A Salute to the Early Uh-ohs
October 24, 2011
As it's job hunting season for me, and since I've currently got more time on my hands than I've ever had before, and since I have neglected over the course of my many years of being a writer to actually compile a portfolio of my works and in fact rarely even look again at anything I've written, I today decided to comb through the assorted discs containing backups of my now-defunct old hard drives, in search of intelligible material. As I scoured, I came across a number of bits and pieces from the early '00s which, to my surprise, shed some light on not only my mindset at the time when I was just entering my 30s and moving to New York, but also on the times themselves. Taken in order, they're something of a history of my evolving consciousness. What follows is a short collection of these tidbits, one-liners for the most part, with a couple of poems and one of my all-time favorite stories (previously thought lost) thrown in for good measure. I hope you'll enjoy these random Jolisms, which together comprise
A Salute to the Early Uh-ohs .. by Jol
I feel oppressed by you
You were barely here five minutes,
But I feel oppressed by you.
3/31/2002
I wish I could go just one day without seeing white people.
6/8/2002
todd thinks we’re going to live forever and be the oldest wisest people forever. he thinks the cure for death will happen within our lifetime.
6/16/2002
professional cat petter offered.
I pet and brush. it all depends on what the cat wants. some don’t want to be touched at all, so I just leave them alone.
(AND YOU GET PAID FOR IT?)
of course.
you think I am a flim-flam man
but I’m an honest guy.
I tell you I’m a cat petter
and that is not a lie.
so you can pay me, have me over
I will see your pet.
and if it wants a friendly touch,
I’ll pet that pet—don’t fret.
6/16/2002
I thought cubby creatures were some kind of std.
7/4/2002
self denial is wicked.
7/20/2002
If I have enough time to spend alone, I will come up with something eventually.
7/20/2002
oh, I can weather your hate a long time.
7/20/2002
dude, I forget that we fight in the same war. I forget that we’re down in the trenches together.
I just get so sick of fighting this poverty shit that I look around me in my frustration and lash out at whatever’s right there, and most of the time that’s you.
8/17/2002
Mother is the Necessity of Invention.
9/2/2002
it’s so weird when you realize you’re living through one of the
happiest, most harmonious and most productive periods of your life
and you’re not even enjoying yourself.
10/2/2002
they were influenced by nirvana, but not enough.
10/2/2002
I really want friends that I could dress up freaky and be a freak with.
is that what we all want ?
10/2/2002
it was weird when k was here. he asked if I ever played music anymore, and I said, gesturing to the playroom that I just play around with my own stuff, and I said my goal is to take some lessons and learn a couple more chords before I play with people again. and he said, “ Chords?” like he didn’t know what that meant. and all of a sudden I realized something that overwhelmed me: there are some people who don’t know how to play guitar better than me.
1/2/2003
he closed the door to the play room because he thought it “looked dirty in there.”
1/3/2003
be gorgeous. it’s fun.
1/3/2003
I love it that I’m so bad behaved that I can do something good just by not being an asshole. I mean, I can always know I’m accomplishing something if I’m NOT saying something stupid.
1/3/2003
friends like randy: you’ve been through so much, times of not speaking, times of speaking; you’ve turned on and off so abruptly so many times, you just know he’ll always be there. he gives you just what you wish you could give everybody.
1/3/2003
winter mornings are quiet.
you can feel the people sleeping in.
it’s not like the summer
when it’s so hot you can’t sleep.
and you want to play your music so loud
because it’s just that kind of tension to rub in.
1/3/2003
An Elegy to Dwayne
Dwayne was stabbed on Saturday.
While the world was talking about the space shuttle exploding,
Pitt and Rivington was swarming with police
And the curious who came to look,
Drawn by the cordons that said
Police Line Do Not Cross.
A black coat lay on the ground on the corner.
Dwayne’s blood was bright, magenta almost, on the sidewalk.
I stood on my front steps and watched it as it changed with the light.
On Sunday I see them placing candles in a little cardboard box,
Some people from the neighborhood who I don’t know.
Flowers are taped to a pole.
I step closer, look at the poor little altar up close.
There is still some blood on the ground near it;
there is even a red chunk of meat lying in the street,
like when a pigeon gets run over, only different, it’s
part of Dwayne, I guess, Dwayne who’s been carved like an animal.
