Let's Pretend Nothing is Going On

Once a woman went to live in the city of Let’s Pretend Nothing is Going On.  She thought that since she was there, she might as well point a few things out.

She got so busy with this, she wound up falling in love.  It was a perfect love, of course it was, with an aristocrat of Let’s Pretend Nothing is Going On.  She married.  She went on pointing things out.

She lived, she worked, she made love, she did the best she could.  She pointed a few things out.  Negative was not the word, she pointed out.  The word was concerned.

Of course I could be wrong, she pointed out.  But I am not necessarily or automatically wrong, just because I’m pointing things out. 

A time came when terrible things happened in the city of Let’s Pretend Nothing is Going On.  To her own house, to her own love, the trouble came.  These are things that can happen even now, and even in that fortunate city.

She cried, she called out, she ran back and forth in the street between her house and the house of her husband’s kin, a prominent family in Let’s Pretend Nothing Is Going On.

Mercifully, her husband was able to make a full recovery.  But now she herself fell ill.  She went on pointing things out.  She got sicker all the time.  She grew desperate.  She pointed a few things out.

I’m dying, I’m dying, she said.

She noticed her words weren’t having much of an effect.  Goddamn, she said.  I’m tired of pointing things out.

She walked downtown and caught the first bus out.. Something had happened.  Or maybe it hadn’t.  Anyway, she was feeling much better and that was the end of her life in the city of Let’s Pretend Nothing is Going On.

    

7 Short and Cheerful Essays on the Subject of Despair

1. The Fish, Despair

The giant fish in the open tank beside the tables at the infamous and eternal Malaysia Hotel – let’s call that fish Despair.  Its long gray gleaming body, the vivid prehistoric fin that surfaces now and then as it circles through the murky water.  Our fish, Despair.  It is necessary to note and experience the fish.

It is also necessary to note the dark water and the glass.  The potted fern, the sex tourists, the Waikiki pancake, the faux cave.  It is necessary to be aware of all of this, as well as the fish, Despair.

A black and white cat prowls the edges of the tank, it strides from stone to stone.  In addition to the cat there is a delicate spider, lowering itself from the eaves.

2. Celery

This TV show is all about celery.  All the pleasures and benefits of celery, and celeriac as well.  Celery, we are told, adds a delicate flavor to soups.  When you buy celeriac you must make sure it is intact with no visible cracks which spoils the taste and would be a shame.

The show ends with the warning that, if you are allergic to celery, your lips may swell or your throat become scratchy.  If this is the case, you should discontinue eating celery immediately.  Thankfully, such allergies are rare.

Imagine if this TV show inspired you to finally sit up, find your keys, and venture out to the supermarket for the purpose of buying celery.  Imagine you made a soup with a delicate taste – only to discover that your throat had become scratchy.

You might very well feel that life was against you, denying you not only great loves and successes, but even small pleasures like celery.

You might very well give way to despair.

3. Fizz

The way it is sometimes apparent that people buy sickly sweet caffeinated beverages simply because the sugar high will allow them to get through the next eight minutes without succumbing to despair.

Because of my ever so slightly dramatic nature, I assume disaster is imminent, when really it is entirely possible to get through four or more decades this way, one soda after another, and never appear any worse than mildly disappointed at the proceedings.  As if nothing else were wrong besides having diabetes.

4. Knife

The grandfather lost his hand to a threshing machine.  The father lost use of his in a motorcycle accident.  By the time the son came along it was tradition. 

Anyway, he wouldn’t need it, would hardly feel it, said the father and grandfather as they sharpened the knife.  Because he was special, as they were special.  Special rules applied to him.

5. Options

My new friend explains that, contrary to what you may have heard, prescription drugs really do help.  They are tremendously helpful.  They are so effective, in fact, that it may or may not be not necessary to actually swallow them.  For him it is enough just to look.

He likes to examine his barbiturate collection every day, and especially at night before bed.  It is a first-rate collection, well-balanced and well-researched and he is confident that he could use it to kill himself, any time he deemed necessary or convenient.

Everyone thinks his new stability and good cheer are the result of a change in scenery, a new love, a decent shrink, a yoga regimen.  When it is in fact the prescription drugs that are so remarkably effective.

