Finally discovering it’s true cultural relevance by aligning itself with the Olympic brand. Consistent effort to neuter/de-claw the art/music/nightlife scene over the years largely successful, resulting in (almost completely ignored) pockets of excited, nihilistic dissension surrounded by a sea of stretch cotton and Gore-Tex. North American leader in the proliferation of ‘Weed Culture.’ Generally ignored/disliked/considered ‘pussy’ by the rest of Canada (most notably exemplified by perennial failing objects of mockery ‘Vancouver Canucks’).
4) Toronto
Might still equals right. Notable for seducing the more-financially-ambitious-but-too-scared-to-go-New York/Europe type individuals from every other Canadian city (Montreal seemingly exclusive). Gave us/the world ‘The Broken Social Scene’ in the early part of the decade, the zenith of which saw Feist immortalized via iPod meme. Not sure what T. has done for me lately, though. Maple Leafs jokes aren’t even fun anymore.
3) Fort McMurray
Emerging financial capital of Canada. Desirable real estate and booming economy working in conjunction to create playground for the nouveau riche. Notable recent artistic contributions include “Landscape With The Fall Of The Boreal Forest” and the animated, multifaceted installation “Oil Riggers On Amphetamines,” by Syncrude/Suncor and (Unknown), respectively. Long-term agreement with the Devil negotiated in mid-00s likely to ensure Fort Mac’s place in the Top Five for the foreseeable future.
2) Montreal
Perhaps the Yang to Fort McMuray’s Yin. Closest counterpoint to ‘Europe’ without actually having to cross the Atlantic or venture into the Franco-fascist depths of Quebec City. Notable for seducing the more-artistically-minded-but-too-scared-to-go-to-Paris/Berlin type individuals from every other Canadian city. Home of Canada’s only internationally-esteemed higher learning institution. Middle-aged men from most other Canadian cities more likely to identify with ‘The Habs’ than any other NHL brand.
1) Calgary
Writes Adam Humphreys: “Sinister. Something like homosexual republicans.” Perceivably ’sinister’ economic/conservative qualities ensure continued financial supremacy in unsettled times while events such as ‘The Stampede,’ multiple ‘Folk Festivals,’ and ‘Red Mile’ ‘Calgary Flames’ NHL playoff binge-drinking celebrations work to temper economical juggernaut image and ensure Calgary’s growing identity as city of cultural significance on the world’s stage. Growing cultural/ethnic diversity continues in conjunction with a firm maintenance of ‘Wild West/Redneck yokel’ historical identity in a model jealously regarded by more ‘identity-deficient’ cities such as Vancouver, Saskatoon, et al. City perhaps best personified by Flames captain Jerome Iginla: outwardly charming and of decent national repute, yet capable of and all-too-willing to break your nose at the slightest prevarication.
Dishonorable Mention:
Quebec City
Haven’t heard from you in a long time, QC. Remember when you used to be fun? What the fuck happened?
When I was in Barcelona, the only thing I felt that I had to do was go the top of Mt. Tibadabo. I had seen a picture of my dad up there, when he was my age, with a babe on each arm and the city in the background, and I felt like it would be a good thing for me to go up there and conjure up the ghost of his youth. I took the train to the bottom, and from there you’re supposed to take a gondola to the top where there’s an amusement park of some kind and some food vendors and stuff. It was January, though, and it didn’t really look like the gondola was running, and I was broke and it was a beautiful sunny day and I saw some people making their way up a trail to the left, so I said ‘Fuck it’ and started hiking.
An hour and a half later, through what could only have been game trails or tiny dry creek beds, after having lost the main trail almost immediately because it seemed inefficiently windy, I popped out on some road. I couldn’t see any amusement park, I didn’t hear any cars. The sun was going down and I was wearing a t-shirt and an uninsulated leather jacket. I hadn’t eaten. It was getting cold.
I wandered along the road for a while until I came to an opening where I could take in a view that seemed similar to the one I had seen in the picture of my dad. I took a self portrait with my manual SLR that actually ended up turning out (and that I have no idea of where it is now). I sat down on the cement barrier at the side of the road and stared down at Barcelona and wondered if I really had to walk down in the cold and dark.
Somehow, for some reason, just then, a young couple and their daughter and their friend popped out of I-don’t-know-where. I kept staring off, trying to look pensive, in control, and totally desperate all at once, sneaking glances towards the group every few seconds. I figured, ‘Maybe there’s a bus or something that they know about.’ After a few minutes the woman approached me.
