This is going to sound crazy but … you don’t HAVE to go. You know that, right?
I said,
Have to go where?
If you’re about to say to Europe, don’t even
I feel angry imagining you saying that
It’s
Just
So wrong
She said,
I would like to know why the suggestion of not HAVING to go is so jarring
I said,
It’s about how I desperately want and need to get the fuck out of this life — want-want-want — not a shred of should — and how the way that I make such things happen for myself is to put some logistical thing in place that I believe to be the ultimate authority
I’m in the car with Ron, going to New Jersey with those of my most valuables that will shelter in place.
Soon I will go to the airport, and I will check in with one hopes little trouble — Dad called for a second time to tell me that probably it will be a problem that my ticket is missing the middle name on my passport — and then we — me and everyone else moving to Denmark — will get on the plane and, with luck, sleep all the way to the new day.
She said,
I have deep feelings of envy and pride for what you are doing
I said,
When will things be normal again?
She said,
This is the new normal isn’t it.
I said,
It feels bad right now.
She said,
Oh well it will only feel like this for a very very short time, like less time than a transatlantic flight.
I said,
I didn’t do the dishes or make the beds or hang all the things on the wall so that it’s nice for the subletter.
She said,
Are you packed?
I said,
Having asked a few questions, Ron says no, I am not packed.
Already Iʼve lapsed into the insanity of someone whoʼs gone from a too-social existence to almost-total solitude
The truth is I am terrified at all times, and to pretend that all I notice is the sunshine and beer and new friends is the only answer I know.
(Although maybe thatʼs exactly whatʼs at the root of such annoying manners at their most manifest, a vain effort to keep the demons of consciousness at bay?)
I slept so badly last night, mostly because of anxiety about getting up in time to do everything necessary in the apartment and be packed and make it to my bus on time, but also I think because Iʼve been on a cocktail of melatonin and some kind of over-the-counter antihistamine to get on this time zone but skipped them last night because I was afraid of oversleeping HOWEVER in the one good, tranquil, unworried hour of sleep I got, I was dreaming about us hiking in the Old World, and it was great.
I’m liking it well enough here, I guess, but where are all the Black people? There are very, very few, and most of the ones I’ve met are African immigrants to Germany, Senegalese and Nigerian men in Michael Jordan jerseys who sell me crummy weed at exorbitant prices because they are savvy and I am wide-eyed and high on novelty and fairly begging for the authentic! cultural!! experience!!! of being taken for a ride in a strange land, plus the bassist from the band from Madagascar that played at Carnival of Cultures, and one Jamaican rapper I encountered at same, the latter of whose black-and-green-and-yellow things I gravitated to for homesickness for Flatbush, one presumes.
I guess I’ve been looking for the Black people speaking and dressed more or less like this nation’s natives. African-Prussian Vernacular German, anyone? But how does a place come to have such a population if previous residents didn’t specifically travel overseas to the African continent and kidnap and bring back and enslave and force foreign names and language on enough African people that, over generations, a new dimension of civilization eventually comes into being? I don’t know enough about this. Someone told me I’ll see more Black people in the clubs, but who are those people, and where are they the rest of the time?
Okay well today one thing I had to do was ride in a circle and go back a ways and inspect what was indeed a hedgehog smashed all over Rue Continière
She said,
Tell me why you had to
I said,
I guess because I was like, Is that a hedgehog?
And everything I am ever doing can wait
She said,
This is an affliction of the bourgeoisie
I said,
Well what the fuck was I riding to?
My actual intention in setting out this morning was to find a starfish
And so I had time to circle back for maybe-a-hedgehog.
And look at it from various angles
And take some pictures
And try to identify some of the organs on the road beside it
Does that even make geographic sense, that it might be here?
Where are hedgehogs?
If someone had asked me yesterday, I would have guessed Texas
Actually maybe I have an idea from somewhere that they are très français
And now I know!
Also today I plucked a billion sea snails from sea rocks with the idea that I would cook them for dinner
But then I got back and Sylka didn’t want me to
So now there is an olive container full of dead or dying sea snails in my backpack
I feel bad on many levels
She said,
I wish that you didn’t feel bad at all
I said,
Thanks
I guess I just don’t like killing things for no reason
I thought about walking right out of the door and messaging one of my stupid Oléronaise Tinder matches to be like, Can we make escargots de la mer at your place tonight?