He never goes anywhere without a pile of condoms, someone else’s credit card, and his barbiturate collection.  He is cheerful, like any man who knows he has options.

5. Nature

At Phuket Zoo the drugged tiger lies on its side beneath a garlanded photo of the dull-eyed elderly king and a sign welcomes you to have your picture taken for just 200 baht.

Or, if you prefer, there is Milo the orangutan, her white flab showing through her thin orange fur like an old woman who tints what little is left of her hair.

Monkeys, birds, seals and crocodiles pace the floor or lie in the corners of cages that seem entirely rickety and unsound.  But I realize that it is not necessary for a cage to be impressive.  It need only hold.

It is essential that we not anthropomorphize animals or intuit what they feel – because, if we did, their grief would be so overwhelming that anyone with a quarter-teaspoonful of empathy would keel over dead. 

What is left waits in its concrete pit so that we can take a picture with our phone to ornament the Internet.  Here I am, in Nature.

6. Red Ant

Large red ants all around me, tracing the edges of the chair, veranda, or fallen leaf.  This one here is hurriedly circumambulating the round table where I sit.  My psychiatrist in Chicago explained that certain repetitive acts are self-comforting.  Perhaps the red ant is feeling agitated.  Sure looks that way.  Maybe the red ant is saying to itself, “I’ll get to the end of this sooner or later.”

7. Living

If anyone has the right, it’s her, in her wheelchair from which bottles hang that fail to dull the pain.  But she does not despair.  She does not even complain.  She explains that now is when she is learning to live – when it is no longer a question of winning a prize or enduring a pleasure.  When there is no consolation, compensation or purpose that will make it all officially work out.  This is how she is learning to live, while dying.

It’s life, she says.  Not a bank account.  You don’t balance it.

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Roberto Bolano

Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth

Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews

New Directions, 2006

Fashion isn’t always wrong.  Geniuses don’t always have to wait a century or two to be recognized.  Sometimes they are appreciated just shortly after their deaths. . .  The surge of interest in Roberto Bolaño has resulted in translations of his work hurrying into print and fame in English.  I have only one argument with these proceedings – this book, Last Evenings on Earth, has been unjustly neglected. 

The lion’s share of attention has gone, understandably, to Bolaño’s doorstop masterpieces – The Savage Detectives and 2666, as well as the oddly perfect novella Amulet.  The short story, that short and unpopular cousin, has been disregarded again.

These brilliant and peculiar stories could serve well to help re-energize the form -- many recent examples of which appear to have grown into a weirdly complicated and oddly dull machines, as ambitious as they are unsatisfying.

If you enjoy Bolaño, you must read this book and, if you have not yet been introduced, this is an excellent place to start.  Bolano’s humor, violence, strangeness, suspense, and tenderness are all present here in abundance.

Everyone will have their own set of favorites.  For me, the best stories were “The Grub”, “Anne Moore’s Life”, “Mauricio (The Eye) Silva” and “Sensini”.  The characters are so vivid you might confuse them, in your memory, years from now, for old doomed friends of yours. 

Notes from Sri Lanka, #1 - #21

Notes from Sri Lanka

September 2012

1. Visitors

The Polish man is in town because the machine that sews Bibles is broken.  The trouble, he explains, is with the paper.  Regular paper is OK, but that flimsy Bible paper, it always makes a problem, here in the humid land of the Buddha.  He’ll get drunk every night, then fly home and in three months he’ll be back because the machine that sews Bibles is forever being broken.

The other drunk is from West Virginia – but he’s been married and living in Pattaya for five years.  And he is still in shock at how much his wedding cost.  Because you don’t just pay for the bargirl, you pay for her whole family.  And most grooms, he’s quick to add, are even fatter and older than he is.  He wishes to make clear that, at 57, and two hundred forty pounds, he can still just squeeze into the category ‘Love’.

For a number of years I lived in a file cabinet.  Now I’ve landed in a picaresque tale.

2.

Whenever I decide that it is all right to be awkward and nervous and shy – I am so relieved that I forget to be afraid..

