1.30.2003 I think I have typhoid or botchulism or something else that one would contract from drinking water that animals shit in. Not that I've done that, it just seems like that must be what I have. Which is to say that whenever television told me not to drink the water in Mexico, I imagined that if I had done so, it would have felt something like this. I have a Mexican illness--clearly I need a Mexican doctor. Of course, I live in upstate New York, where it would be easier to find a leprechaun.
First of all, I'm not hungry. And in the place of hunger, I have a sort of dull, aching pain. I don't sleep for very long. I've stopped dreaming, or at least remembering my dreams. I exercize my legs by making trips back and forth to the bathroom. It's horrible and annoying. I lie back down in bed, and my stomach says, "Maybe we should go back to the bathroom."
"No, but we were just there."
"Yeah, I know, but I think we should go back."
"Go back? No, we're not going back."
"I'm not kidding around, we should really just head back now."
"Why would you want to go back? We were just there and neither of us particularly enjoyed it."
"I'm just saying--head back now. Don't make me make a big deal out of this."
This goes on for most of the night.
In my pre-med days, I probably would have considered the fact that I had the same symptoms at the beginning of last semester, and deduced from that that my illness is nothing more than my body adjusting to the considerable differences between my eating habits at home and my eating habits at school. Fortunately, now that I'm an ignorant literature and creative writing major, I can cast aside my logical medical knowledge, and attribute my dull pains to more exotic things, like gremlins burrowing their way through my insides. Only a moron would rest with something like that going on inside him. A year ago I would have made sure to drink lots of fluids. This year I'm denying myself all forms of food in order to starve the tiny gremlins that are living inside of me.
1.28.2003 We flirted with the unattractive girls working the counter of liquor store, and in exchange for our pretending not to notice their various irregular features, they showered us with recipes. They showed us how the computer that had, in the past, been used exclusively to verify the information on our driver's licenses, could also be used to look up and print out recipes for exotic drinks we had never even heard of, much less tasted. We meandered around the small space, collecting bottles and yelling back and forth to the girls in their embroidered aprons.
1.25.2003 There are at least a couple long arguments on different message boards (1,2) about the puppy sketch. Ironically, the two boards have gone in fairly different directions. People are either weighing the morality, deciding upon the acceptable circumstance, naming prices, or threatening our lives--it's really fantastic. It's led in and out of the debate over whether humans and animals have souls, whether its objectively wrong to kill another living thing. It hasn't taken a strong turn toward abortion yet, but it could end up there soon. This kind of stuff, even when people miss the point, really makes me happy.
1.21.2003 Like last year, my New Year's resolution this year was to gain weight and to spend less of my day moving. And let me be the first to congratulate myself on a job well done. While the rest of you have already begun to abandon your commitments to commercial gyms and diet plans, I've gained four pounds in the time I've been home. Four pounds. That's a small cat. If I had eaten a small cat two months ago, and retained all its substance, I would weigh what I weigh now, which is more than I've ever weighed. I love achieving my goals.
1.20.2003 1. New York in January is full of screaming people. They're everywhere, and they're screaming. They should be screaming about the cold, because there's little else worthy of screaming in January, but mostly they're just screaming. It's really quite horrible. If you look at them, they'll scream about you, and you'll wish you hadn't looked at them. On a subway, standing next to one of them, I imagined walking around with a basket of oversized, novelty corks, and making New York a lovlier place in January.
- Elliott Smith - Miss Misery (live)
2. At an improv show, the performers asked for CD's from the audience. I had two CD's on me: one of which was a CD of comedy I'd bought in the lobby only minutes before, the other was the the newest Beck album. I gave them the Beck album, and watch embarrassedly as five people tried to perform scenes to match the feeling of an album that is more or less the soundtrack of Beck's emotional suicide.
- Beck - Guess I'm Doing Fine
3. At another improv club, earlier in the night and chronologically before anything else I'll mention, we each paid ten dollars at the door and drank a necessary minimum of two drinks. I had a margarita, and wished the ice had been ground the way I like it. The improv was horrible, like strangers pulled off the street and thrown blindly together. We whispered different versions of how these people came to be on stage.
"Maybe they were arrested for some misdemeanor and sentenced to performing improv."
"Maybe this is some sort of therapy session. No, I'm sure this is some sort of therapy session."
The bill for the drinks--four gents at two drinks apiece--came to fifty-four dollars. Joel leaned over the table and suggested that we make a run for the door. He was serious, and I turned around to gauge whether or not such an escape would be possible. The waitress was standing directly behind me, and I turned around into her lap.
- Elliott Smith - Condor Ave
"Hey, Ben, those songs you posted were great!"
"You really thought so?"
"Oh yeah! They're fantastic! Thanks for uploading them."
"No problem, enjoy."
"Oh, hey, you're talking to yourself. You should stop."
"Right. Good call. I'll catch you later man."
