New Year, New Vices
If you think I took a final gasp of chaos in the last few seconds of 2020 and exhaled into 2021 viceless, you have been misdirected
I’ve quit practically everything already anyway.
Like, hundreds of times
And I’ve learned to portray my vices as virtues, mostly anyway, with the convincing air of an illusionist so you might think me natural as opposed to sloppy, unique as opposed to weird, refreshingly honest as opposed to insensitive, and a fan of the Oxford comma.
Gorgeous morning out there today, nice and soft underfoot instead of the rink it’s been for a few days and there’s another sprinkle of fresh snow which gives up all the forest’s secrets so I can see what Daisy’s nose is telling her about a fox over here and a rabbit thataway and the deer who went right along the edge, in sure-footed single file.
I was first human today and I left some things for the next guy to think about
My footprints disappear and reappear and zig and zag and take giant steps forward and a couple of times when there was enough room to make a running leap, I did, and it looks like I might be a Sasquatch or some wierdo that gravy doesn’t work on and that should be gravity but Spellcheck’s still hammered I guess.
I just finished a novel by Michael Chabon called Wonder Boys and it really got me and I’m still got. Can’t get it out of my head, thank goodness. It’s very funny and clever and poignant and it’s left a kind of nice little stain on me if you know what I mean.
I love the story and the humour with which it is told. It’s written the way ballerinas dance, you know, gorgeous and without noticeable effort which isn’t the same as effortlessly because I mean obviously defying gravity is as difficult as resisting jokes that collapse in a premature punchline which is probably the weirdest analogy you’ve heard all year.
Anyway Mr. Chabon’s humour is exceedingly well done, applause here, and you get a happy and satisfied feeling – not necessarily lols – but your funny bone is definitely rubbed the right way or maybe it’s your unexpected bone or your trying-to-figure-out-how-the-heck-he-does-it bone.
So I ordered Wonder Boys from the library and got it in a jiffy because I guess it’s not in demand like Seinfeld’s Is This Anything? which took about two months to arrive, and isn’t. I mean I’m a fan but also exhausted
But this guy, Michael Chabon, is special and fresh in spite of the publishing date of 1999. The movie is 2000 and it hasn’t aged either and weirdly neither have the actors who include Michael Douglas, Francis Mcdormand, Robert Downy, Jr., Rip Torn, John Boy Walton, Toby Maguire, and I’ll try to think of the rest of them before I finish. Katie Holmes. Think that’s it. And everybody was cast perfectly especially Robert Downy, Jr. and Toby Maguire who made a perfect James Leer but a lousy Nick Carraway to Leonardo’s Gatsby but maybe because I’m stuck on the first Nick, Sam Waterston, who was the perfect mix of narrator, participant and lover of Jordan Baker, my flapper idol, whose line Not for me thank you, I am in training I use on the increasingly infrequent occasion when I decline debauchery.
Wonder Boys has been one of my fave movies forever so I don’t know why it took me so long to read it
We watched it the night before Christmas which is a pretty coveted little time-slot. Oldest daughter curled up on the couch and dug in and she loved it and what better compliment can I pay it, the book I mean, than I just ordered it from Amazon so I can have it for keeps and also one for my daughter unless she already ordered one for herself which means I’ll have a spare for you.
Amazon seemed delighted to see me again after our short-lived but intense holiday affair, and filled my inbox with sudden declarations and reminders of unrequited love languishing in carts that remain stalled at dimly lit checkouts all over the world
In one struggles a ghost-grey duvet comprised from a ménage à trois of cotton, hemp and bamboo. Another contains the uncertain tentacles of mismatched stereo components. And another is glistening and warm with exotic spices, possibly illegal, while a paddleboard from Brazil, I think, is standing in line, tapping its impatient foot.
Also wide awake in various carts are the sharp shoulders of a dozen or so espresso machines I ditched
And way in the shadowy recesses you might find an old cart of mine containing a couple of imperfect manuscripts, rejection letters in alphabetical order, a tightly wound package of grief, incorrectly sized sneakers, a few soggy obstacles, some self-sabotage, and all the chocolate I spit out that year I went without sugar.
Which is really too much information, I know, and believe it or not I err on the side of privacy and I don’t know about you but not a fan of nosy people. I used to shut them up with my best lies but now I write fiction instead and give the nosey fuckers something better. The truth.
So this is how I answer the most invasive question of all:
Q) What are your New Year’s Resolutions?
A) To mind my own business, Asshat…You?
Because nobody wants to admit that their resolutions are just to shower more and maybe slip out of their pyjamas once in a while and continue exploring the elaborate but elegant route to the perfect punchline.
