The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

A couple years ago (three actually) (seems like forever, so many changes) I was on a business trip to Orlando, and was delayed by snow and had to fly back at night — it’s a three hour trip, Florida to Philadelphia, but I remember that the sky was clear the entire way back north, and I could look down, at the land below, and see the great strings of orange lights representing the cities and roads of the Great Eastern Seaboard — I remember flying over the Eastern shore of Maryland, and seeing the great cluster of light that was either Washington or Annapolis to my left — and then, flying low over the Altantic Ocean, passing the casinos and boardwarks of Atlantic City which I could see from the window — until I came back to my home, to Philadelphia. There I was. Waiting for the world to begin. Halfway through it.

Where a strange man turns losers into douchebags.

He has a strange lazy eye. Young, brilliant. A sadist and a masochist.

“Let’s go find models for wives …”

Carnival-go-round, a fake life, extras in suits handing us suitcases full of money, taking fake airplanes to fake countries, with the stagehands setting up the scenery as fake clouds fly beneath us, dancing around this set of paris, title card says “Five Years Later,” while makeup artists add wrinkles to our eyes, introduce us to our new co-star, an actress unspeakably beautiful who will be playing our wife — set up the hospital room, what a set, look at the special effects, here’s a little actor baby (secretly a twin getting switched in and out due to child labor laws) — go to the show, pretend to play guitar — get me more makeup, more wrinkles — funerals, life, real, pressing on all sides —

and one day you realize it wasn’t artifice, it was real, those places you went were real, the model girlfriend was a real human being, and the fake love you held was real, so sweetly real, and now its gone, and the wrinkles aren’t makeup they’re lines pressed into your skin that won’t iron out and the number of days you have left — well — less than 10,000 — now, less than 1000 — and was all this dancing worth it? Pirouettes on an ice covered lake in March — at least, you say, at least, there are fishes swimming underneath — your son smiles at you, surrounded by his strange new family — when did that happen? Love is what you want and need. Small comfort, maybe, but that’s the way it is.

Booth — the place I was born; when I was a small child, a young child, I knew that it was where I was from– and I returned there, only a few years later, to witness the dropping into the world of my sister Sarah. Booth. Oh, world of well-named things, where have you gone? Where these places were written in Capital Letters, Pregnant with Meaning, like my large round mother was — the wondrous playworld of children — the only hope — oh, to have a child, and to play with it in the afternoon, to take it for walks and to playgrounds — to teach it things — to spin it stories — to watch as it learns — oh, Booth, place of love, which loved me, and helped my momma bring me to this gardenworld — I was light as a feather then, small, small enough to sneak into the world — now I am large and ungainly, still a child in this young but aging man-body — Alexander ruled the world by now, a thought that made Caesar, now dead and dusty, weep — too heavy now, to go the way I came in, when I leave this world, I’ll have to leave my body down here, too heavy to float, not a little pippin anymore, no, no.

Subject + Predicate

I am.

He runs.

She touches him.

Julie lifts her head.

Julie, curls hanging down across her brow, lifts her head and looks at me.

Michael pushed open the door, ran swifty into the street to the yells of his master behind him, joined by several hundred others who were similarly moved by the historical nature of the events unfolding, and bellowed deep with the great unyielding joy of the new day.

“[He] gazed round his little room with loathing. It was a tiny little cubby-hole of a place, no more than six paces long, and so low that anybody of even a little more than average height felt uncomfortable in it, fearful that at any moment he might bump his head against the ceiling. The yellowish dusty wall-paper peeling off the walls gave it a wretchedly shabby appearance, and the furniture was in keeping; there were three rickety chairs and a stained deal table in a corner, holding a few books and papers so covered with dust that it was plain that they had not been touched for a long time; and lastly there was a large and clumsy sofa, taking up almost the whole of one wall and half the width of the room, and with a print cover now old and worn into holes. This served Raskolnikov as a bed. He often slept on it just as he was, without undressing, without sheets, covered with his old worn-out student’s overcoat, his head resting on a little cushion with his whole stock of linen, clean and dirty, bundled together under it for a bolster. Before this sofa stood a small table.

A more slovenly and degraded manner of life could hardly have been imagined, but it suited Raskolnikov’s present mood.”

Crime and Punishment, Dostoevskii

Happiest day of my life. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Optimism. Hope. History. We have done these things. We have done these things. We have done them together.

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> Middle class repulsion to the poor; the poor are weak, lazy, addicted;

> I feel it myself — the great discomfort and fear I feel when faced with those less privileged than I am. Do they want what I want? Do they dislike me out of jealousy? Deeper questions too — such as why I’ve gotten the privileges I’ve gotten, how many backs have I tread on and climbed upon to get to where I am — a great discomfort and anxiety — it’s a true one — and the only answer may be to look back, to return to the masses, not out of guilt, but out of solidarity, to accept the responsibility that the only justification for my gifts are that they be returned to the good of the community. Helping in some way the common weal.

At 2:50 PM, I put down my guitar, picked up my backpack, and walked out the door. Late again. Somehow, whenever I am in a place I call home, surrounded by the fetish-objects I’ve invested pieces of myself in, time slips away, distractions multiply, and I can never get out of the house. I have lost whole months of my life in this way, distracted by toys. I wonder if I will miss those months one day? How can I miss what I never had?

Still, it’s the day before election day, and since my absentee ballot never came, I have to make my way south to Philadelphia and go vote at the Old Original Polling Place one last time, exercising the lucky franchise of a swing-stater (a dubious privilege since it means I must share my home state with loyal oppositioners; still, fellow-travelers make me nervous as well–surrounded by the like-minded, I fear I’m not getting the whole story and can’t accurately guage the national mood).

So I hop on the subway, slipping through the revolving metal barred turnstile just as the 1 pulls up. I walk down, hoping to get in a less crowded car, but stand anyway, glancing helpless at the three attractive girls my age sitting a few feet from me. They speak in Spanish and are handing back and forth medium-sized handdrawn posters that look like blown-up greeting cards by way of an indie rock album’s cover art. I look away and I look back–drawn by either some residue left over from my bachelor days or alternatively by some still lingering question about that whole “one and only” business I’ve got going with my girlfriend, the girlfriend I love and have just left this morning.

I get off at 32nd St, Penn station, fall in line behind a mother and her young four-year-old daughter–I walk slowly, a secret protector, letting them go before me. I turn around, walk up some stairs and then I’m right in the deep dark middle of the great station, Penn Station