Here and There

"There was a time when courtesy and winning ways went out of style, when it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste." 

(T.C. Boyle, "Greasy Lake:")

"Man, I don't understand young people today."  

There it was, the common complaint.  I wasn't interested in what was to follow, but he was determined.  I couldn't stop him.

"I've been seeing this girl who is younger, and everything has been great.  She's something, really, tall, raven black hair, good figure, and she's smart, too.  She's going back to school in the fall.  All of the sudden, though, she gets like weird, you know, and acts like I've done something bad, which I haven't, and she won't answer my calls and when she does, she's like really cold and distant and nothing I say seems right.  She's got like a snotty attitude about everything."  

"Well, I'd say you're done," I said, knowing right away it was the wrong thing to say because he would go on explaining things that I didn't care about and about which he himself hadn't a clue.  He was just thinking out loud.  

"But why?" he pleaded as if I were the one making the decision.  "What'd I do!""

"You were you," I wanted to say, but I didn't think he'd have much of a sense of humor about it, so I kept quiet and let him talk.  I could have told him that it was because he dated a younger woman, but that wasn't it exactly, either.  It was more of a culture clash than a matter of age, though I supposed the two corresponded.  

"Do you watch Reality television shows," I asked him? 

"What do you mean?" 

"You know, shows where people form temporary bonds and then break them and form new ones so that they can stay on the island or in the house or in the running to marry someone?"  

"You mean like Surivor?"  

"Bingo."  

"Yea, not much." 

"Well, there's your problem.  You don't understand the rules.  Drama is important.  Bonds are meant to be broken.  Life is a giant reality game.  You want stasis.  You want things to go on the way they are.  Boring.  Crisis is cool.  She probably wants a little drama. Watch more TV.  Get into some social networks.  Twitter.  Or else date somebody your own age." 

"Ahh, bullshit."  

"OK."  

Of course the best advice is to avoid emotional attachments, to float above the mundane, to concentrate on the internal environment.  Chant.  Meditate.  Contemplate.  Simplify.  

I'm good for a couple of laps, but the damn thing is a marathon.  


I've been working with Polaroid and hoodoo again. This is the first scan from about thirty photos I took the other day. I am excited about them. "Postcards from Nowhere." I was there. You should have seen it. It is all changing now.  Soon, it will be just like Everywhere.