“Are you ok? Do you need a ride somewhere?”
She was beautiful. Her accent, I would learn, was Italian. She and the others were waiting for a cab. I was saved. When we got back to the city they wouldn’t even accept the 5 Euro note I tried to give them.
This little episode went a long way to temporarily restoring my wavering faith in humanity.
4) The Rooftop Of Electric Mansions – Brixton, London, UK
In London I had almost no friends, I couldn’t get laid, and I was, in hindsight, insecure to the point of agoraphobia. I was 20 and trying to figure out how to pretend to be a writer. I spent much of my time practicing on the roof of the Electric Mansions, where I would sit with my notebook, an acoustic guitar, a Heinekan, and a 10-pack of Lucky Strikes that I would make last a week because I didn’t want to smoke more than one/day and ‘get addicted.’ Oops.
3) East River State Park – Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC, USA
I went here in the heaviest snow of the past winter in New York and I went here in May and read in the grass with my shirt off. Right now (well, as of June), ERSP is (was) in an industrial area, far enough away from Bedford that it doesn’t attract too much casual traffic, and surrounded by enough ugliness to qualify it as a ‘hidden gem.’ As just about anyone with a pair of tight jeans will tell you, though, Williamsburg is getting yuppified to an extent that would make any self-respecting Strathcona/Main St/Mt Pleasant-er blush. The biggest part of this shift is going on around the park, where some opportunistic developers are cashing in on what has to be one of the last pieces of unresidentialized waterfront in greater NYC. As soon as construction is done and people start filling all those builidings – if it hasn’t happened already – I’m willing to bet the park is going to be full of little dogs and little kids and ‘professional 30-somethings,’ and be completely unpalatable.
2) Third Beach – Vancouver, BC, Canada
In the summer it’s good to go here everyday, pretend like it’s never going to end, and forget that a ‘future’ exists. In the fall and winter it’s good to go here and remember the summer and realize that it’s never going to be the same again.
Probably the only contentious choice on here. But goddamn, no one else thought of opening a song with the line “DOUBLE-BARRELLED SHOTGUNNNNN / WE POP SONNNNNNNN.”
4) T.I. – What You Know
This song made walking from the bathroom to the bar at the Columbia feel more like arriving at a Diddy ‘White Party’ in a helicopter with Sasha Grey on your arm.
3) Lil Wayne – A Milli
Good in the club; possibly better on the street in Bed-Stuy. You could hear the kick drum coming a full 45 seconds before you saw the scary-ass whip it was thumping from.
2) 50 Cent – In Da Club
Sometimes I still (mostly jokingly) copy the dance that one of his boys does at the end of this video – the one where he sort of just shakes his hand back and forth in front of his face. I still have no idea how to interpret it, though. This beat is like ______. Pretty much invented club rap for the 00s. Still sick.
1) Three Six Mafia – Stay Fly
By my authority, I hereby declare “Stay Fly” the best rap song of the decade.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
I opened the floodgates with this one…here’s three more:
I think I have the H1N1 (aka ‘The Swine Flu,’ aka ‘The Hi-Ni,’ aka ‘The Oinker,’ aka ‘Pigfucker’). Seeing as how it’s going to kill me and you and everyone we know (three months ago), I wanted to try and remember all the other times the world got the red carpet ready for the Second Coming.
5) Y2K (2000)
When you’re 15 and you don’t have a credit card or any money in the bank or even a mobile phone, the idea that all of the world’s computers will simultaneously explode at midnight on New Years Eve is actually pretty exciting. When a complete catalog of your life’s goals include little more than snowboarding, getting drunk with your bros, and breaking things, a full-scale worldwide descent into madness is basically a less-complicated alternative to winning the lottery. I was a little bit bummed when nothing at all happened.
SARS started in November o2, escaped from China in February 03, and the last human case was diagnosed in June 2003. Wikipedia refers to it as a “near pandemic,” which sounds to me like a last-ditch attempt by someone in the scientific community to retain some sort of respectability in spite of the fact that ONLY 8000 PEOPLE IN THE WHOLE WORLD CONTRACTED THE VIRUS. I get ‘nearly’ hit by a car everytime I ride my bike, but I’m not going to update my status on FB about it.