A message is scrawled and taped to the little cardboard altar.
“To Dwayne” it said, and it was signed, “A friend.”
A white girl brings her bike into Havana
even though she has a lock and a chain.
She questions the boy at the register
without removing her headphones from her ears.
“Was there any more violence today?” she asks.
and he shakes his head for her.
“I guess no news is good news,” she explains.
Then she asks about toothpaste.
They don’t carry it at Havana yet.
“She’ll ask for Tom’s,” I think, and
“You should get Tom’s” she tells the boy.
”Es muy bueno,” she attempts.
He nods for her.
2/3/2003
I will officially condemn this war.
I officially condemn this war and all the people who are fighting in it,
all the people who have put on uniforms and gone to fight in a war,
all who have joined up with their country’s military.
I condemn everyone who picks up arms against anyone else in the name
of war. I condemn this war and everyone who fights it.
I pray that only the people who want to be fighting the war are fighting the war.
the people who do not want to be fighting a war need to be counted, their
views need to be respected. they need to have the freedom to live in a world
without war.
3/24/2003
Hi, I just wanted to formally announce to the people of the united states
that we are conducting a revolution, that we are living
in peace and joy among you whether you know it or not,
that we are living happily ever after
no matter what.
The Happy Revolution is here to stay.
3/29/2003
I’m falling in love with iraq,
all these beautiful pictures of it in the news.
the post is doing beautiful color photos, and iraq looks
beautiful.
there’s a park with a statue of saddam.
it was beautiful. I hope they leave that up,
but you know they won’t.
you know they’ll just tear it down.
I’m falling in love with iraq.
honey, I want to live there. it’s
beautiful. look at it. it’s like LA.
well, we’re gonna own it.
oh, honey! we could be the first white people to colonize
iraq! wouldn’t that be fun?
3/29/2003
my life is an ongoing experiment with an unknown outcome.
4/21/2003
as I get older I have fewer and fewer memories.
4/23/2003
I’m fasting like a catholic today. there were some cult things I did as a kid that I
liked, and that was one of them.
4/23/2003
today I let my hair down and had a cry. that would be a great thing to tell people today if they want to know what I did before going to work.
4/23/2003
no me importa
what everyone says
I’ve got me a woman
I’ve got me a man.
no me importa
it’s anyone’s guess.
I could come in pants
Or I could wear a dress.
really don’t matter,
I’m fine either way,
it’s mine, and I couldn’t
decide anyway.
no me importa
I’ve heard it before,
it’s hard to let go,
but not hard to ignore.
no me importa’s
what everyone says,
there’s blood on their hands
and it’s all in low rez
I’ll take all their ignorance,
ignore all their stares
no me importa
I really don’t care.
no me importa:
it means I don’t care.
8/2/2003
friday: the bjork concert
the real show was the girl on cough medicine.
nico says if you drink a whole bottle you’ll get high,
that it contains hallucinogens
8/24/2003
I have an idea. they could make that jerry brown guy, the mayor of oakland, governor of california. that would be craaaaazy!
9/14/2003
hopefully it’ll be a really good illness
and I’ll get over my life.
9/14/2003
you will be taken from everything that you love.
your friends will be lost and you will have nothing.
you will be at your lowest point,
face your meanest of enemies,
be forced to mend mortal wounds,
fall prey to your addictions,
drown in privation,
live in fear,
receive little encouragement,
nearly give up,
nearly give in,
and yet, the sky will open up
and a vision will fall from it
and you will see that it is all
EASY.
10/21/2003
I’m so happy you’re thirty now. It was scary being over the hill all alone.
11/1/2003
A Fly's Progress
Today my Depeche Mode Black Celebration CD caught my eye, and so in honor of the flies living out their final days in my apartment, i played track two, "Fly on the Windscreen," which begins with these lyrics:
Death is everywhere.
There are flies on the windscreen for a start,
Reminding us we could be torn apart--tonight.
It's very dramatic stuff, and so it's scary that the song seems so appropriate right now. A few weeks ago I reported on the flies that were circling around and around the kitchen table in very lazy flight patterns. Well, the flies are still here, but what's shocking and hard to watch is that they appear to be wasting--becoming smaller and taking on a sickly demeanor.
