the diary of antoine roquentin

So tonight, like every night I spend at home, I’m watching an adult movie before I hit the hay. I’m watching the action, but I have this niggling feeling that there’s something familiar about this. Haven’t seen this dick before. Green—it’s green. The siding on the wall is a specific shade of green. I’ve seen this siding somewhere. He’s sitting on a bench the same color.

The Powerhouse. This porno is being filmed in the back room of the Powerhouse. I smirk.

Later, I tried to get to sleep. I closed my eyes, try to think of nothing. Blackness. It’s a time when I think of a lot of things I want to write about but never do. Specifically, this one image that would always be the last thing I would remember before sleeping. It was an imaginary view of a crag of rock, looking up to see another planet above. I would always think about that view, with the sound of wind whistling by, and gaze at the planet above until I fell asleep. It seems odd, but it always worked.

Another technique I read about was this thought exercise where you imagine yourself in a guillotine. Your head is cut off, but instead of blood, all your problems fall out and float away. You wouldn’t believe the things that come out: my boss, diplomas, the Word documents I need to do the next day, tricky PHP issues, etc.

None of the traditional methods are working tonight. It always happens that I set my alarm, and I actually have enough time to wake up at a non-insane hour (I got up at 3:30pm today). Then I lie there. I try to visualize different places—how I imagine them through the thousands of tourist photos my magazine has published. What all the people I wish I were in better contact with (or despise entirely) are doing.

Sometimes I think of that Margaret Cho skit where she talks about her mom astral projecting. It’s almost unsettling to be alone with your thoughts with no record. When writing, you can always stop and think. You can reread the entire blob. You can edit it for high diction, low diction. But abandoned to the vagaries of my unimpeded thoughts, it ends up being this battle to stop whatever song is playing in my head. Not that it’s a bad song usually. Last night’s 3 a.m. battle (that I really didn’t have my whole heart in) was to try to stop “Jaimie, My Intentions Are Bass,” from the new Chk Chk Chk album.

Tonight, it will probably be “Walk in the Park” or something similar from the new Beach House album. What an ironic lyric, in context: “in a matter of time / it would slip from my mind[.]” I realize what I don’t like about this album is that Victoria’s vocals are swallowed by the songs. I want her voice to be front and center, like on “Some Things Last a Long Time,” where it takes about a minute of nearly-silent white noise to reach the first lyric, pregnant with sadness, “Your picture / is still / on my wall[.]” I’ve been loth to listen to Devotion ever since I played it nearly nonstop on the car leg of my vacation.

My teacher that I recapitulated Molly’s Intro to Lit class with was at best a hack and at worst a failure, but she did teach me one thing that I always come back to thinking about. It was the etymology of “nostalgia.” And, I’ve just learned, according to Merriam-Webster, what she said wasn’t true. She really was good for nothing. For the record, “nostalgia” is from Latin and Greek words meaning “to return home” or “to return.”

I want there to not be this cacophony every time I shut my eyes and try to sleep. It’s especially annoying because once I am asleep I can sleep for a long time. I’ll turn my alarms off and sleep way in because it’s so relaxing that I don’t want to wake up. I can see why people are on uppers and downers. I have always wanted to try sleeping pills, but that old Christian Science aversion to pills that was drummed into my head as a child refuses to let me. My dad, even though he does not practice that religion and ridicules religion in general, brags that he hasn’t been to a doctor in the past ten years. What’s really going to happen is he’s going to discover he has advanced prostate cancer and he has six months to live. I hope he reconsiders.

I think the thing that I am most cognizant of in my half-waking hours is how the room I’m in isn’t mine. In that vein, I just don’t feel grown up when I’m not in my own house that I’ve paid for. I think that’s why I’m excited to move back into the apartments in the university—it’s a place I can call mine. I’ve signed the lease and paid the rent. I think Jorge and I are going to go all out decorating. It will be wonderful. My home away from civilization.

I got my Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center tickets in the mail today, which I’m excited about. I want to go see a performance with Matt or my mom, but I don’t want the responsibility of hoping that my companion is enjoying the performance. If I go see something solo and it’s completely uninteresting, I have only wasted my time. If I drag someone else, then I feel guilty for wasting both of our time. I may bite the bullet and go see this violin performance by this famous violinist, but I really have no money. I’m soon to run up against the actual limit of my credit card. I just cannot afford my lifestyle any more. I can’t eat out all the time when I’m at Matt’s. I can’t afford to drink in bars. I can’t afford my monthly MetroCard. Some of this is that Josh hasn’t sent me a bunch of checks for my work for him (he’s like four months behind) but still, those checks would bring me to just breaking even.