So it seems to me that, coming on the heels of SARS fear-mongering and the (never existent) threat of a deadly Bird Flu pandemic, this whole H1N1 thing is pretty embarrassing. The World Health Organization officially knighted H1N1 a pandemic, Obama declared a state of emergency, and everybody went charging out into the rain to line up for a few hours to get injected with a vaccine full of (???). But everyone I know has had this thing already and I don’t think it kept even one person off the sauce for more than three days. I’m bummed right now, but I’m willing to bet I’m not going to be in the 0.2% (!!!) of people who die from it.
3) Global Warming (early 19th cent. – present)
Probably could go in at number one if I believed we were going to last long enough to see the full effects of climate change without fucking everything up in a much more immediate way before then. The revelation that leading climate change scientists have been fudging information, working in almost complete secrecy, and obstructing any form of outside criticism doesn’t really surprise me, for some reason. Not that I don’t think human beings are destroying the environment, I just don’t really believe anyone who tells me anything about anything, anymore. Fear of climate change has done nothing to curb consumerism, it’s simply spawned a whole new market, wherein people pacify themselves by buying themselves products emblazoned with the word ‘Green,’ while ignoring the fact that it’s the constant buying of new shit/disposing of old shit that is doing all the damage. Saving a few watts a year with your efficient washer and dryer doesn’t really matter when you’re doing a load a day.
But I dunno. The economy has to continue functioning, I guess, even while the ship is sinking. And I don’t do anything to actively change anything, I guess. I just try and live meagerly. Which is easy with no money.
2) Planet X/Nibiru (2003/2010/2012)
I like this one because it’s completely made up of left-field psychotic ramblings touching on nearly every sci-fi cliche you’re likely to witness in an afternoon of watching Space Channel with Fedchuk. Having an opinion on this is sort of a waste of time; it’s pure entertainment. Even awesomer is the link-up between the ‘Apocalypse 2012′ Mayan calander enthusiasts and the Zeta nerds, who I guess have decided that there’s strength in numbers when trying to convince people that, not only are there aliens out there, but that they also have decided that we, in all the universe, are important enough to seek out and destroy via some Bond-bad-guy-esque melodrama of a plan.
1) 9/11 (2001)
September 11, 2001 was one of the first days of my Grade 12 year of highschool. I spent the majority of the day with my Walkman on, tuned to the news, wondering why I was at school when the USA was getting ready to launch a nuclear war.
It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m not real hopeful that it won’t.
It’s called “Crobar” because you pretty much need one to get in. The place feels about 10’ wide, and that includes the space taken up by the bar, which is right at the front and through the lineup of which you have to pass to get to any spot where you can reasonably ‘chill’, I was already pretty far up the wall when I got to this place, but I remember elbowing my way in, jamming myself in front of the bar, and looking down to see one of the employees sitting on the ground, under a shelf full of booze, reading a book. The place was a complete fucking madhouse – band playing in the back, people stacked three on top of each other, sweat dripping off the walls and smoke sticking to the roof – and dude is just sitting there reading Oscar Wilde. I wanted to never leave. (Note: Looking at this place on the internets now, I’m not sure how I would feel about it if I was to walk in tomorrow. Might have been a ‘one time good time.’)
4) Zeitgeist (San Francisco)
I spent 24 hours in San Fran, and at least four of them sitting at a picnic table in the beer garden at Zeitgeist, talking to a couple hood-looking Mexican dudes about hockey, slamming $2 PBRs, and picking my favorite sleazy rock and roll songs off the rad jukebox. We got to this place by getting into a cab with a cool driver who drove us around trying to think of a suitable spot for us to ‘get faced’ at, and ended up here.
3) Gramercy Hotel / Rose Bar (NYC)
I didn’t really have the most fun I’ve ever had at this place, but anytime you get to get drunk on the dime of the dude who runs Sirius Radio, surrounded by multi-million dollar pieces of art, while trying to not get caught ogling girls whose shoes are worth more than your bank account was at the start of you trip, you figure out a way to make the best of it. One time I got some ‘hot’ ‘mnstrm girl who probably only dates rich dudes’ phone number. Another time, James and I were playing pool against a couple of old Brits and he wanted me to give him $200 to put up as a bet. I didn’t, and we ended up losing to the bastards three times in a row. Also, we were smoking inside, which strikes me as being a funny thing to do while sitting underneath a Basquiat, surrounded by millionaires.