In all my years I have never observed this process, and while it usually pleases me to make new discoveries--Burmese food, for example--this is knowledge that's not particularly enjoyable. I find it difficult to detach like a scientist and observe nature doing her thing. I am a sentimental fool, I suppose, and I'm feeling, for the first time in my life, compassion for these creatures that I, along with most of the world, have always experienced as pestilential. Now it feels like they're pets instead of pests, and I watch with deep concern as they slowly move from place to place.
Why am I noticing this now if never before? I suppose it's because during the late part of the summer, I was too often leaving open the window from both the top and the bottom, not thinking about the screen, which slides up and down to cover either the top portion of window or the bottom, but not both at once. This was against Nico's judgment, it should be noted, and several times he told me, "You're letting all the flies in." My attitude was that it was hot and that air circulation was of primary importance; also, I figured the flies would simply leave the same way they came in.
But I was wrong about that. The flies did not leave the way they came in. Instead they stayed and chose to make our home their retirement village, the place to lazily spiral into eternal rest.
One fly in particular caught my eye the other day. It was perched on the bathroom window, and its situation was so grotesque that I found myself calling to Nico to come and look at it. One of the fly's hind legs was encased in some kind of tiny brown cylinder that looked like a bug pupa. "It's deformed!" I screamed, but Nico argued that its leg was caught in some foreign object.
Whatever its ailment, whether the product of some bodily mutation or ridiculous accidental encumbrance, this particular fly became an instantly identifiable member of the household, as frequently to be encountered as, say, my hairdresser roommate Martin Christopher.
Yesterday as I sat on the toilet with my "Sunday Styles" section of the New York Times, reading about the fabulous parties that George Plimpton used to throw, the fly landed on the edge of my paper. I noticed it, almost sickened, and watched it amble ever closer to my hand until finally, when it had reached an unbearable proximity, I shook my paper, prompting it to fly away. Still, though, it remained within eyesight, and after I was done with my article I stood and observed the fly and again pondered the question of whether it was disease-twisted or simply stuck.
This morning I noticed the fly had come out of the bathroom for the first time. It landed near me on the bed. I greeted it familiarly. Its grotesqueness had ceased to shock me. The pupa-like hind leg had become a sort of tag, like the kind conservationists put on animals that they're re-releasing into the wilderness in order to track the animals' progress. I realized that this is the first time I have taken note of a fly as an individual. It felt strange but not bad.
Maybe what flies need in order to gain more human sympathy are more gimmicks. Imagine if flies wore little outfits, each one with its own little signature accoutrement, like a little green hat or a little red wig or a little Kate Spade purse. Who then could resist them?
Moments ago I saw the fly again. It was in the bathroom and the little brown tube was hanging by the very tip of the fly's leg. The mystery was solved, and Nico apparently was right again: its leg had been stuck in something. Now it was struggling to kick itself free of its encumbrance. I watched it as it kicked and kicked and flung its tiny leg over its back to rub the tube against its wing, all to no avail.
I tore off a square of toilet tissue and approached the fly, attempting to help it. I tried again and again to assist, but as soon as I would touch the tube with the tissue the fly would buzz off and land somewhere else, never too far away, but far enough for me to get the hint that it wanted to accomplish this job without my assistance. I watched for a long time, thinking it would be miraculous to witness the moment that this bold little fly finally extricated itself from its little leg trap. It looked like it was going crazy twitching its leg and flinging it over its back like that.
After a while I walked away from the scene, too impatient to watch and not be able to help. I realized that I hadn't seen any other flies buzzing around all afternoon, and I wondered if all the others had finally succumbed to the changing seasons. It's funny how the only one remaining is the one that's been suffering in this trap all this time, and it's weird how all the fly has to look forward to once it gets free is its imminent demise.
I wonder if the fly has lived longer because of its determination to free itself, whereas the others, relieved of all fly ambition, have resigned themselves to their rest. Either way, I am optimistic that the fly will get the thing off its leg; it looked like it was just about to come off a few minutes ago, and with all the energy that fly was exerting, it could probably light the apartment for the evening. Next time I see the fly, I probably won't recognize it, unless it's gotten itself a little Kate Spade purse. 11/4/2003
Dean and Keith's Adventures in Love
Dean and Keith were in stiff, deep competitive waters right now, at least according to dean, who claimed to be noncompeting. “I used to compete a little,” he says, “but I don’t compete much anymore. I’ve fairly well purged myself of that tendency.” But Dean and Keith were both trying to get jobs. Keith had been fired after they came back from India, where some friends, Kreena and Lukas, had been married.
