comedian/writer.

2009-06-14T04:56:58Z

Semantics, my friend, is made up of antics.

The alcohol and my defeats reduce me to a core of failed misery. Enough of this. But still, thankful to know that the pain is a possibility. Perhaps I’m not pretty enough to compete. Perhaps I have no gossip to offer, in addition to a bottle of wine, no scintilatting tabouli recipe, for christ’s sake. And so, yes, perhaps my place is not amongst others. I’ve never done well surrounded by strangers. I want either to own them or else to fade away. No place I’ve understood, no conversation or repartee that I’ve found space in, just walls, unscaleable, at least by me.
All I can think is, I am such an asshole, I am such a loser. Reverberating, echoing. I lasted 15 minutes tonight, which includes a cigarette and a bathroom trip. And so, resgination, retreat, the reminder that nothing much changes, despite med levels, cities, relationships, degrees.

Tom, it is all beginning again. In jubilation, we are all the same; in suffering, we individuate. Dissolving again, madness again, a room again, and no anchor.

It’s 4am, and beside me the bed is empty. Powdery traces across the mirror on the desk disappear into my sleeve as I settle myself down to write this. Cold seethes through the dark air, coating skin and eyes as I reach for the mug of coffee, now settled in fine layers of grit in its glass.

There is the rising panic again, a bittersweet accompaniment to the car alarm and garbage truck, fellow sojourners in the pre-dawn. I sit, old coffee, stale smoke, while the wave of tension demands my body’s full extension and flexing.

nousvivons @ 2009-06-12T00:41:00

2009-06-12T04:42:00Z

Beneath his inertia, Jake felt the old tension.

Noisy at the Circus

2009-02-11T07:26:28Z

Mr. Salty exists, still, at least out here, though they're in chocolate-covered, 100 calorie-pack form. But it's something.

In Memoriam

2009-01-20T01:58:14Z

Dec. 25, 2008

Whiskey is gone. My dear, loved, perfect, heroic dog is gone. He’s gone. And I don’t know what to do, and instead I drink. I drink alone, in an apartment in the Upper West Side in New York, David out roaming, hiding from my pain, which I deaden, then heighten with white wine chilled with ice cubes. Closeness, distance, strangeness.

Ten years ago I brought home something small, soft, warm, smelling faintly of popcorn and yawning into my chest. I brought home this slumbering, delicate, honey-colored infant of a dog, whose milk-teeth would gnaw my fingers, their touch on my skin a feather with backbone. Mewling, tossing in sleep, with bellyskin spotted beneath a thin, pale fur that never properly thickened with age. I brought home this small mound of warmth against the furious objections, shouts, threats of my mother. I hung up a pay phone in the community college quad, easily holding the exhausted pup against my body as she screamed, as I told her this wonderful little thing was coming home with me regardless of her feelings on the subject.

This animal, this existence, with personality and preference and joy, all matured and filled out with time, as his body pushed out from five pound softness to one hundred pound chiseled sinew and hooked tooth. A running, rolling, compassionate creature, that offered speechless love and support in difficult times. This friend and child, who would lay beside me under the onslaught and volley of echoing yells, of discordant and terrible youth and womanhood. I had a protector and ally always, an animal noble and close, to warn off men walking past, to warm me when muscles cramped, to lick the salt from my cheeks and to sleep beside me when the world was too close and too dark.

With age, he grew into himself, shifted deeper in my heart. Across the large, difficult world, the curve of my body missed him. I begged for him to be near, the only life that might understand always exactly what was needed. A reflection of love’s simplicity, of unifying loyalty, of total understanding derived instantaneously from poise and tone and motion. Something I loved for the sake of his love, his world guided completely by utter wholeness of familiarity and family. There is no community like the communion of a dog.
He was my hero, the only anything I’ve ever applied that word to. He was true, and clear, and knew love without identification. He understood how to treat the ones you love, without being taught. He knew that, when those you love are in pain, the best thing to do, generally, ever, is to lie beside them, lend them your warmth and solidity, while they crumble. He felt that what you give in love is your iron, bent into the shape of the crook their body makes.

I brought him to surgeries. I force-fed him pain medication. He was ashamed of the weakness of his body, ashamed of my crying over him, wished to be better, was miserable, was confused, wanted me to believe that nothing had changed. He hid the failing of his energy behind his attentiveness, his unceasing closeness, the unbroken contact between our bodies. Four and a half weeks between diagnosis and this, his utter absence. My stoic hero, my standard for friendship and love. I do not accept this. All too fast, my indomitable dog. Simpler and better than all of us. Complete in himself, breathing in the dispositions of a room and knowing what was called for, what behavior might balance the moment.

When he was young, I terrified him of the ocean. I hadn’t meant to, but the day was too windy for a pup still unsure of his own dimensions. It was the sea foam that broke him. Flaking from the waves, it seemed to chase him across the sand, and he ran, terrified. First long ride in a car, which he would later love, first encounter with something so unfathomable that he hated water his entire life. I would like to have done that differently, to be as sensitive to him as he was to me, to preserve the chance of adding another source of joy in his life. But I fucked that up.

Swift mortality to the undeserving. Hours of lying beside each other, belly rubs and face licks and bad movies and crying, each taking assurance from mutuality and understanding. His decline was fast, every day brought changes that he finally acknowledged, returning the expression that had been directed towards him for two weeks: infinite sadness and the weight of impending inevitability.

It’s a strange thing to have the future and the present so closely, crudely, splayed everywhere, always. Ugly, that thoughts of consequences are incestuous to their source, that they flaunt their immediacy.
I love my dog, completely, utterly. He made me a better human, and I am humbled before the dog that he was. I want more, I feel robbed, beaten, savaged, and this is not happening, not any of it, not now and not ever. I can’t believe that my dog could die, could just die, be gone, never return, despite all his love and despite how fucking good he was, I want to rip out pieces of myself and exchange them for him, for his life given back, because I’m flawed and could do with less, could get by, but he was perfect and Love and he shouldn’t have to die in pain and alone on Christmas, scared and resigned and tired, because he was better than that, but again, life lowers itself to this filth, and my dog is gone and I want him back.

in the corner, something is happening

2006-11-16T05:09:57Z

the time to be swept up passionately and shocked by pebbles on my window is dwindling rapidly. brief and beautiful, with a dramatic exit scene which leaves viewers wondering what if and secretly knowing that it all would have been so right and whole and inevitable and untouchable if only. a quiet life, instead; the only pebbles are those which i'll toss myself, into some still water, just to watch the equanimity break.

famous men and prominent women

comedian/writer.

nousvivons @ 2009-06-12T00:41:00

Noisy at the Circus

In Memoriam

in the corner, something is happening