2) The Levee (Brooklyn)
A few of the reasons the Levee is my favorite bar in New York City: $2 Carling Black Labels ($1 during happy hour); “The Sportsman” (Black Label + shot of Evan Williams bourbon for $4); free cheesy poofs; jukebox with Titus Andronicus on it; Jenga; darts; pool table; pinball; “Big Buck Hunter”; “Buy A Friend A Drink” board (prepay for a drink, yr bro’s name goes on the chalkboard, if he goes in within 30 days and sees his name on the board he gets the drink. Made even better when the drink purchased is “The Fratboy”); unimaginably shitty food for unbelievably low prices (chili cheese dogs, anyone? Frito pie?); almost a total lack of attractive girls (makes for more focused drinking binges), badass bartender who I got drunk with one night at a different spot, when Bison rolled through town; etc. I get pretty bummed thinking about a place like this could never exist in a Draconian hellhole like Vancouver.
1) Limerick Junction (Vancouver)
This really could have been anywhere, as long as what was going on there was going on there. The beers weren’t especially cheap, the decor was forgettable, the layout was wacky, and it alternated between smelling like barn animal and smelling like septic tank, but through the summer and fall of 2006 the combination of ‘Young Folks’/'We Are Your Friends,’ ‘Kathyisyourfriend,’ and some weird, AmAppy/VICE induced sense of sexual liberation created a sort of guarunteed good time cocktail the likes of which I/we are probably never going to sip on again. Thanks Tony & Tyler!
5) Mike’s Apt., end of summer ‘08, from the same conversation from which this blog’s name was taken from, Mike hunched over computer, points a thumb over his shoulder towards the window:
“I’ll jump.”
or, alt. version,
“One bullet, one gun.”
4) Hangover breakfast at Docker’s Diner, circa sometime 2007:
Me – “Well, at least we’ve got our youth and our good looks.”
MB – “I’m getting old and I’ve never been good looking, so fuck you.”
5) “Trail Of Puke” House, Whistler, March-ish, 2003
I had never really been good at staying up all night before we moved to Whistler, and even then my idea of “all night” meant doing basically anything at all besides going straight home after the bar. The night before the day in question I went “hottubbing” after Garfinkle’s with a couple of girls I knew who had a bottle in a purse and some places we knew we could get into. I think one of the girls was my friend’s sister. I don’t think I made out with either of them. We probably didn’t stay out very late even, and at some point I left and ended up at this place where I was sort of living and where a bunch of my friends lived called the “Trail Of Puke” (as in, “…And You Will Know Us By the Trail Of Puke”). There were a half dozen freeloaders already there, sleeping all over the damn place. I was wearing denim – coat and pants. I was soaked. It was March in the mountains. There were no open couches, no blankets, no pillows, no cushions. I tried to sleep on a throw rug overtop of the slate floor infront of the front door. The window at my feet was open and the wind blew in. I don’t know why I didn’t close it.
At some point I remembered that the mud room had heated floors and I went in there. I spent the rest of the night surrounded by wet snowboard boots, wrapped in a less-wet snowboard coat, with my nose jammed under the crack in the door to breath.
I think this one was so bad because before this I had never not-slept simply because that was the only option. Guess I was ’sheltered’ as a kid or something.
4) Vancouver/North Vancouver, Oct 31, 2009:
This was a bummer because Halloween is fun and I more or less fucked it up for myself. The night before was bands covering the Misfits at the Media Club, and I was still pretty stoked on that idea after how much fun I had at the ER for a similarly-themed party two years ago, so I decided to turn it up a notch. And it was fun. And the specifics are sort of hazy, because it was like pretty much any other Friday night preceding it. But, like I said, ‘up a notch.’
Really though, I think the biggest problem was that I had been going for ______ days in a row, and on Halloween it finally caught up to me. In the back of my head right now a little voice is telling me I did it on purpose so I could go about being a bummer to hang around with on everyone’s fave party night, but I dunno.
I guess this is a roundabout explanation for my costume, in case anyone was wondering. I was this guy, sort of, without any religous connotation. I just really thought I had created my own party apocalypse, and that nigh, indeed, was the end.
I went out on Halloween and had a pretty good time anyhow, though.
3)New York, February 25, 2009:
The previous night was my friend Nicole V’s birthday. I met up with my friend James N at his loft, where we started working on collection of 30 Bud Lights (I know, sorry bros) and playing pool. You could smoke in his place, so we did lots of that as well. At some point we left to go to Nicole’s place in Greenwich Vil. While we there we drank the rest of our beer. At some point a big bottle of Percs came out and we all had one. Then me and James had two more. Then we got into some tequila that was left unattended. Then some other shit came out.