3. Knowledge

The small main street of Negombo possesses, collectively, something near omniscience.  After I’ve been in town a day, everyone on the street knows everything about me.  They know where I’m from, what I’m doing, what side my bread is buttered on.  They know that yesterday I spoke to a man on a bicycle, who dismounted, and walked alongside of me.  I’m not sure if they know what happened after that -- my guess is Yes.

My doe-eyed waiter would like to discuss the economy.  When I say that I live in Japan, he mentions that there are currently 78.52 yen to the dollar.  This is the same man who gazes at me beatifically as I eat my dry eggs and kerosene toast.  Are you an economist? I ask.  Knowledge makes happy, sir, he says.

4.

Two or three times a night I wake up with a clenched chest – and then I remember that I have given up attempting to fix anything.

5.

Last night at the Lakshmi Guesthouse in Kandy, I woke to the pleasant sound of rain on the roof.  Then the last pleasant plink of drops striking the mattress.  I moved over to give the rain its spot on the bed but – like a restless lover – the rain kept moving over.  Finally I got up and moved the bed.  And still I wound up sleeping on the very edge of a bed full of puddles.

6.

In Kandy, at the temple of the Buddha’s holy relic.  I love it that the guidebook finds it necessary to warn: you will not be able to see the tooth itself.

7. Visitors / 2

Sri Lanka is not a place one visits first.  The tourists here have been everywhere else.  They are anxious to see how Sri Lanka ‘stacks up’ against Tanzania or Angkor Wat or Bali.  The talkative Swede explains that he did Uganda last vacation and Malawi is next and so he thought he’d take it easy this time.  He’s certainly had a lot of adventures.  He hitchhiked Australia in 250 rides.  He photographed and blogged each one of them.  He hitchhiked Sweden too.  Also 250 rides.  It’s a smaller country obviously but then, people aren’t driving so far.

“I’m sorry,” I say.  “I have to ask, How often were you hit on?”

“Women under 40 almost never pick you up.  Only two in all of Australia.”  Then he realizes what I’m talking about.  And seems nervous that we are sharing a bathroom.

8. Visitors / 3

One bubbly lady is still astonished by what happened to her at the market.  Choosing a necklace, she decided to barter for it.  “I’ll give you 1500 rupees,” she began.  The shopkeeper shook his head.  “Not possible, Madame.  I’ll sell it to you for 1250.  To make more profit than that would be immoral.”

9.

What the people who disapprove of me all have in common is that they have all already made up their minds.  Years ago, most of them.  Some even before I was born.

10.

Certainly there are benefits to traveling other than being made to feel uncertain, uncomfortable, and insecure.

I do not know, however, if there are greater benefits.

11.

It’s deplorable really, that I am unable to enter a botanical garden with a spotlessly pure motivation.  And I really am interested by the herbal garden.  I marvel at the giant fig, dotted with ominous crows.  My enthusiasm for the bamboo collection, however, is highly suspicious.  And the pandanus would serve even better.

I was ruined by a puppyhood in Bangalore’s Cubbon Park, where it was impossible to walk five steps without some gentleman demonstrating that he was considerably above average.

12.

The Park appears nearly deserted until it suddenly starts to pour -- then a man and woman are found beside each broad tree trunk.  Each couple has been wise enough to bring only one small umbrella, beneath which they huddle close together, as if the rain were downright dangerous.  It is possible that this is the moment they for which they waited all afternoon, keeping up the conversation, watching impatiently as the storm clouds gather overhead.

13. Visitors / 4

The Finnish couple counts every rupee; the Lithuanian couple focuses on time.  They have a system, they explain.  Each evening they get as close as possible to the site they wish to see the following day.  They get up early, and, as there is no time for a hotel breakfast, they buy fruit from a vendor.  At the opening time of the historic or religious site, they are the first to enter.  By noon they have finished sightseeing and are on to the next city.  They have been in Sri Lanka six days.  They have seen six cities.

That’s wonderful, I said.  What did you think of what you’ve seen so far? 

All good, said the Lithuanian couple. 