"I don’t know why we ever went to India," Dean demanded one night.
"I liked India," Keith said.
"Yeah, but we spent all our money going there. It disrupted our rhythm. It got us out of the rhythm of new york living."
"Jet travel is new york living," Keith replied.
"That was in the ‘70s. But they grounded the Concorde the other day."
"I saw Christie Brinkley waving on the news. She was on the last flight. I was so worried about her."
"That would have been a fantastic terrorist attack. It's like they’re giving them these great opportunities. It’s almost like they’re taunting the terrorists, like dangling a steak in front of a dog."
"And Christie sure is brave to be flying on it and knowing all that.”
“Oh, man, the terrorists must just be kicking themselves."
“If I had a Jihad, I would definitely want Christie Brinkley involved in it.”
Dean nodded his head vigorously, in absolute agreement with what he heard. He hadn’t been in absolute agreement with anything he’d heard all day until now.
"The jet set is dead. Or at least if it’s not dead its cultural cache is. I mean, poor is cool now. To have too much money is just disgusting, and everyone knows it now, and the people are brewing and stirring and calling for revolution. Like the French Revolution. That’s how it’s going to be, but with celebrities instead of French royalty types.”
“America doesn’t really have royalty. Except for the Kennedys.”
12/23/2003
they said it on the news
they’re searching for life on mars
they want more people to bore.
3/2/2004
most of the time all I need to get out of a situation is a good exit line.
3/2/2004
is it possible for a man to do everything he wished without consciously trying, that he could accomplish all his goals by simply laughing?
3/2/2004
in a capitalist society it’s hard to have a relationship that’s not mediated by money somehow.
3/2/2004
in the bedroom of our first New York apartment, at Pitt and Rivington, c. 2002
October 24, 2011
As it's job hunting season for me, and since I've currently got more time on my hands than I've ever had before, and since I have neglected over the course of my many years of being a writer to actually compile a portfolio of my works and in fact rarely even look again at anything I've written, I today decided to comb through the assorted discs containing backups of my now-defunct old hard drives, in search of intelligible material. As I scoured, I came across a number of bits and pieces from the early '00s which, to my surprise, shed some light on not only my mindset at the time when I was just entering my 30s and moving to New York, but also on the times themselves. Taken in order, they're something of a history of my evolving consciousness. What follows is a short collection of these tidbits, one-liners for the most part, with a couple of poems and one of my all-time favorite stories (previously thought lost) thrown in for good measure. I hope you'll enjoy these random Jolisms, which together comprise
A Salute to the Early Uh-ohs .. by Jol
I feel oppressed by you
You were barely here five minutes,
But I feel oppressed by you.
3/31/2002
I wish I could go just one day without seeing white people.
6/8/2002
todd thinks we’re going to live forever and be the oldest wisest people forever. he thinks the cure for death will happen within our lifetime.
6/16/2002
professional cat petter offered.
I pet and brush. it all depends on what the cat wants. some don’t want to be touched at all, so I just leave them alone.
(AND YOU GET PAID FOR IT?)
of course.
you think I am a flim-flam man
but I’m an honest guy.
I tell you I’m a cat petter
and that is not a lie.
so you can pay me, have me over
I will see your pet.
and if it wants a friendly touch,
I’ll pet that pet—don’t fret.
6/16/2002
I thought cubby creatures were some kind of std.
7/4/2002
self denial is wicked.
7/20/2002
If I have enough time to spend alone, I will come up with something eventually.
7/20/2002
oh, I can weather your hate a long time.
7/20/2002
dude, I forget that we fight in the same war. I forget that we’re down in the trenches together.
I just get so sick of fighting this poverty shit that I look around me in my frustration and lash out at whatever’s right there, and most of the time that’s you.
8/17/2002
Mother is the Necessity of Invention.
9/2/2002
it’s so weird when you realize you’re living through one of the
happiest, most harmonious and most productive periods of your life
and you’re not even enjoying yourself.
10/2/2002
they were influenced by nirvana, but not enough.
