Crack 'n Go

I'm usually a pretty proactive person. I like big complex projects that I can rub my brain up against. But when it comes to filling up the tank, I'm rather passive. I usually wait 'till the orange light comes on. And that can be anywhere.

So I'm in an unfamiliar part of town. The pay-at-the pump thingy was not working (maybe this should have been clue, I dunno) so I saunter into the shop to pay for my gas, and while I am waiting I have the opportunity to look around at what's on offer. I can shop anywhere. It's what I'm good at.

As my eyes rove over the myriad selections I suddenly hook up a bunch of visual dots:

1. Pipe screens, on the left:
2. Small zip-lock baggies, in the center;
3. Razor blades, on the right.

Hmmm...

Perhaps this establishment caters to older pipe-smoking gentlemen. The kind who like to save and organize small items such as buttons or pieces of string. Charming and endearing old men who use ivory handled Old-Skool shavers.

What I Have Discovered About Myself In The Process of Trying To Buy a Car

What I have discovered about myself in the process of buying a car is that there are three distinct voices in my head that want to “help” me.

[Yes, I am bonkers but not in THAT way. My pathology makes the tiniest of blips on the clinical radar.]

The Voices are:
Manicgirl:

[you have to say it really fast], Manicgirl does not have time to give herself a proper name, which is a good thing because she is lacking in any form of inner censor and would probably choose something naff like Roxie. Her interests are: [much] younger men, talking incessantly, brainstorming, accessorising, smoking, shopping, exclaimation points!!! and fender-benders.

Penelope:

Arch-martyr Penny chose her Homerian name herself, as she strongly identfies with long-suffering regal heroines . Her interests are: hyper-vigilence, ruminating, predicting negative outcomes and sighing audibly and saying "Nothing..." when asked what is wrong.

Helvetica:

Named for the country from which the type-face takes its name, Helly tries not to get too involved in Pen & MG's dramas. Her interests are: reading, writing, film, photography, contemporary art and culture, yoga, coffee houses, giggs.

Alas, Manicgirl has found a car. She is very action oriented (but notsogood on R&D), and while driving around smoking and drinking a quadrupal latte with an extra shot happened upon the PERFECT vehicle to suit her transportation needs:

The tag price is only $900.00 for this 1973 beauty. The fact that the sign in the window reads "As is" and "Runs Good" do not arouse any uneasiness in Manicgirl that the average consumer might feel. She's got 900 bucks and is ready to to close. Of special interest and amusement to her is how the car runs. The columnar gear shift is sooooo retro, and when put into D for Drive there is a momentary polter before the gears actually engage followed by a rather sporty lurch. MG finds this hysterical. "Perfect" she says, "I'll take it."

But not so fast: Penelope is NOT HAPPY, which is par for the course for her, but she bypasses sighing loudly to get her say in before it is too late. Penny likes that it is a Merc, but not THAT Merc. Besides, she thinks one ought not to drive oneself if one can help it. She wants this:

A Lincoln Town Car with driver.

Helvetica is assimilating these two very different views. Ideally Helly prefers public transportation (see previous blog, Leaving The Big Smoke) but under the circumstances she knows that living in Oklahoma City without a car is not really viable. So, if she must get a car then she would like something along the lines of this:

This is an electric car made in the UK. Great lines, easy on the Earth, fully pimpable, practically fits in your handbag. http://www.goingreen.co.uk/store/content/gwiz/ And you can order it online, and the postman will bring a big box to your frontdoor. No congestion charge if you live in London, which is a huge bonus.

And it is soooo quiet. Like, really you would only hear it if it rolled over an empty Evian bottle or some other thing in the road like a pedestrian who didn't hear you coming.

Ferdydurke

Don't ask me to pronounce it. But it's what I am currently reading.
Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz

Follows is the opening paragraph:

1. Abduction

Tuesday morning I awoke at that pale and lifeless hour when night is almost gone but dawn has not yet come into its own. Awakened suddenly, I wanted to take a taxi and dash to the railroad station, thinking I was due to leave, when, in the next minute, I realized to my chagrin that no train was waiting for me at the station, that no hour had stuck. I lay in the murky light while my body, unbearably frightened, crushed my spirit with fear, and my spirit crushed my body, whose tiniest fibers cringed in apprehension that nothing would ever happen, nothing ever change, that nothing would ever come to pass, and whatever I undertook, nothing, but nothing, would ever come of it. It was the dread of nonexistence, the terror of extinction, it was the angst of nonlife, the fear of unreality, a biological scream of all my cells in the face of an inner disintegration when all would be blown to pieces and scattered to the winds. It was the fear of unseemly pettiness and mediocrity, the fright of distraction, panic at fragmentation, the dread of rape from within and of rape that was threatening me from without-but most important, there was something that I would call a sense of inner, intermolecular mockery and derision, an inbred superlaugh of my bodily parts and the analogous parts of my spirit, all running wild.

