November Notes

The Collective

We will form a Collective, drawing upon our individual talents, which, taken together, will make us no more commercially viable, yet imminently available for the day that someone throws an event that should require the services of two singer-songwriters, a hurdy-gurdy repairman, a vegan Nuevo Latin chef of small dishes, a poet, and a eye, ear, nose and throat specialist no longer licensed to practice in the United States and its territories.

Ramen

M: Ramen is to New York what burritos are to California.

Minca for the pork, Setagaya for the noodles, Sapporo for the mid-town hustle, Rai Rai Ken for hole-in-the-wall ambiance and the handsome fellow behind the counter.



Central Casting

See that man at the bar: he played a pederast on a police drama. He also played a serial killer-slash-rapist in an R-rated thriller starring a well-known actress, the one with the lips. He is, as you say, right out of Central Casting. Something in the pallor of his skin – a tightness around his temples and the peculiar shine of his forehead – fulfills our expectation of what a social deviant should resemble.

I knew a woman who went on a few dates with him. She couldn’t get over it; he made her uneasy, like white bible covers.

Central Casting, Part 2

Me: The wise-cracking best friend

You: The explosives expert

Me: The stoic vamp lover of the Russian drug lord

You: The seen-it-all barkeep

Me: A robot with feelings

You: The sexually ambiguous master of ceremonies

Me: Neo-Shanghai is About to Explode!

You: The neighborhood fink in his autumnal years



Movie Rental

Down to the Bone – the careless, incremental ways ordinary people guide you to your own self-destruction.

The Human Predicament

When she was younger, she wore dark lipstick to appear older. When she became older, she shaved a few years off her age. When she made barely anything, she bought one expertly tailored silk dress, used, and wore it for important occasions. When she began making real money, she would sometimes buy expensive baubles to make her fatigue worth it. Whereas once she was embarrassed by her family’s loud Cantonese, she now grasps at its aphoristic wisdom. There were men she slept with but could barely speak to. There were men who she could speak to but couldn’t imagine sleeping with. She was attracted by that borough because the immigrants made the local restaurants cheaper and more interesting, but the other borough had more trees and better coffee. When she was in the prime of her health, she subsisted on arugula and almonds. Now that she is dying, wasting away, really, she eats like a teenage boy.


Sighing

An animal is never more human than when it sighs.

Or is it that humans are never more bestial than when we sigh?

Anorexics and Bulimics

B: What would you guess is the number one health-related reason New York subways get stopped?

L: People who think they are having heart attacks.

B: No, it’s not that.

L: People who shit themselves.

B: Naw, I wish. The number one reason is fainting women. Because they’re not eating enough.

There are two types of people: anorexics or bulimics. Whatever it takes for you to get things done.

Me, I’m a bulimic. I have to sink both arms and submerge my entire face in the depraved, empty-calorie, mind-numbing blubber of excess before I am able to emerge, as purposeful as the slice of a knife blade. But it’s the anorexics that I admire, their grueling discipline that counters no weakness.

S: Does it have to be anorexics and bulimics? That seems so depressing. What about constipation and flow?



Line Breaks at the Diner

S. is upset because Z. has proclaimed that Sebald is a greater poet than most poets. Although she agrees that the problem with American poets is they might as well be writing prose, what with their lazy line breaks. I don’t know about Sebald, but release my usual crank renunciation of poetry as an art form.

After we leave the diner, I go home and read a poem by Bernard Radfar, translated from the Persian Azerbaijani Jewish Neo-Aramaic:

we didn’t know
that we
weren’t together

we went into it
and later
what was broken
became days

and me
with night
riding me