10/2/2002
I really want friends that I could dress up freaky and be a freak with.
is that what we all want ?
10/2/2002
it was weird when k was here. he asked if I ever played music anymore, and I said, gesturing to the playroom that I just play around with my own stuff, and I said my goal is to take some lessons and learn a couple more chords before I play with people again. and he said, “ Chords?” like he didn’t know what that meant. and all of a sudden I realized something that overwhelmed me: there are some people who don’t know how to play guitar better than me.
1/2/2003
he closed the door to the play room because he thought it “looked dirty in there.”
1/3/2003
be gorgeous. it’s fun.
1/3/2003
I love it that I’m so bad behaved that I can do something good just by not being an asshole. I mean, I can always know I’m accomplishing something if I’m NOT saying something stupid.
1/3/2003
friends like randy: you’ve been through so much, times of not speaking, times of speaking; you’ve turned on and off so abruptly so many times, you just know he’ll always be there. he gives you just what you wish you could give everybody.
1/3/2003
winter mornings are quiet.
you can feel the people sleeping in.
it’s not like the summer
when it’s so hot you can’t sleep.
and you want to play your music so loud
because it’s just that kind of tension to rub in.
1/3/2003
An Elegy to Dwayne
Dwayne was stabbed on Saturday.
While the world was talking about the space shuttle exploding,
Pitt and Rivington was swarming with police
And the curious who came to look,
Drawn by the cordons that said
Police Line Do Not Cross.
A black coat lay on the ground on the corner.
Dwayne’s blood was bright, magenta almost, on the sidewalk.
I stood on my front steps and watched it as it changed with the light.
On Sunday I see them placing candles in a little cardboard box,
Some people from the neighborhood who I don’t know.
Flowers are taped to a pole.
I step closer, look at the poor little altar up close.
There is still some blood on the ground near it;
there is even a red chunk of meat lying in the street,
like when a pigeon gets run over, only different, it’s
part of Dwayne, I guess, Dwayne who’s been carved like an animal.
A message is scrawled and taped to the little cardboard altar.
“To Dwayne” it said, and it was signed, “A friend.”
A white girl brings her bike into Havana
even though she has a lock and a chain.
She questions the boy at the register
without removing her headphones from her ears.
“Was there any more violence today?” she asks.
and he shakes his head for her.
“I guess no news is good news,” she explains.
Then she asks about toothpaste.
They don’t carry it at Havana yet.
“She’ll ask for Tom’s,” I think, and
“You should get Tom’s” she tells the boy.
”Es muy bueno,” she attempts.
He nods for her.
2/3/2003
I will officially condemn this war.
I officially condemn this war and all the people who are fighting in it,
all the people who have put on uniforms and gone to fight in a war,
all who have joined up with their country’s military.
I condemn everyone who picks up arms against anyone else in the name
of war. I condemn this war and everyone who fights it.
I pray that only the people who want to be fighting the war are fighting the war.
the people who do not want to be fighting a war need to be counted, their
views need to be respected. they need to have the freedom to live in a world
without war.
3/24/2003
Hi, I just wanted to formally announce to the people of the united states
that we are conducting a revolution, that we are living
in peace and joy among you whether you know it or not,
that we are living happily ever after
no matter what.
The Happy Revolution is here to stay.
3/29/2003
I’m falling in love with iraq,
all these beautiful pictures of it in the news.
the post is doing beautiful color photos, and iraq looks
beautiful.
there’s a park with a statue of saddam.
it was beautiful. I hope they leave that up,
but you know they won’t.
you know they’ll just tear it down.
I’m falling in love with iraq.
honey, I want to live there. it’s
beautiful. look at it. it’s like LA.
well, we’re gonna own it.
oh, honey! we could be the first white people to colonize
iraq! wouldn’t that be fun?
3/29/2003
my life is an ongoing experiment with an unknown outcome.
4/21/2003
as I get older I have fewer and fewer memories.
4/23/2003
I’m fasting like a catholic today. there were some cult things I did as a kid that I
liked, and that was one of them.
4/23/2003
today I let my hair down and had a cry. that would be a great thing to tell people today if they want to know what I did before going to work.
4/23/2003
no me importa
what everyone says
I’ve got me a woman
I’ve got me a man.
no me importa
it’s anyone’s guess.