###

Okay, it is passages like these that make me want to write and also dread to write. See, even that sounds crap, it came out all caveman, I am starstruck by a dead writer. He just sort up sums it up there...the angst of nonlife...inner, intermolecular mockery...Well, all of it really. And that is in translation. It makes me want to become fluent in Polish in the same way that Heidegger makes me want to become fluent in German. Ain't gonna happen, but its the thought that counts, right? Inspired and intimidated.

saturday moring in la

3rd November 2007 8am
I'm drinking a 5 dollar coffee by the pool @ The Standard on Sunset and Sweetzer. The ashtray is electric blue and sits on a zinc white table, which in turn sits on an acreage of electric blue AstroTurf. The maid, in a Pepto pink uniform, partially covered by a cheap navy blue windbreaker is vacuuming the AstroTurf. The vacuum is mostly putty colored and has an electric blue base and power cord which is plugged in to an impossibly long and infinitely kinked orange extension cord . The other worker, a man, is wearing the gas station attendant-like Standard uniform. Navy blue cotton Dickie's with a pale blue short sleeved shirt with soft navy vertical stripes. He is changing the butane canisters in the poolside heaters. In the pool are two clear pink plastic inner tubes. The water is perfectly still. The morning fog has yet to burn off and the towering palms and neighboring buildings look like awakening specters.

I don't know why but this weird combination, cheap windbreaker and all is making me really happy.

leaving the big smoke

Due to unforeseen circumstances I find myself in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And after nearly 12 years of being accustomed to having a Big Red Limo at my disposal 24/7/365 in London, I now find myself relegated to having to provide my own transportation, like some sort of regular person. The indignity does not stop there, however; I am currently living in my mother’s house, which at [##] is increasing the burden of humiliation that is mine to carry at this particular point in time. I find myself saying things like, “Mom, can I borrow the car?” Which will, no doubt, in time lead to getting caught making out on the sofa.

Here is how I try NOT to imagine it will go down: I will meet a Hot Guy and we will have “chemistry”. After a few coffees out, a movie and some phone calls we will go to a gig and engage in the Devil’s sport of dancing [OKC is in The Bible Belt] which in turn will lead to the following verbal transaction:

HG: want to come back to mine?

Me: ummm…

HG: or we could go to yours if you prefer…

Me: ermmmm…

CUT TO: Close-up of my alarmed face as I imagine how that would work out, then

FADE OUT AND UP TO:


NIGHT, INTERIOR: Camera pans across the darkened interior of my mother’s well-appointed home. Me and HG are locked in a clinch on The Celery Green Silk Sofa, The Needlepoint Pillows are on the floor and my shirt and bra are in a careless pile next to the Scalamandre Covered Louis XV Fauteuil. HG’s shirt is unbuttoned to the waist. The camera slowly zooms in on me and HG.

Me: mmmmschlurpahhh

HG: mfwgggrrrrr

Me; ooooohhh

HG: schlopmfwaaagahhh

From another place in the house the sound of a footstep is heard and the camera
CUTS TO:

The shadow of a be-robed woman slowly descending the stairs in the dark

Mom: [VO] Lovebug…? Darling…? Is that you...????

Here we do not fade to black. We CUT to BLACK quickly, quicklyquicklyquickly, because I don’t even want to go there or, go back there because there I have been before. Different house, different city but same Sofa, Pillows and Chair with a Fancy French Name:

To wit:

Ian in 6th Grade
Brad in 7th Grade
Lorenzo in 8th Grade
Ivan, Summer Break, Junior Year, College
Dietrich, Christmas Break, Senior Year College

Gentle Reader, I have the Gestalt on this scenario, good and proper. Let me enlighten you. My mother, who I love with all my heart probably more than anyone else in the world in fact, persists in referring to older divorced couples who are co-habitating as being “shacked-up.”

