Solitary Man

My weekends have fallen into familiar routine which consists of the following: stop at the local microbrewery with colleagues after work on Friday (although I think the word "colleagues" is generally used to elevate the estimation of stupid jobs, like mine) followed by a couple of days spent sleeping late, sitting in bed even later with my laptop, leaving the curtains closed until noon, experiencing some irritation at the sound of lawnmowers, wishing I had a dog so I'd get more exercise, renting movies, drinking vodka and soda with lemon in the evenings, waking up in the middle of the night to spend time with Jonathan Lethem, rummaging through cupboards searching for stuff to eat so as to avoid shopping, and actively maneuvering around any thought processes which might lead to student loans, home repair or my lack of meaningful relationships.

This weekend I mixed it up a little. Yesterday I went to the theater to see Reign Over Me, with Adam Sandler, who incidentally, looks really sexy with Bob Dylan hair.


He plays a dentist who falls apart after losing his wife and kids (and dog) on 9/11. He reconnects with his college roommate and through their friendship both find ways to begin living again. This is all very hopeful, being a person who is highly attuned to paradigms for new beginnings, if the path to living again for Adam Sandler's character hadn't been a supermodel. The inclusion of her character as a potential future relationship bummed me out. Why not leave him alone, but healing, at the end? Why does his future need to be redeemed through another relationship with a woman, in particular a supermodel?

Being a couple is easier. Conventional relationships make us part of the club. We are "normal" and fit in nicely at social events. Alone, we become outsiders, trouble, hard to categorize. Did Adam Sandler become "normal" in the end? I liked him better crazy!

All this thought of plastination and viruses lately. How does it all fit in? Maybe it doesn't. Maybe the connections never will be made. Perhaps all of my training and socialization is finally draining, like blood, and a new cyborg will walk away. Alone.

A New Frontier

I finished reading Girl in Landscape sometime in the night, a fitting time to be reading it, I think. Another "simple" little gem, just the kind I love. I appreciated the genre-bending, the sexual tension, the classic Western elements, the feeling of stepping into the "invisible" role of anthropologist to study human behavior on a new frontier.

I spent a week in NYC during spring break, a lot of it at the Thompkins Square dog run with Huck and Pip's dogs, which also was a study of human behavior on a new frontier. That's the week AJ and I went to Bodies... The Exhibition. I neglected to add in my post about that excursion, which looking back on it seemed to be fixated on the penis, made AJ sick. She was ready to leave after about a half-hour. For me it did the usual, plummet me into an existential crisis. At one point I also experienced some irritation at the damn plastinated basketball player, but who knows where that reaction came from. So much for our grasp of educational opportunities. The conflict of intended and unintended curriculum.

One scenario I like to toy with periodically, and which also connects with the Lethem book, is this: If you were one of a small group of people left on earth after an apocalyptic event, what skills would you bring to the group? What role would you have in the community?

What I have come to realize is that I would like to be one of those guys in Road Warrior who can jerry-rig vehicles, think on their feet and use what's available to survive. But in reality, if it were up to me to carry the new society forward, we would be doomed. Hell, I would have trouble recreating the wheel. Let's face it. And fire starting? Forget it. Practicality has never been a strong point. And I'm not so sure the community would be so supportive of "the entertainer", "the artist", "the philosopher", or "the comedian".

So after I got back from NYC I got sick, another of the plagues which run rampant through institutional spaces, like the one where I work. I was flat in bed for 36 hours, and it turned out to be an upper respiratory virus, the cough of which, the doctor said can last weeks after the other symptoms are gone. Something to look forward to.

So I'm thinking about getting a dog. I have avoided it because I don't want to be tied-down, I don't know if I am a dog-person, I doubt I'm responsible enough to have a dog, along with a myriad of other reasons. I went in my virus-weakened state to the humane society a few days ago and checked out the dogs, and I found some of them quite irritating. Is that a bad sign? I think if I were living in a post-apocalyptic society, a dog would be great. A working dog.

I have a copy of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, but I want to spend a little more time in my head with Girl in Landscape. What I really want to read is this:

Flesh and Bone

AJ and I attended "Bodies... The Exhibition" the other day. Here are some thoughts:

Most of the bodies on exhibition are male, which created a bizarre "hanging penis effect" that everyone was tactfully avoiding. I guess it had something to do with the placement of the testicles. Who knew?! Somehow the "scientific" nature of the presentation lent the male nudity respectibility, so I can't count it as exploitation. (I am always on the lookout for more male nudity as a signpost of equality.) On the other hand, this may be exploitation of another kind:

While the exhibit's representatives claim that all of the bodies were obtained through the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories in China, human rights campaigners point out that Dalian University "[has] had been previously implicated in the use of executed prisoners for commercial purposes".[1] If the bodies are those Chinese prisoners whose bodies were used without their consent, it may be a violation of human rights and of Chinese law. (Wikipedia)

But they are only bodies, flesh and bone made into life-sized, primary-colored key rings. Cotton candy circulatory systems, underwater life, bizarre sea creatures with huge human eyeballs.

AJ found the fetus exhibit the most interesting. A woman with the front of her body sliced off to reveal a fetus curled inside. I remember long ago in Guanajuato, seeing the mummified remains of women and babies who had been exhumed because of unpaid cemetary taxes. There's some sort of corellary here.

We are born into this body and then we die, and between those points we cause so much commotion! But in the end it's just flesh and bone.

Nothing Heroic

Rain drummed on my roof as on steel, and I awoke to the sight of a dog on my bed. Thought I. The world is overpopulated. With sameness. Just like beasts of burden, like slaves we shop. Our matter-of-fact and well-equipped appearance against the muddy ochre walls of a crowded mall. The trotting step, round. And round.

A battalion from the Somme marches up with music, an overwhelming sight. Everything yellow with mud. The unmilitary, matter-of-fact appearance, the steel helmets, the equipment. The trotting step. Nothing heroic, just like beasts of burden, like slaves. Against a background of circus music. - Paul Klee, diary entry, 6th December, 1916