I could come in pants
Or I could wear a dress.
really don’t matter,
I’m fine either way,
it’s mine, and I couldn’t
decide anyway.
no me importa
I’ve heard it before,
it’s hard to let go,
but not hard to ignore.
no me importa’s
what everyone says,
there’s blood on their hands
and it’s all in low rez
I’ll take all their ignorance,
ignore all their stares
no me importa
I really don’t care.
no me importa:
it means I don’t care.
8/2/2003
friday: the bjork concert
the real show was the girl on cough medicine.
nico says if you drink a whole bottle you’ll get high,
that it contains hallucinogens
8/24/2003
I have an idea. they could make that jerry brown guy, the mayor of oakland, governor of california. that would be craaaaazy!
9/14/2003
hopefully it’ll be a really good illness
and I’ll get over my life.
9/14/2003
you will be taken from everything that you love.
your friends will be lost and you will have nothing.
you will be at your lowest point,
face your meanest of enemies,
be forced to mend mortal wounds,
fall prey to your addictions,
drown in privation,
live in fear,
receive little encouragement,
nearly give up,
nearly give in,
and yet, the sky will open up
and a vision will fall from it
and you will see that it is all
EASY.
10/21/2003
I’m so happy you’re thirty now. It was scary being over the hill all alone.
11/1/2003
A Fly's Progress
Today my Depeche Mode Black Celebration CD caught my eye, and so in honor of the flies living out their final days in my apartment, i played track two, "Fly on the Windscreen," which begins with these lyrics:
Death is everywhere.
There are flies on the windscreen for a start,
Reminding us we could be torn apart--tonight.
It's very dramatic stuff, and so it's scary that the song seems so appropriate right now. A few weeks ago I reported on the flies that were circling around and around the kitchen table in very lazy flight patterns. Well, the flies are still here, but what's shocking and hard to watch is that they appear to be wasting--becoming smaller and taking on a sickly demeanor.
In all my years I have never observed this process, and while it usually pleases me to make new discoveries--Burmese food, for example--this is knowledge that's not particularly enjoyable. I find it difficult to detach like a scientist and observe nature doing her thing. I am a sentimental fool, I suppose, and I'm feeling, for the first time in my life, compassion for these creatures that I, along with most of the world, have always experienced as pestilential. Now it feels like they're pets instead of pests, and I watch with deep concern as they slowly move from place to place.
Why am I noticing this now if never before? I suppose it's because during the late part of the summer, I was too often leaving open the window from both the top and the bottom, not thinking about the screen, which slides up and down to cover either the top portion of window or the bottom, but not both at once. This was against Nico's judgment, it should be noted, and several times he told me, "You're letting all the flies in." My attitude was that it was hot and that air circulation was of primary importance; also, I figured the flies would simply leave the same way they came in.
But I was wrong about that. The flies did not leave the way they came in. Instead they stayed and chose to make our home their retirement village, the place to lazily spiral into eternal rest.
One fly in particular caught my eye the other day. It was perched on the bathroom window, and its situation was so grotesque that I found myself calling to Nico to come and look at it. One of the fly's hind legs was encased in some kind of tiny brown cylinder that looked like a bug pupa. "It's deformed!" I screamed, but Nico argued that its leg was caught in some foreign object.
Whatever its ailment, whether the product of some bodily mutation or ridiculous accidental encumbrance, this particular fly became an instantly identifiable member of the household, as frequently to be encountered as, say, my hairdresser roommate Martin Christopher.
Yesterday as I sat on the toilet with my "Sunday Styles" section of the New York Times, reading about the fabulous parties that George Plimpton used to throw, the fly landed on the edge of my paper. I noticed it, almost sickened, and watched it amble ever closer to my hand until finally, when it had reached an unbearable proximity, I shook my paper, prompting it to fly away. Still, though, it remained within eyesight, and after I was done with my article I stood and observed the fly and again pondered the question of whether it was disease-twisted or simply stuck.
This morning I noticed the fly had come out of the bathroom for the first time. It landed near me on the bed. I greeted it familiarly. Its grotesqueness had ceased to shock me. The pupa-like hind leg had become a sort of tag, like the kind conservationists put on animals that they're re-releasing into the wilderness in order to track the animals' progress. I realized that this is the first time I have taken note of a fly as an individual. It felt strange but not bad.
