Deluge

When it rains in LA all bets are off. There is doom, then catharsis in the downpour and you must endure the first to enjoy the second. In New York the rain is for skipping through or getting caught in, but here the gray goes right to your gut.

It’s coming to an end. I’m not sure what, but something. That’s what it feels like, and it feels that way for a lot of people. Whatever’s been working doesn’t anymore. Whatever’s been not working is still not working, so the only hope is something new and by new, I mean free of fear, and by free of fear I mean full of fear, but the fear ignored. Comfort is a dangerous word. Things might be cozy, but you don’t learn shit. Put a “dis” in front of it and the whole world opens up and all praise be to he who embraces struggle.

I’ve been on a seven-year comfort jag, and it’s almost done me in. I’m ready for something else. Ready to re-value myself, but I may need an agent to pull it off and if you need an agent to re-value yourself, you’re barking up the wrong tree (How great would it be to go outside right now, get on all fours, and bark up a tree; the right one or the wrong one). I have eaten enough delicious, humanely raised heritage breed pork in the last seven years to earn a lifetime ban from every Rabbinical school in Brooklyn. I’ve been fed and fucked and festooned with good fortune. I’m so sick of it I could puke. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ungrateful, I’m just confused. I’ve got a meaning habit and all my dealers have left town. I play my 1940s jazz and pray at the altar of Cab Calloway, but I am no match for the 21^st century, and like most of you, the phone is both my jailer and fairy Godmother (my un-imaginary friend). It hands me a fork and offers me all the isolation I can eat. I use GPS and feel more lost than ever. I’ve been sending up smoke signals and thank God you all read them, but even that only goes so far.

The other day I read about the madness in Iran; heroic courage in the face of bullets and theocracy. I watched a video; black night, urban chaos, gunshots poppin’. A man ducked behind a white car holding up a phone to film the slaughter. He cried out hoarsely, “They shooting us!” Pap pap pap. “They shooting us!” Pap pap pap. “This government shooting people!” Pap pap pap. “They fucking shooting us. Please help!” It was a plea to the western world. A message in a bottle on a phone. I read about a doctor performing emergency surgery on a woman in a hospital hallway. Asking the two policemen (who were harassing a man who had carried her there on his back), “Why are you doing these things to your people? Why are you massacring your brothers and sisters?” I watched and read and was ashamed. Not that I was here doing nothing, but that I was here doing nothing, thinking about myself. What should I write, make, be envious of or not envious of? I wasn’t massacring my brothers and sisters I was floating above them. “I have lost my way,” I cried out! Okay, I didn’t cry out but was silently startled by my selfishness. Shocked by how easily I had sealed myself off from the agonies of my fellow man. And in that moment, I swore to re-engage. To become a card-carrying member of the human race. To honor my activist roots and fight for freedom! Three hours later I was back sucking on the lozenge of my own disaffection, unable to sustain empathy or at least empathy with force.

It’s coming down harder now. Dark light. Heavy drops. Melancholy windows. My lap pool can’t decide if it’s offended or at a family reunion. I don’t know what matters anymore, everything or nothing. I sit in my home office on house arrest, but what’s my crime? Laziness? Whiteness? Lack of ambition? I no longer have the courage to lose everything but I’m not sure anything else will do. I’m so fucking stoned on money, and it’s so much more insidious than junk. Not that I have so much, just enough to not have to give-a-fuck about anyone but me. I feel the deep ache of meaninglessness and my solution is to buy a mid-century Heath coffee cup on Etsy; tell me I am not completely fucked! I know these are white people problems but I’m white or at least really good at passing. Something is coming to an end. For me, for you, for all of us, but especially for me, because it’s my essay, my Substack, my everything. Jesus fucking Christ, just book me a ticket to Tehran.

Okay, let me get a hold of myself. I know it’s a disease of perception, but I was cursed with a great clock of a heart and sometimes I just can’t wind it. Things are hurtling forward at alarming speeds. We are being brought together and torn apart in one digital gesture. Ghost ship taxis HG Wells us across cities and we are happy to not have to smell the driver’s cologne. Our lovers write us long, aching emails and AI suggests a three-line response. If they tell us we have wasted the last ten years of their life and misunderstood everything about them, AI offers, “I appreciate you saying that. Let me think about it.” Is there AI that answers, “I am sorry my love, we are both wounded. For a while it felt like we were healing together, but time has worked us over and whispered mischief in our ear. I thought I was giving you what you need, but if what you need has changed and I didn’t notice then I have failed you. I hope you are able to find some blessing in our demise. Please, don’t squander your pain and I’ll try not to squander mine.” Oh, wait a minute, AI does do that. You tell it to write like Tommy Swerdlow after he’s been reading Rilke for a year.

Something is coming to an end, and I for one am ready for it.