shampooP: PART TWO
I was even then beginning to understand that when you arrive on the doorstep of Europe, you are given a pair of wings--not for using to fly up into the sky but rather with which to fly backward in time.
Europe lacks the possibility of metamorphosis (how egghead!). Europe is like a beautiful baby with super distinctive features who, while beautiful, is also kind of depressing because you know exactly what the child will look like at twenty, at forty, at ninety-nine. No mystery.
I wanted to see what sort of world my ancestors found so intolerable they needed to leave. And I'd heard Europe was the total place for aprtying.
Europe trieds to be so modern, but the effort always sort of, well. . . flops. Germany, to the country's credit, is higher-tech than the inside of a CD player but their platform toilets are like a torture device straight out of the Inquisition. France has never heard of Sunday shopping. And in Belgium I saw a nuclear cooling tower with moss on its convex northern slope. Modern?
He was the exception to the rule of youthful summer Eurofriendships, friendships based on "mutual assured disposability," (Kiwi's term) the myriad of relationships experienced between Susans and Petras and Volkners and Clives and Mitsuos and Julios and DAves who meet in Europe's cramped train compartment and squalid youth hostels, which seem to always smell vaguely of sperm and cafe au lait.
All in all I felt I was at the end of an epoch bigger than just my holiday in Europe. . . Maybe the air of Paris was making me feel like this. Maybe I was just intoxicated by too much pilsner and too much metro air' bu sweet almond cookies and reflexive recoils from ambulant street trash. Maybe I simply. . . felt isolated and small-townish and couldn't help but notice couples in love around all corners. Again, too many experiences but no relationships, as my travelogue all too deeply reveals.
Live seemed to be hopelessly waltzing by me then as I downed shooters of licorice-sweet 51 liqueur, my emtied glasses lined across the gray-veined marble tabletop of yet another outdoor cafe in which I chose to rest.
Monique rarely punctuated my consciousness. She was like a stylist trimming your hair in a town you're only passing through, spoken to in a friendly yet ephemeral manner via a mirror's reflection.
"I like you because you broshed your teeth and drank grapefruit juce before we went out to drink wine. I like you because when I think of you as a yong boy you are walking over big fields and there are no skelletons in the dirt on which you walk. . . I like you because you have never been in love before. And when you do have love, I know you will survive such pain when it ends. You will always recover. You are the New World."
I feel I am forgetting how I felt when I was younger. I have to remind myself that forgetting something behind you is not quite the same as throwing it away.
My world is moving too fast once again. I think of the fact that my reserves of money will be gone soon and rev my car through the suburbs of Lancaster, but my noise is no competition for the cold, the indifference of the dark sky and the icy, faraway stars.
When you grow older a dreadful, horrible sensation will come over you. It's called loneliness, and you think you know what it is now, but you don't. Here is a list of symptoms, and don't worry--loneliness is the most universal sensation on the planet. Just remember one fact--loneliness will pass. You will survive and you will be a better human for it.
I have this feeling. . . that as you grow older, it becomes harder to feel 100 percent happy; you learn all the things that can go wrong' you become superstitious about tempting fate, about bringing disaster upon your life by accidentally feeling too good one day.
Maybe people with weird haircuts are like structures that become interesting only after being wrecked--Florida ranch houses half-fallen into sinkholes; bankrupt malls; civilizations after nuclear war. I feel a warm tragic glow knowing I may be of interest to the world only once I have been destroyed. Youthful vanity. Tip of the day: never become destroyed.
At a mall people are interested only in staying as modern as possible, continually forgetting the past while envisaging a shinier more fabulous future. Just think of all the wonderful products to buy. . . do these products sparkle? Can you see your face reflected in these products? Are they made of a wonderful material like Lucite or Kevlar that exists nowhere in the known universe save for Earth? We are so lucky to be living in the times we do.
I am by now completely convinced that my downfall in life is going to be my inability to achieve computer nirvana. . . I think this lacking is the most unmodern facet of my personality--the career equivalent of having six fingers, or a vestigial tail.
I wonder if people who accuse you of not revealing enough about yourself are the people not actually doing the divulging.
his theory as to why so many people are going to the gym these days. "People need to be perfect in every way so their souls won't have to reincarnate again. So many people are at the end of their cycles now. That's why Earth is so overpopulated. It's obvious. People are fed up with having to relive history. They want it to end."
Life is maybe like deep-sea fishing. We wake up in the morning, we cast our nets into the waters, and, if we are lucky, at day's end we will have netted one--maybe two--small fish. Occasionally we will net a seahorse and sometimes a shark--or a life preserver or an iceberg, or a monster. And in our dreams at night we assess our Catch of the Day--the treasures of this long, slow process of the accumulation--and we eat the flesh of our fish, casting away their bones and weaving the memories of their onceglinting skins into our souls.
Sitting beside Dan in the kitchen is unleashing a flood of memories from when I was gounger--trying but never being able to predict what would catalyze Dan into a rage after his fifth scotch and tree bites of dinner. I'm remembering how Daisy and Mark and I simply stopped offering opinions or showing traces of emotion, refusing to sell triggers to complete his weapons-buildup scheme. And I'm remembering how it was we became emotionless robots when around him.