Maybe what flies need in order to gain more human sympathy are more gimmicks. Imagine if flies wore little outfits, each one with its own little signature accoutrement, like a little green hat or a little red wig or a little Kate Spade purse. Who then could resist them?
Moments ago I saw the fly again. It was in the bathroom and the little brown tube was hanging by the very tip of the fly's leg. The mystery was solved, and Nico apparently was right again: its leg had been stuck in something. Now it was struggling to kick itself free of its encumbrance. I watched it as it kicked and kicked and flung its tiny leg over its back to rub the tube against its wing, all to no avail.
I tore off a square of toilet tissue and approached the fly, attempting to help it. I tried again and again to assist, but as soon as I would touch the tube with the tissue the fly would buzz off and land somewhere else, never too far away, but far enough for me to get the hint that it wanted to accomplish this job without my assistance. I watched for a long time, thinking it would be miraculous to witness the moment that this bold little fly finally extricated itself from its little leg trap. It looked like it was going crazy twitching its leg and flinging it over its back like that.
After a while I walked away from the scene, too impatient to watch and not be able to help. I realized that I hadn't seen any other flies buzzing around all afternoon, and I wondered if all the others had finally succumbed to the changing seasons. It's funny how the only one remaining is the one that's been suffering in this trap all this time, and it's weird how all the fly has to look forward to once it gets free is its imminent demise.
I wonder if the fly has lived longer because of its determination to free itself, whereas the others, relieved of all fly ambition, have resigned themselves to their rest. Either way, I am optimistic that the fly will get the thing off its leg; it looked like it was just about to come off a few minutes ago, and with all the energy that fly was exerting, it could probably light the apartment for the evening. Next time I see the fly, I probably won't recognize it, unless it's gotten itself a little Kate Spade purse. 11/4/2003
Dean and Keith's Adventures in Love
Dean and Keith were in stiff, deep competitive waters right now, at least according to dean, who claimed to be noncompeting. “I used to compete a little,” he says, “but I don’t compete much anymore. I’ve fairly well purged myself of that tendency.” But Dean and Keith were both trying to get jobs. Keith had been fired after they came back from India, where some friends, Kreena and Lukas, had been married.
"I don’t know why we ever went to India," Dean demanded one night.
"I liked India," Keith said.
"Yeah, but we spent all our money going there. It disrupted our rhythm. It got us out of the rhythm of new york living."
"Jet travel is new york living," Keith replied.
"That was in the ‘70s. But they grounded the Concorde the other day."
"I saw Christie Brinkley waving on the news. She was on the last flight. I was so worried about her."
"That would have been a fantastic terrorist attack. It's like they’re giving them these great opportunities. It’s almost like they’re taunting the terrorists, like dangling a steak in front of a dog."
"And Christie sure is brave to be flying on it and knowing all that.”
“Oh, man, the terrorists must just be kicking themselves."
“If I had a Jihad, I would definitely want Christie Brinkley involved in it.”
Dean nodded his head vigorously, in absolute agreement with what he heard. He hadn’t been in absolute agreement with anything he’d heard all day until now.
"The jet set is dead. Or at least if it’s not dead its cultural cache is. I mean, poor is cool now. To have too much money is just disgusting, and everyone knows it now, and the people are brewing and stirring and calling for revolution. Like the French Revolution. That’s how it’s going to be, but with celebrities instead of French royalty types.”
“America doesn’t really have royalty. Except for the Kennedys.”
12/23/2003
they said it on the news
they’re searching for life on mars
they want more people to bore.
3/2/2004
most of the time all I need to get out of a situation is a good exit line.
3/2/2004
is it possible for a man to do everything he wished without consciously trying, that he could accomplish all his goals by simply laughing?
3/2/2004
in a capitalist society it’s hard to have a relationship that’s not mediated by money somehow.
3/2/2004
in the bedroom of our first New York apartment, at Pitt and Rivington, c. 2002
Jol Devitro is a writer and Cubby preacher based in Los Angeles, CA, USA. His mission is to bear witness to the Nao, promote Cubby awareness, and foment revolution through inspired living.
Attempts at correspondence with Jol should be directed to...
jol dot devitro at gmail dot com
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