Still, when left to choose between my amazing vacation and two grand knocked off of my credit card, I’ll choose my vacation 10 times out of 10.

I don’t know where the summer went. I barely used my gym membership or my pool membership (I don’t think I’m joining either this coming summer). I was more of a homebody last summer, working during the day and taking breaks to go jog and such. Matt lives so far away that it feels like an entire day is sacrificed in transit.

I want to write that the summer was amazing and flawless, but a lot of things happened that I wasn’t thrilled about: Grandma had two surgeries that she still hasn’t recovered from (she still has no appetite at all). I did start talking to Kelly again, which was something I wouldn’t have imagined happening. Grammie died, which, apparently, is just the beginning of some kind of legal battle between my dad and Kathleen (Kelly’s mom).

Josh told me that it would take an act of god to subpoena me to testify in California. Inheritances, he says, are a matter for state courts, not federal courts who have the ability to subpoena and extradite across state lines. That’s good to hear. I don’t care if I get nothing at all—those people are fucked up and I refuse to be a part of it.

I suppose my dad is buying me off by paying for my tuition, but hey, he needs to pay the piper for all those years of awful parenting.

I feel like the more autobiographical this blog is the less I’ll be able to take it seriously ten years from now. Hell, even five. Hm. That’s not actually true. I read this one post that really touched me, about driving past an ex’s house.

I couldn’t help myself but drive by Ripley’s house. I don’t know what I was expecting… perhaps his abusive boyfriend leering out the window with a carving knife… but there was nothing. All the time I was up there I was half waiting for my friends to call me wanting to do something. It’s 1 AM. Nothing.

[later that week]

He seems like such a nice person, I don’t know why his boyfriend beats up on him. I guess things like that don’t really make any sense. I wish I could make that guy be nice to him. I hate people that only hang around others because they want to change them, but I must admit I really do want to change him. [...]

I’m going to go to sleep and unwillingly have dreams about cuddling with Ripley. Accursed subconscious. I should have been expecting this, yet I was totally unprepared. Why do I have to be me?

As much as I’d like to think that I’m at home in this exurban clusterfuck (Jersey) / Locus of capitalism (NYC). There’s a lot of that lonely small town guy who would drive around at night to ease the loneliness. Even the thought of it is comforting. Driving through forests is very calming. You always feel like you’re going somewhere when you drive, even if you aren’t. There’s this sense of purpose. I remember one of the most fun things I’d do with my friends would be to select a road at random and see how far into the wilderness it went. This one time, we ended up on this road with gigantic potholes that was so narrow I couldn’t make a U-turn. We put some creepy music on the stereo and jumped at everything that could have been anyone with an axe or chainsaw until we got to the very end. There was a giant, spooky-looking house (maintained by the Parks Service, oddly enough).

Sometimes I miss the ability to be alone with my thoughts. I’d drive down to the beach, and if it was low tide, I’d crawl through that special crevice in that big seastack that faced Pebble Beach. Sitting on the cliff face, I could see the puddle-jumper plane of the day coming in to land at our tiny airstrip. Perhaps there would be one person on the beach. I never discovered another soul in my little nook above the beach where someone had installed a bench.

I need a change of scenery once I graduate. But still, when Matt and I went upstate, being in a rural area didn’t seem real. There is no real way to get to that kind of rural-ness that I was used to, the 8-hours-from-civilization rural. Perhaps it doesn’t even exist any more. I don’t think I could relate to it even if I went back to it.

One of the arguments of that book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, is that by living in cities, or otherwise nearly 100% man-made surroundings, we completely lose the ability to sense nature. I’m not sure if that is good or bad.

So I laid here in the bed, vaguely thinking about the Powerhouse and all the good memories Sam and I (and a rotating cast of characters) had there. I miss that. I miss so many things, but we have to forge ahead. Taylor was talking about moving to L.A., which would be so sad, as I’d probably never see him again.

Heck, there are people here that I never see.

I don’t know what I’m doing these last few months. I can’t seem to get anything done. I never went to the New Museum, I never saw the Basquiat movie. You know what? I need to go to the Film Forum and see that Antononi movie, Le Amiche, that’s playing this week. Probably not. It’s 6 a.m. It’s going to get light soon.

This is a good sample of all the thoughts that swirl around when I’m trying to sleep. Is it better to write them down? I have no idea. I need to try to snooze again.