I need to find my own place, but before that can happen I have to buy a car.

Where to start?

Here is a list of things I have been thinking about writing but not writing:

First, a trek to Aspen with my four-years' dead dog Pigeon's cremated ashes to drop in our fave spot up Hunter Creek, where we used to swim and hike 12 years ago;

Trying to manifest a 70's Mercedes SL for my trip to LA;

But manifesting a rusted out '71 380CD instead.

Trying to de-manifest said Merc;

Starting my second [unfinished] novel to avoid rewriting my sitcom for the US market;

The pleasure of reading Malraux's Anti-memoirs aloud to myself [I'm not as pompous as that makes me sound, I'm just weird]

Madeleine Goes To Aspen Where She Meets Ötzi The Iceman

Aspen is surreal. I grew up here but I have never become inured to the whole Famous People thing.

Like waiting in line at Carl's Pharmacy for a prescription to be filled with Stephen Hawking,

or being asked by Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez where the cool parties are on New Year's Eve the year after Repo Man came out. For example.

I see Famous People daily in London, but it is a roomy city. Perhaps, in Aspen, because it's such a small village there is an uncomfortable intimacy when The Illuminati and The Glitterati rock-up in their Lear jets and then start doing things we normal people do.

So, I'm here in Aspen for a 3-week visit and the climate is very dry. Aspen is, in fact classified as an alpine desert, and I have forgotten to pack my face creams. It's the middle of day 1 and I already need to get my hands on some Weleda products, namely Iris Day Cream and the über emollient Skin Food to lock in the moisturizing benefits of the IDC.

Rents are very high in Aspen and a lot of businesses don't make it. So year-in and year-out there is a constant turnover. Not a big problem if you live here full-time or visit frequently. But nothing is where it used to be since I moved to The Big Smoke 12 years ago, except for Carl's Pharmacy, which had already been here for 14 years when we arrived in '73. And Carl's has EVERYTHING, don't let the name fool you. And because its Aspen they even have caviar in their little grocery section. But they are sold out of my Weleda products, and nothing else will do. I know what I am talking about. So I am thinking I need a health food store, right? So I'm schlepping all over Aspen looking for places that do not exist. Prada is now in what used to be Andre's where we went for Sunday Brunch if we weren't going to Arthur's, the original one, before the Chinese people bought it. Dior, Gucci & Vuitton are where Poppycock's use to be before it moved to The Aspen Square where Scandinavian Design was after it moved from the place next door to The Epicure, but after the Epicure closed and the first Pour La France opened before moving next door and later became Farfalle, but now seems to be some sort of Asian-fusion place. The Cantina is STILL in the old Epicure spot from 12 years ago acting as North Star for my Ullysian Face Cream Adventure, thank God.

But back to my face. My skin is starting to feel tight. I can't see my face, so all I have to go on are the sensations emanating from behind the mask [hahahaha]. And I think: "This must be what Ötzi the Iceman, [the early man-dude some trekkers stumbled across in 1991 on a glacier somewhere between Italy and Austria] would have felt had he lived to see his discovery.

But then.

I see this lady! She has Purpose! She looks like She Knows Where She Is Going! And she even Looks Familiar! Aha! A longtime local, me thinks! My tightened hide relaxes in a Pavlovian anticipatory placebo response. So I make a bee-line for her. She clocks my moves, quickens her pace and ups her Purpose. But I friggin’ need to exfoliate, re-hydrate and lock in the goddamn moisture. I am hemorrhaging bodily liquids via my cutaneous and subcutaneous layers at an alarming rate. And whether she knows it or not she has been sent to me as a Guide from The Archangel of Youthful Dewy Skin, and I am not prepared to wait on the side of this [alpine] desert road for another opportunity like this to pass by:

Me: Excuse me, excuse me...do you...[woman ignores me, so I speak up and add a tone of Authority] Pardon me, would you happen to know where the health food store is...?

Woman: I'm sorry...?

Me: A health food store or, like, an organic spa that sells Weleda or Dr. Hauschka products...I need to get some moisturizer...its so dry here, an Alpine Desert I'm told. [Beat, then] I feel reptilian...

Woman: [Tersely] I can't help you, I'm visiting myself.

Me: [I pause and consider woman] Are you Madeleine Albright?

Woman: Yes.

Me: Oh. [Beat, then] Does your skin feel dry?