"Peace."
My headache's name is Susan. No, my headache wasn't caused by a person named Susan--it's just that I've had the same headache for so long, that it seems wrong not to give it a name. Like hurricanes. Susan and I have been together for twenty-one hours now. At this point, I really feel like she's a part of me, and to pummel her with analgesics seems wrong. I mean, we've spent quality time together. We watched TV together, we cuddled in front of a movie together--we've eaten two romantic meals together for christ sakes! I don't know what to do at this point. I mean, clearly we're meant to be together, or else she would let up, but I don't know if this is going to work for me. She's a little bit "clingy," if you know what I mean. Like last night, for instance, I remember lying down in bed with her and thinking, "At least she'll be gone in the morning. Then you'll have some time to yourself." But instead of leaving in the middle of the night, like we had planned for her to do, she woke me up at eight in the morning (which is my middle of the night), and then refused to let me fall back asleep! Something's got to give. Because I am not putting up with her bullshit much longer.
1.07.2003 Take a second to look over my itinerary.
1. A friend in France wrote me a letter today. Because I said I would be there, and because I had tickets to reinforce the fact, she was under the impression that I would receive her letter in Amsterdam. She wanted to do something just crazy and join me there. I responded to her letter quickly, which is not particularly like myself, and she has yet to reply. I'm not sure whether she's in Amsterdam or not--though if she is, she won't find me there.
2. My parents and relatives all asked what my brother and I would be doing in Amsterdam. "Drugs," I responded straight-faced, each time as if it was the first. It's what they all wanted to hear, and it saved them the trouble of having to approach the matter by means of smalltalk. And anyway, if something gets a good laugh, I tend to use it over and over again. Nobody knows the difference, and the scripting allows me to devote more of my attention to inspecting people's eyebrows. There are few parts of a person you can stare at without being too conspicuous, it's best to pick something near the eyes. It's the same when someone has crazy eyes--eyes without direction or a relationship or anywhere in particular to be--it's best to fix your stare on the thinnest point of the ridge of the nose. Most people have hair there, and if they don't they probably pull it out. Which is not to judge those people, god knows I should have a world of hair there, it's just that it's less to look at.
3. Five hours before my flight, I had not yet begun to pack. Which was not a problem. I had made a complete mental inventory of all I would need in Amsterdam, and every part was somewhere in my house. I don't take packing very seriously, and if something's extremely important, you probably won't forget it.
My mother chimed, "Don't forget your passport!"
Three seconds passed.
"I don't have my passport."
She laughed then. She thought I was kidding so she laughed. She later explained to someone else that my brother and I never replied seriously when she gave us serious advice. Accordingly, by my logic, the first thing I should have said was "Well, I do have my passport." That assertion, made in jest, could only have meant one thing.
"I don't have my passport."
4. In my room at school, there is a dresser in the closet. I bought a couch two years ago, and I like it more than the dresser, so the dresser lives in the closet. When I have a house with spacious floors, instead of a dorm room the size of a humidor, my furniture will no longer have to compete for my favor, and all will be out in the open. Until then, the shitty wooden dresser will continue to live in the closet. In the top drawer of that dresser, there is a really lousy photograph of me, right after a haircut, where I look like the sort of guy that would hit women, and it's laminated to the inside of my passport. I had my passport photos taken at the local AAA. They tell you to sit down in a chair and there's a big flash and then they tell you to wait for fifteen minutes. I waited in a bank of chairs, across from a girl who lived in the town next to mine and had business cards and who gave me one and asked me to call her. I never did call her, because I never did have a spine, though it felt wonderful to know that I had the option. I kept her card on my nightstand for two weeks, and I looked at it almost every day.
California in December I took two-hundred pictures. Here are five of them.
You can eat the cactus's fruit--though, if you pick it off the plant with your fingers, like my brother, you'll probably spend the day complaining, like my brother, about the sharp and painful barbs embedded in your skin.
I watched this poor man dig a hole over and over again for what must have been twenty minutes. I talked to him, though he didn't especially want to talk to me. He could hear that something was there, and he would dig for it, though every ten seconds the tide would come back in and all his work would be undone. He didn't find a thing.
I took a whole series of pictures from inside the airplane, and many of them came out beautifully. Send me a letter if you want me to send you a few of the full-size images.
My cousins' dog, Betty. One of the ugliest dogs I've ever seen, though hilarious in every respect. Never before have I seen a dog wearing a sweater ride a skateboard. Hilarious.
Wind-powered turbines line the hills of Northern California. I've always found them beautiful, and when I think of California, I sooner think of them than the beaches. I'd like to hike into the hills to see them more closely. I want to know what they sound like when the wind blows through them.
And a bonus picture, to prove that I was thinking of all of you in the East--knee-deep in snow, waking up early to scrape a shovel across your frozen driveways. Enjoy.