We went to the Beatrice at like ten to 4:00. I don’t know why they let us in. Half the time I couldn’t get into that place when I was on top of my shit, but this time I they let in the dude who couldn’t speak and had to lean on the wall to make it down the stairs. I drank beer out of anyone’s hand who walked too close to me for ten minutes, then we left. Some girl who I had been talking to earlier in the night pushed me into a cab and took me home with her. Somehow when we got to her place I had the wherewithal to open the passport on the desk while she was in the washroom and find out her name. I woke up beside a half opened Trojan with the girl poking my ribs.
“Get up. I have to go to school.”
“What? Isn’t it Saturday?”
“Get up.”
Later on I almost threw up wandering around the LES, trying to get my shit together to go ice skating in Central Park with my roommate’s best friend. Neither she nor the chick who took me home ever really talked to me again.
(Note: For some reason I feel like it was also the birthday of the girl I went home with. Either Nicole and that girl have the same birthday, or I’m confusing two nights. Or I’m wrong about the girls’s birthday. I may never know.)
2) 546 House, sometime in the spring of 2007
I have no ’story behind the story’ for this one. It was probably a nothing night and I probably forgot to eat and I probably drank most of the beer in the back room of one of my friends’ parties and maybe I went somewhere to drink after and maybe I didn’t. I was dating Maya, but I can’t remember if she was there with me or not, when I was out or when I woke up. The only thing I can remember about this day-I-can’t-remember is lying sideways, watching Apocalypse Now – ‘apocalyspe,’ again, because all I could think about was the end of everything, and I thought I was dying – watching Apocalypse Now, not being able to eat, or move, or even hold down a glass of water. I would drink as much water as I could (a couple little sips), take a little bite of a Portugeuse bun, lie back down sideways, watch Willard take a hit of whiskey, and go crawling back into the bathroom. It was pretty pathetic, really. I wish I could remember what happened the night before so I can never do it again.
1) North Vancouver, Late June, 2002
Graduation. I got ‘graduation-assed’ drunk. We had the ceremony, and then after the ceremony there was a party at a dude’s house. Really great, heritage house, big and drafty and smash-proof. Some moms and had made food for everyone and brought it to the party, but I was doing that thing then that I still do sometimes now where I get so excited to socialize that I can’t eat. Or, maybe, I get so excited to get drunk that I don’t want to put anything in my stomach that doesn’t help me get drunk. So I didn’t eat, and I was 18, and I had graduated and the world was my great big virgin-smelling oyster.
I threw up on the floor in the living room, sitting on a chair while a bunch of friends stood arond me talking. They got me outside and I threw up in the garden. They got me to bed and I threw up in a vase. A friend of mine came in and DRANK FROM THE VASE because I had so much nothing in my stomach that the beer still looked like beer. He didn’t even notice a change in taste. I fell asleep and woke up in the morning with a girl I had a ‘crush’ on just waking up beside me. I wished I could kiss her, but my puke was still in a vase on the dresser and I thought I might be a tough sell.
In the morning a bunch of us went to McDonald’s. I stayed in the car and hung my head out the window. On the way back, sitting in the back seat with McDonald’s smell wafting around, I threw up in a Supersize cup. Then I got dropped off at home. The next few hours were, thankfully, the only period of my life spent wrapped around a toilet, afriad to move and afraid to barf too loud and let my parents know their son is a total fucking trainwreck and should probably be in the hospital.
I guess because it was ‘Grad’ I usually tell that story in the tone of ‘glorious/heroic,’ like “Yeah, that’s a cool story dude, but let me tell you about the time I won at getting drunk after graduating from high school. I was the drunkest dude who ever graduated.”
Who am I kidding. I tell all these stories like that.
At the time, we thought it looked kind of like Rod Stewart’s haircut on the cover of his album Never A Dull Moment, which I had taped to the wall in my room. I think this was the first ‘expensive’/'razor blade’ haircut I ever had. Looking at it now, it seems pretty nondescript. There’s just some scraggly shit coming off the sides and it’s all preened up.
4) The “Nothing” Shag
I think I probably wore this haircut for the best part of the first half of the 00s. I would go into whatever barber shop and say “Just make it one length everywhere. Don’t even put the clippers on my neck,” and voila.
3) “Long Hair”
This was my first go at growing a nice, dirty mop. I am unapologetic about this picture.
2) “Short Hair Following Long Hair”
(I am willing to apologize for this photo.)
Successful in obtaining some cheap attention. The first time I did it for a girl. The second time I did it because I thought it would get me girls.
(Probably should have left it.)
