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Floating Cities With Their Own Provenance
Apr. 23rd, 2021 09:56 amAll day yesterday, I was in a Terrible Mood.
I told myself it was because no one will ever love me as deeply, tenderly, and truly as the Time Traveler loved the Time Traveler’s Wife (that being the name of an incredibly sappy movie I’d watched the night before.)
But really it was because it was cold and grey and miserable out.
It even snowed though the snow didn’t stick.
You’d think by now I’d understand that my brain functions have nothing to do with me and everything to do with the weather.
But, no. I persist in thinking of myself as a person with unfathomable emotional depths.
###
The night before I went into the City, I’d dreamt of Ben, though I didn’t have time to write it down. Kind of a pleasant dream. We’d had sex, and the sex was good, which it almost always was in real life, too, no matter what was going on between us.
“I was going to tell you I was leaving at 11:30,” Ben said in the dream.
“But it’s one o’clock now,” I said. “And you still haven’t told me.”
“I know,” he said.
After that, it was understood we were going to be together.
I woke up, and I was horrified.
Ben was an asshole.
There is no fucking way I want to be with him.
I mean like WTF, subconscious mind?
###
The dream kicked off a strange line of thought. I spent the entire train ride into Manhattan wondering: Exactly who is gonna be there waiting for me when I finally make it through that pulsating tunnel of light—crawling on my belly, no doubt—after I finally kick off?
I mean, I know so many dead people!
A few of them, I am actually rather fond of. And once upon a time, they were similarly fond of me!
But fond enough to drag their canvas folding chairs and snacks to the celestial finish line so they can witness the precise moment I complete the race?
That I don’t know.
I can count on Rutger to be there.
And Milo.
They may only have been a cat and a dog in this lifetime, but I know their souls loved my soul unconditionally.
Oddly enough, maybe Tom Mandel.
Maybe Rik.
My grandfather? The benevolently ineffectual Alfred Lord Tennyson Vogel, forever floating just beyond the reach of shoreline mooring?
I felt the Former Democratic Congressional Candidate hovering around me for a long while after she died, though in this lifetime at least, she wasn’t what I would have called a close friend. But she did vouchsafe me a vision while she was dying, and though she’s three years dead, I feel her benign interest—call it protection if you like!—hovering around me still. So, maybe she’d show up.
Who else?
Certainly, neither of my parents will be there. I used their DNA but I had no other connection to them.
And Ben better not show up.
He was an asshole, but I behaved very, very well.
So as far as I’m concerned, that karmic mortgage has been paid in full.
###
It was a beautiful clear day on the train ride into the city. The Hudson River was so deep and still, the reflections on its surface were like submerged cities with their own provenance:
I told myself it was because no one will ever love me as deeply, tenderly, and truly as the Time Traveler loved the Time Traveler’s Wife (that being the name of an incredibly sappy movie I’d watched the night before.)
But really it was because it was cold and grey and miserable out.
It even snowed though the snow didn’t stick.
You’d think by now I’d understand that my brain functions have nothing to do with me and everything to do with the weather.
But, no. I persist in thinking of myself as a person with unfathomable emotional depths.
###
The night before I went into the City, I’d dreamt of Ben, though I didn’t have time to write it down. Kind of a pleasant dream. We’d had sex, and the sex was good, which it almost always was in real life, too, no matter what was going on between us.
“I was going to tell you I was leaving at 11:30,” Ben said in the dream.
“But it’s one o’clock now,” I said. “And you still haven’t told me.”
“I know,” he said.
After that, it was understood we were going to be together.
I woke up, and I was horrified.
Ben was an asshole.
There is no fucking way I want to be with him.
I mean like WTF, subconscious mind?
###
The dream kicked off a strange line of thought. I spent the entire train ride into Manhattan wondering: Exactly who is gonna be there waiting for me when I finally make it through that pulsating tunnel of light—crawling on my belly, no doubt—after I finally kick off?
I mean, I know so many dead people!
A few of them, I am actually rather fond of. And once upon a time, they were similarly fond of me!
But fond enough to drag their canvas folding chairs and snacks to the celestial finish line so they can witness the precise moment I complete the race?
That I don’t know.
I can count on Rutger to be there.
And Milo.
They may only have been a cat and a dog in this lifetime, but I know their souls loved my soul unconditionally.
Oddly enough, maybe Tom Mandel.
Maybe Rik.
My grandfather? The benevolently ineffectual Alfred Lord Tennyson Vogel, forever floating just beyond the reach of shoreline mooring?
I felt the Former Democratic Congressional Candidate hovering around me for a long while after she died, though in this lifetime at least, she wasn’t what I would have called a close friend. But she did vouchsafe me a vision while she was dying, and though she’s three years dead, I feel her benign interest—call it protection if you like!—hovering around me still. So, maybe she’d show up.
Who else?
Certainly, neither of my parents will be there. I used their DNA but I had no other connection to them.
And Ben better not show up.
He was an asshole, but I behaved very, very well.
So as far as I’m concerned, that karmic mortgage has been paid in full.
###
It was a beautiful clear day on the train ride into the city. The Hudson River was so deep and still, the reflections on its surface were like submerged cities with their own provenance:
