the book of problems

Part one is here.

THE MAN

An insane person standing in front of the staircase going down to the 6 train at Astor Place, gesticulating and shouting, “Jesus Christ, should the whole fucking city do it?”

THE PLOT

A person returns home and attempts to combat the public sentiment and agreed upon life and ambiance of the town in which he lives and works.

THE MAW

Dear Ruth,

If it’s any testament to my recent state, I haven’t written any words in the journal you gave me. It’s been a scattered couple weeks of throwing projects out like 52-card pick up and feeling overwhelmed when the tide sweeps back in and overtakes me with things to do. Obviously, being dispersed doesn’t feel so good. Pieces of me are all over the place and I’m writing, but it’s tainted writing, without that secret element of play and loss of time that make it worth doing.

Haunted by a quote I read in an F. Scott Fitzgerald book: “I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the ‘well-rounded man’. This isn’t just an epigram—life is more successfully looked at from a single window after all.”

New York is cold, but I like the clean moon and iced-over fields of the park near my house, the ice that crunches under my feet. Some good friends of mine just moved up here and although I’m happy they’ve arrived, I don’t quite know how to entertain them or show them the secret glory of this city.

It doesn’t exist in bars or at brunch. It’s like some kind of skittish woodland ghost. It only reveals itself at the moments when you’re most alone.

Talking about things is the exact opposite of doing them. Moments of genesis. Even now I have the sinking feeling that the words I write in this letter will be the most honest words I say all week. Movies, journalism, the city’s endless distractions are always waiting. Even when they’re good, they just don’t compare…

Got a letter back from Ruth in which she advised me to put the laptop away for a couple of weeks and read. Followed by a list of obscure Oulipo-coded writers I’ve never heard of.

Maybe she’s right, but when you get unsolicited advice like this it’s natural to be suspicious and annoyed. I frown, and push the letter to the side of my desk without replying. My impulse is to snap back, “Well, maybe if you stopped reading so much, you’d get more work done.”

A proper balance can never be struck. I’m poorly read, having darted from book to book for years, touching on different eras and topics but never making a thorough study of a period or author. The last steady sustained reading I had was in high school, and even then it was a smattering of books from across the long years with nothing to bind them together as a mass.

Tolstoy told Maxim Gorky: “You read too much and that is bad because you do it out of self-mistrust!”

The truth is if you have any skills at all it is better to be a poorly-read do-er than a well-read consumer. I believe that most people, having a choice and some confidence in their ability to make stuff, would choose not to spend their whole lives inhaling the must of other people’s often monotonous and boring output. I can only imagine that a steady binge with no purge causes the mind to balloon up, the body to weaken and swoon, lacking perspective and identity.

One could read and read without end, like termites spending their whole lives plowing through chipboard until their hearts unexpectedly stop beating. Reading without writing would be like being adrift in an ocean for life with no sign of dry land. It seems impossible, bleak and empty to never stake your claim.

A pallor hangs over my heart. At first I think it’s acid-reflux, and then I panic and worry that it might be my heart—or a hidden tumor. Drinking doesn’t make it go away, but neither does exercise. I don’t feel like crying, so there’s no trying that. The muscle seems tired and used up. Sometimes I rub the skin over the heart and feel its strange energy on my fingertips, static electric and life-giving. I wonder how long I will last. The heaviness is so serious, so maudlin and dramatic—and there’s not enough smiling or laughing or quality time with other humans. But I start to notice that the heaviness starts to go away when I write, it dissipates, breaking up like a phlegmy cough after coating the chest with Vicks VapoRub.

Wet slushy snow all afternoon. Walking to the subway to go home from work with a determined city-frown on my face, nobody’s singing in the Virgin Megastore Karaoke booth. Frustrated crowds rushing down into the subway to go home. It’s one of those dark, early winter evenings where you question your entire life trajectory and wonder if you went horribly wrong. Then you try to re-prioritize and focus in the hopes that maybe it’s not too late. Underground in the bustling Union Square station, there’s a big band playing. Energy and lightness coalesce around them. I feel ghostly coming up from the tunnel and the stairs are wet and I can see the texture of the snow falling from inside the tiled tunnel. I walk by the library near my house and the light is on, but the wrought iron gate is closed and locked. The feral cats aren’t out in their usual place on top of the steam vents eating the bowls of food that the old people slip them. Snow has gathered high on top of my mailbox. I open it up and there’s no mail inside.

I take a cab from work to JW’s house so we can watch the Savage Eye. It’s snowing and we cross the river like I’ve crossed it so many times before over a bridge, though I’m not sure which one it was—the grey-green of industry and the snowy lights in the sky stay with me. He unlocks his tenement out in Ditmas Park, the hallways smell like urine. Their apartment is a messy little roost of love—books strewn everywhere, a tiny coffeemaker in the kitchen, the snow-covered above ground train station across the street giving the place the appearance of Minsk.

When I go to the bathroom, I examine my weird face in the mirror under the fluorescent light. Hardened circles under my eyes. The whole thing was very youthful, but still definitely adult. Something I think about often is how older people don’t get looked at as often as the young and full of vitality.

Strangers don’t approach and introduce themselves, and I start to wonder if I have entered that long middle age where I’ve closed myself off to the possibility. The night before, instead of going home after work, I had taken the train to a goodbye party, cutting myself off from the possibility of going home and falling into the predictable routine of dinner and bed. I have an apartment, I have a job, I have heat. But I sense I no longer have that inner warmth that lights and fills up rooms. I’ve turned reptilian and cold, always warming my feet with a space heater, drinking coffee and taking extra long showers just to get to that base level that others manage to produce naturally. At the party I don’t dance, but I smile at the people dancing to indicate that I’m not judging them and am rooting them on—“just glad people are having a good time”—but by standing silently on the side lines and not dancing you are a de facto judge or at least a passive observer. Holding back. Like those times at a party when a friend feels free and light and starts dancing—why didn’t you join her? What stops you?