1) “Longer Hair”
Does generally neglecting yr hair for two years count as a ’style’? Number one in honour of my commitment to decrepitude.
I can’t remember when I started using the Internet, and I don’t care to. I can’t really remember anything that happened to me before the Internet, except in weird clips that I file like youtube videos and slowly, eventually, forgot the tags for. I know there is a past there, but conjuring it is too difficult, and all I ever really recall is feeling uncomfortable in it. Sometimes I will catch a scent in the air, if I’m not smoking, and I’ll feel an honest-to-goodness emotion, and I will get lost for a second in it, and feel wonderful, and remember and forget everything I’ve ever known, all at once, and become pure once more. But then it will pass, and I will light a cigarette, put my head back down, and slouch forward through rain and the modern world.
Through my participation in the Internet all these years, I’ve come to realize that, in the weeks leading up the New Years Day, it’s important for every person with access to the World Wide Web to make and publish lists about things that they liked that happened in the public sphere since the January first previous. By making these lists, one is able to succinctly summarize their person in anywhere from five to 10 items, ordered. By ordering one’s tastes, publishing those tastes, observing the tastes of others, engaging in dialog with those others regarding the rightness or wrongness of those others’ various tastes, an individual as participant in the great democracy of the Internet is able to carve out for him or herself his or her own unique identity amongst the mulitudinous, multivaried, and multispectral human geography of Cyberspace.
Eventually, hopefully, and almost assuredly we, through the proliforation-of and our contiued participation-in the End of Year list-making ritual, can work towards manufacturing an Omega list – an aggregated, ordered, and inarguably comprehensive list of all things that mattered to us as human beings in the previous 365 days – to be published on the first of January every year. It is only when we have achieved the Omega compendium that we will truly and objectively be able to understand what it was that shaped not only us as individuals, but also the world in which we as individuals ate, slept, breathed, and browsed.
Though at this juncture the acquisition of the entirety of the vast swath of information necessary for the compiling of the Omega list seems a task unattainable, we must always keep in out minds the staggering rate at which Cyberspace has expanded over the course of our Internet lifetimes. Had I told you, even 20 months ago, that you would have an account on a social networking site called Twitter wherein you were allowed no more than 140 characters with which to communicate your most instantaneously profane thoughts, feelings, and observations, that they would be called “Tweets,” and that you would be one of the 2,297,009 people (as of 10:34 pm, December 1, 2009) ‘following’ the Tweets of Sean “Diddy” Coombs, would you have had any idea of what I was talking about, or the inclination to believe it was possible? When when one considers such ‘possibilities’ becoming such ‘realities,’ it should no longer seem so desirably benign to dismiss the possibility of the Omega Compendium as ‘unrealistic.’
But, of course, this WordPress blog-not-blog post is set in the current year, the year that is currently ending, 2009, in decline; a year in which no such ‘master list’ yet exists. And, also of course, with the ending of the year two thousand nine, we bear witness also to the end of the first decade of the “Aughties,” and a whole different and perhaps greater reason for which to compile lists of the things that we like and that have shaped us since that fateful when we woke up, turned on our computer, used our phone, swiped our credit card, and realized that the world had not gone into full digital meltdown while we worked on perfecting our hangovers. (Why did Y2K seem like so much fun while it lasted?)
Leading up to January 1st, 2010, I intend to every day make a ‘Top 5′ list of things that strike me as being important to me as the human being I have been, am, and am to become. Up until December 24, these lists will be primarily concerned with the decade that was. From there until New Years Eve Day the lists will be about the enrapturing, beguiling, and profligate year that is and was – 2009.
(I Googled “aughties” in ‘Images.’ Here are a few of them:
And yet, at the other end of the telescope through which I can see my own pygmy history projected, is always for me Chamberlain’s white face, its utter incomprehension a mere mask for ideal certainties and delusions, hanging above an obsolete billiard table, hungry for news in a world which has no news to offer. The summer went down at last in a hush of bows. That much is history. The rest, the winter for instance, is so much a part of us that we are unable to dissociate –to distinguish it from our other diseases. The empty stage on which we clown brilliantly under the audience of stars. A ballet of human beings rigid on our hooks, gently swaying, like frozen meat…
The wilderness is paradise enow. And in the great stallion’s face there are new markings, new “fields” of experience, which show that the struggle is beginning again. The verb “to fuck” has become synonymous with the verb “to be.” It is as if this act were the one assurance of existence remaining to us still…
From The Black Book by Lawrence Durell. Paris, 1938 (New York, 1960).