14. Difficulties

Every night I have nightmares.  Every morning I wake as if without my skin, like a hermit crab who went sleepwalking and left his shell behind.  I have lost weight and strength.  I’ve never had courage.  Nor time.  My body aches from where the surgery was done years ago on the crippled boy.  It will not be long now before I will need a cane to walk.  Traveling at this speed does not suit me.  Above all, I am someone who is afraid of everything.

If someone arrived now to take charge of me, arrived with a sensible plan and a ticket to another place – I would scratch and bite.  Anyone would be shocked to find me like this, like a madman, animal or demon.

I do not want any place but this one.  For example, I do not want Thailand, with its miserable pleasures.  Or Japan, like a marble down a plastic shute.  Or America, where everyone is so horrendously important.

It seems to me that I have found exactly the right difficulties.  These are exactly the difficulties I require.

15.

Surprised to see, in my otherwise spotless guesthouse, a small turd on the bathroom floor.  With one toe I kicked it toward the drain – it took off hopping.

Despite this bad start, which resulted in both of us leaping into the air, we now shower peaceably together, though the frog does not like soap.

16.

In Sri Lanka, the gods work for the Buddha.  Near the Temple of the Tooth are the devales, the shrines to Vishnu and to Murugan.  At sunset there are oil lamps and colored electric lights and women sing devotions.  Here too, the bo tree is worshipped.  Climbing the steep steps I do my best to not teeter off the edge.  A woman in white with a thick black braid puts white flowers in my hands and shows me how to offer then to the Buddha.  Her smile has enough sustenance to last three days.  “God bless you,” she says.

17. Example

Let my life stand as an example of what is possible – if only you will renounce virtue, good sense, security, and accomplishment.

18. Are you married, sir?

I must exercise more care with the conversation that begins, “Are you married, sir?”  Innocuous as it may seem, it can swiftly get out of hand.  I do not have a wife.  I do not have a girlfriend.  I do not want a massage from a lady.  Monkhood and pedophilia are the next inquiries, both scratched from the list, until finally my mountain guide asked, “Do you like me?”

A very sweet thing to say, I thought, until I glanced over and realized that, although he said me – he actually meant a very specific part of himself.

Which was indeed impressive, as well as exceedingly vigorous.  (He was a small and delicate man, in other respects.)

“Wow,” I said, as I quickly looked around for hikers.. “But. . . aren’t there a lot of people around?” 

He didn’t care about hikers.  He only wanted to be liked.

I am always surprised at how, in cultures that may seem very conservative, guys are not shy in the least about hauling their junk out.  In certain parts of India it is impossible to read a book on a park bench without someone coming along with a stupendous erection and a forlorn expression, like, Is now any time to be reading?

19. Visitors / 5

When I marveled at how fast the two of them were traveling, the woman said, “We have both just completed a marathon.”  She was an American mechanical engineer in France.  He was her French boyfriend.  He was not much fun.  “It is not difficult if you have been in training” was his sentence for the evening.

Sri Lanka was their obstacle course.  They could do three cities in a day.  They were confident they could “do” the whole country in two weeks and still have time for a beach vacation at the end.  I did not doubt that they could do a beach vacation in 22 minutes or less.

The American woman explained, “If you want to be his girlfriend, you have to be able to swim a mile in the morning, bicycle all day, and climb a mountain at sunset.  If I fall behind, that’s it for me!”

I understood.  I did not want to be his girlfriend.

20.

How unfortunate, it seems to me, that I only pass through the places where I could live, spending only a day or two, before returning to the place where I cannot live, where I stay years and years.

21. Luxury

This room costs seven dollars.  It is the sort of place that guidebooks refer to a dire.  The walls are stained with sweat and betel nut, there’s no ceiling at all, just a bare bulb hanging on a wire between the corrugated tin roof and the bed.

Is this roughing it? I wonder.  Am I an ascetic yet?

No.  I am still just playing.  The room even has its own bath.  I count the other luxuries: a bed, a fan, a light, a door that locks.

Then I decide the order in which I’d give up the luxuries.  An attached toilet isn’t necessary at all.  After that I would give up the light, next the bed, then the fan.  Last of all I would give up the lock.

With all five items present, I continue to live in luxury.