything that happens. I'm not saying there is one, but I hope like hell a universal truth exists. If you want to know how uneasy I am about the whole thing, just look at my teeth.

Double Whammy

Seriously, dumping toxic shit into a lake isn't cool. I myself have always been a fan of boycotting. Political activism doesn't have to be radical, reactionary, or hot-headed. So take fifteen seconds to fill out this boycott petition, and let's see what we can do.

Click Here to help Lake Michigan.

Help Lake Michigan

Click here to sign a petition against the proposed dumping of 6,500 pounds of harmful waste into Lake Michigan.

Singing Tesla Coil at Duckon 2007

The sounds are being made by the high voltage sparks. The Tesla coil was built by Steve Ward, a student at the University of Illinois.

Why Infinite Jest is the Most Brilliant Book You'll Ever Read

David Foster Wallace won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997, the year after Infinite Jest was published. The M.F. is more commonly known as the 'Genius Grant.' DFW like deserves it.

Infinite Jest is 981 pages of narrative. Endnotes take the book to 1,079 pages. It is dense, highbrow, hilarious, and like heartbreaking.

The title comes from Hamlet, in relation to Poor Yorick, known well. In the novel, Infinite Jest is the name of the final film of James O. Incandenza, father of slowly unraveling protagonist Hal, seventeen-year old tennis/lexical wiz. The film is so entertaining it's like lethal. Anyone who sees it loses all interest in life, and wants only to see the film again. They will not eat, sleep, or get up to go to the bathroom. After several days, anyone who watches the movie dies of sleep/food deprivation, in a puddle of piss and a pile of shit, happy as a clown on stilts.

While initially confusing/off-putting due to the cut-and-paste timeline, the strange near-future world, and the myriad of characters, the novel carves for itself an emotional peg in your heart. Don Gately and Hal Incandenza are people whose lives I felt a need to witness.

The novel overflows with detail and verisimilitude, and the language is as tight as a well-strung tennis racket. I thought about the book daily. I dreamt about it. I traded sleep for reading time. I even missed class. The novel proved to be so entertaining that at times I would not stop to make dinner.

And when it was finished I wanted to start all over again. I reread the first three chapters, then collapsed with like exhaustion.

I'm sure most of you can see where I'm going with this. My point falls under the 'form = function' category. A novel about a movie so entertaining people watch it with zeal then re-watch it when done, is itself so entertaining that readers go through the same circle. Luckily, you won't like die.

Infinite Jest is genius. Not just an ego-satisfying think piece, it still has (so) much for the reader to consider. Not a mindless pleasure-filled bestseller, it still will make you laugh, and keep you in that strangely satisfying state of emotional suspense, like that feeling below your breastbone just before the roller-coaster falls. It is involved fiction. It was work for the author, and so it makes sense that the novel should be work for us, like, too.

Maps

Writing is a wild thing, for me. It's independent of me, a black-and-white jungle. Non-fiction interests me, but fiction intrigues me. Non-fiction can be creative, can be structurally unusual, but it is constrained, for the most part, by something we call the truth. Invention must be acknowledged, imagination is tongue-in-cheek*. But fiction is different. While the goal--imparting truth--is the same, the means of coming to it are as different as a lizard and a kangaroo in a sports coat. Non-fiction is crawling through the dense jungle seeking the light which means escape. Fiction is seeking the light by making the jungle more dense. Fiction is the piling on of untruths to get to the truth. Fiction is like being trapped in an oubliette; to escape we must build a ladder of shit.

I've always been a fan of the Modernists, for whom Truth, if it exists, can never be arrived at using language. There is no direct route with words. The road does not cease so much as fall off, like that illustration on the cover of Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends. So to inform you of their inability to inform you, the Modernists write, after declaring that writing is useless. This notion is oxymoronical. This notion is a cold-rain headache.

When I think about it, I feel lost. But if you wanted to know what I really meant by that, I'd have to tell you something completely different. Fiction writing is not saying, "I feel lost, and this is why," but "I feel unfound, and this is why not."

*Whatever that means.

Family Guy -

Je pense que c'est drôle.