In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in sentences that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we heed to ask so many questions as we dream alone. We bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves.
Europe lacks the possibility of metamorphosis (how egghead!). Europe is like a beautiful baby with super distinctive features who, while beautiful, is also kind of depressing because you know exactly what the child will look like at twenty, at forty, at ninety-nine. No mystery.
I wanted to see what sort of world my ancestors found so intolerable they needed to leave. And I'd heard Europe was the total place for aprtying.
Europe trieds to be so modern, but the effort always sort of, well. . . flops. Germany, to the country's credit, is higher-tech than the inside of a CD player but their platform toilets are like a torture device straight out of the Inquisition. France has never heard of Sunday shopping. And in Belgium I saw a nuclear cooling tower with moss on its convex northern slope. Modern?
He was the exception to the rule of youthful summer Eurofriendships, friendships based on "mutual assured disposability," (Kiwi's term) the myriad of relationships experienced between Susans and Petras and Volkners and Clives and Mitsuos and Julios and DAves who meet in Europe's cramped train compartment and squalid youth hostels, which seem to always smell vaguely of sperm and cafe au lait.
All in all I felt I was at the end of an epoch bigger than just my holiday in Europe. . . Maybe the air of Paris was making me feel like this. Maybe I was just intoxicated by too much pilsner and too much metro air' bu sweet almond cookies and reflexive recoils from ambulant street trash. Maybe I simply. . . felt isolated and small-townish and couldn't help but notice couples in love around all corners. Again, too many experiences but no relationships, as my travelogue all too deeply reveals.
Live seemed to be hopelessly waltzing by me then as I downed shooters of licorice-sweet 51 liqueur, my emtied glasses lined across the gray-veined marble tabletop of yet another outdoor cafe in which I chose to rest.
Monique rarely punctuated my consciousness. She was like a stylist trimming your hair in a town you're only passing through, spoken to in a friendly yet ephemeral manner via a mirror's reflection.
"I like you because you broshed your teeth and drank grapefruit juce before we went out to drink wine. I like you because when I think of you as a yong boy you are walking over big fields and there are no skelletons in the dirt on which you walk. . . I like you because you have never been in love before. And when you do have love, I know you will survive such pain when it ends. You will always recover. You are the New World."
I feel I am forgetting how I felt when I was younger. I have to remind myself that forgetting something behind you is not quite the same as throwing it away.
My world is moving too fast once again. I think of the fact that my reserves of money will be gone soon and rev my car through the suburbs of Lancaster, but my noise is no competition for the cold, the indifference of the dark sky and the icy, faraway stars.
When you grow older a dreadful, horrible sensation will come over you. It's called loneliness, and you think you know what it is now, but you don't. Here is a list of symptoms, and don't worry--loneliness is the most universal sensation on the planet. Just remember one fact--loneliness will pass. You will survive and you will be a better human for it.
I have this feeling. . . that as you grow older, it becomes harder to feel 100 percent happy; you learn all the things that can go wrong' you become superstitious about tempting fate, about bringing disaster upon your life by accidentally feeling too good one day.
Maybe people with weird haircuts are like structures that become interesting only after being wrecked--Florida ranch houses half-fallen into sinkholes; bankrupt malls; civilizations after nuclear war. I feel a warm tragic glow knowing I may be of interest to the world only once I have been destroyed. Youthful vanity. Tip of the day: never become destroyed.
At a mall people are interested only in staying as modern as possible, continually forgetting the past while envisaging a shinier more fabulous future. Just think of all the wonderful products to buy. . . do these products sparkle? Can you see your face reflected in these products? Are they made of a wonderful material like Lucite or Kevlar that exists nowhere in the known universe save for Earth? We are so lucky to be living in the times we do.
I am by now completely convinced that my downfall in life is going to be my inability to achieve computer nirvana. . . I think this lacking is the most unmodern facet of my personality--the career equivalent of having six fingers, or a vestigial tail.
I wonder if people who accuse you of not revealing enough about yourself are the people not actually doing the divulging.
his theory as to why so many people are going to the gym these days. "People need to be perfect in every way so their souls won't have to reincarnate again. So many people are at the end of their cycles now. That's why Earth is so overpopulated. It's obvious. People are fed up with having to relive history. They want it to end."
Life is maybe like deep-sea fishing. We wake up in the morning, we cast our nets into the waters, and, if we are lucky, at day's end we will have netted one--maybe two--small fish. Occasionally we will net a seahorse and sometimes a shark--or a life preserver or an iceberg, or a monster. And in our dreams at night we assess our Catch of the Day--the treasures of this long, slow process of the accumulation--and we eat the flesh of our fish, casting away their bones and weaving the memories of their onceglinting skins into our souls.
Sitting beside Dan in the kitchen is unleashing a flood of memories from when I was gounger--trying but never being able to predict what would catalyze Dan into a rage after his fifth scotch and tree bites of dinner. I'm remembering how Daisy and Mark and I simply stopped offering opinions or showing traces of emotion, refusing to sell triggers to complete his weapons-buildup scheme. And I'm remembering how it was we became emotionless robots when around him.
In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in sentences that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we heed to ask so many questions as we dream alone. We bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves.