still staring at the hexagons

It was a Wednesday. Mid-week. I am best, theoretically-speaking, mid-week. I have a couple of hours to kill, so I decide to do what I’d always done when I find that I need to kill time. I walk approximately 30 blocks down Madison Avenue toward 23rd street, stopping by a Starbucks here and there to end up at Madison Square Park. I sit on the bench. And stare at the hexagons on the ground.

It all sounds very easy.

I had done this a million times before. Different parks. Usually, it was Union Square Park. Yes, so I had done this a million times before… until it was second nature… but this is now. I hadn’t killed time in this manner in what seems like a million years.

And, I am buzzing.

Not drug-buzzing (though, there is a part of this that we will get to later). The natural internal buzzing. The inability to ‘just be…’, to blend in with what surrounds one and give way to time. That buzzing of years past. I’d include the poem here, but this author is too protective of random things that keep the world in place.

Anyway, that buzzing. The buzzing of indecision and uncertainty.

Somehow, I go with it. Sit on the bench… initially stare at the hexagons… look toward the hexagons almost for some semblance or answer or something. I think cerebral thoughts. I remember that I sort of cherished this sort of moment. My brain crazy with stories. Currently, though, I am blank. Just stare… blankly outward. And I wonder, god, what have I done?

Catastrophizing as your author does.

It isn’t a catastrophe, however. I take the uncomfortable-to-write-in moleskin notebook that is small enough to carry places out of my bag. I write, “so, I don’t know what the middle-ground is. Maybe there is no middle-ground”.

deep.

At this point, though shifting, I am still primarily in cerebral territory.

Yes, I acknowledge the buzzing. This misguided sort of energy. I also acknowledge the blankness in my head. Then, I think of the ADD drugs. The speed in a pill. And this is what I speak of when I say, “middleground”.

I, for the most part, in the broadest of definitions, finally got what I want… what I once thought that I need. …in a legal way that is regulated, even.

And now?

Now, I write, “I can’t do it without the drug… I can’t do it with the drug, either, maybe [as evidenced by today]. By “it”, I mean, “life”.”

Eventually though, I shift (or rather, my cerebral found some cerebral spinal fluid to float within), and as always, it is time that has determined everything. Time. Don’t misunderstand, I didn’t again become the bursting-at-the-seems, artist-writer, of years past. This would be impossible. I can never go back. And though, I could barely wrap my head around how it is I am how I am now or how this version of me has evolved from that one, I recognized the fact and had to light a candle for it’s death.

Metaphorically, speaking.

Kind of like when people die in dreams or whatever. The whole representation of a death of a part of one and the resulting opening of a door. It’s always sad.

But, I guess… “deal with it… because this is just how it is now.”

So, as I sit, wait, stare at the hexagons and increasingly become more a part of my surroundings; I wonder how I could possibly proceed from here.

This [post] would possibly be more interesting if it were more ‘multimedia’. And we do have something.* But… this is a writer’s post. And thus, you get words.

*update (04 Jul 2011): Okay, fine… at 23rd Street, we are a glutton for multimedia:

Just another parable from the folks at 23rd Street.

Limbo [aka growing up sucks]

You see, Limbo is a synthetic concept. That is, it is man-made.

Though, what concept isn’t man-made?

Not the point, I suppose.

The point? Limbo’s creation (as a word as well as a concept) seems like the product of pure desperation. It seems to have been created by someone that needed so badly to control time.

But, you see, though one may ‘feel in limbo’… in this non-place and non-time where no movement occurs… Time will always truck on… regardless of where one has decided that they are. One may have decided that certain non-action and the consequential non-movement (in the most denial-based naive of cases) places them in limbo.

but the thing is… though, as a psychological construct used to soothe the fear of one’s place in time, limbo works fantastically… this is all it is good for. Limbo cannot exist in other capacities because time and space are always constant in acceleration. And it is as much as what one doesn’t do as much as what one does. Time and space will always win.

You can’t stop it; you can’t control it. And you can’t blame anything on time and/or space. The only thing you can do is make a choice… any fuckin’ choice.

Because by not making a choice, you’ve made your choice. And doing that and ‘choosing’ to be in Limbo is for the coward. Or, more mildly, the timid and fearful.

Yes, now, we sound like Renton from “Trainspotting”. Choose life… or whatever.

This is not that.

No grand political statements here.

I’ve just realized. …this whole thing. This whole:

“23rd Street Chronicles: A Year and a Half in Limbo After a Decade Under the Influence“…

…well, it’s been well beyond a year and a half, at this point. And I tell myself that I am still in limbo. Limbo is a word that bounces about my vernacular way too often. And it’s not that I’m not in limbo. And it’s not also that I haven’t changed (drug-wise as well as generally evolutionarily-so)… but I could speed this shit up.

Your author here, is erroneously, trying just a bit to control time.

Stupid bitch.

And I’ve become something that I’ve never been. And reverberating in my head constantly is that quote from that movie, “the saddest thing in life is wasted talent”. And it occurs to me that as more time passes, the more sad it becomes.

Anyway, we are on this sound bite kick, so:

growing up does suck… but as much as one tries to stall, is still unavoidable.

the truth in the lie

“There comes a time when every kid peeks behind the curtain and sees she’s not the only one putting on a show. Fathers, mothers, cops and robbers… every member of the PTA, all playing dress-up… all in their masks: The constant Halloween. That first peek behind the curtain… the lifting of the mask, it’s a disorienting moment. The solid ground beneath you slips away to quicksand. Along with all you thought you knew. But you realize, as days and nights go by, that there’s a kind of truth in the lie… that the mask is often more revealing than the face that lies beneath… that because the person that you pretended to be (the mother, the father, the sister, the cop) became, somehow, the person that you are.” -In Plain Sight

It’s not that straight-forward… it’s not as discontinuous as a mask can provide. But it applies. I remember being obsessed with the notion that no one could ever really know any one else. …that no one could ever see all sides of another person and that the lens used to view would always have a neutral density subjective filter placed upon it. In fact, I wrote my first screenplay based on moments witnessed… pieces of the puzzle of who a person may or may not be. Put it together… figure it out. Or not.

I’m sure this isn’t a unique experience by any means, but at that time (and for years following), I felt the invincibility of my person. But more importantly, no obligation to “be something”. It is personal freedom to the highest caliber. Left with no burden to even exist at all. I can’t be sure why I felt so safe sticking needles with stimulants in my veins. But that’s not true, either. I guess that I believed nothing certain about myself except for my invincibility. My ability to, for lack of a better term, stand outside of all experience and observe. Rendering all of my actions, merely actions. Needles and coke and meth and ecstacy and dilaudid… anything, by this definition became things that couldn’t touch me because it was impossible.

And somehow, everyone else was so subjective that everything that they did affected them. They were fully-formed human beings with very strong views on character and people. …fully-formed human beings, unchangeable but affect-able.

And in this manner, as well, I was not a drug addict. I was a person that performed an action. Buying and doing drugs is the same as going to Rite Aid for eyeliner and walking across 23rd Street to work. Even, level… the same.

This is why I hold this time in such high regard. I created a way in which I could do anything. And I did. The error in this manner of thinking is that one is not invincible. And though it makes it completely possible to do everything and chalk it up to an “action”; though there may be no burden to exist or be something, every action will and does affect the person that you are. As under-developed it is or as much as one has created a mechanism wherein they can deny the existence of it at all. Everything affects one… you… something, because, like the rest of the human race, you are a person.

I didn’t think of myself a drug addict for a very long time. And then, I secretly (or not) reveled in the idea that I might be one. And then, I held onto the definition for dear life as one of the most important components of who I, as a person, am. Basically, I accepted a certain version of day-to-day reality. Age, evolution and the fact that to “be something” is now an obligation. And though it took that “decade under the influence” and longer, even… it feels more like a swift, half pirouette. Where my head has snapped, more quickly than the eye could detect, to a position exactly opposite of where it was half a second ago.

And though I’ve always been able to hide it well… I felt that I was internally, somehow (and inconsistent with everything I’ve said here) inherently, a drug user. Furthermore, I was a person… subject to all the personal consequences of action and experience.

And there you go.

Now what?

This is the grey zone. Because I was always a functional this or that and because I didn’t technically make a statement to the effect of “I’m not doing drugs anymore”… because I’m not in recovery… because I still drink; I felt things hadn’t changed enough. Fuck, who even knew that I was a heavy drug user to begin with to know that I stopped using drugs at all?

Furthermore, I didn’t make this decision.

In a way, you could say that my actions made the decision and I carried-out my actions. But, it’s not that simple. Even a month or so prior to this time, if my dealer had up-and-disappeared (as was the case), I would have gone scouring Los Angeles for meth. And I would have found some. I had, I believe 5 separate meth dealers as detailed in The Bus Ramblings… in Los Angeles in roughly 2 years. Only Frank in NY (and he wasn’t just meth… and that spanned atleast double the aforementioned time). But this time, in LA, I was just over it, somehow. But also, I can probably also attribute maybe 75% of the “just over it” to the quality of crap-ass meth that I was getting.

None of this matters, of course. And though I finally felt a pathetic-ness of being a drug addict, there was a HUGE-ass part of me that reveled in drug culture, drug experience, drug everything. I was just now aware of just how much I couldn’t talk about it. And without the drugs to make me forget about this whole thing, felt exceedingly stifled. And not only this… but because I had krazy-glued this notion of myself as a drug person into my fiber… I felt like a fraud; a liar. …and a bit digressively, empty.*

*to be addressed in a future post.

But this is where the quote comes in, one might see themselves as a definitive thing and thereby fraudulent by acting in seemingly unnatural ways… I suppose this would be the mask they speak of, but:

“…you realize, as days and nights go by, that there’s a kind of truth in the lie… that the mask is often more revealing than the face that lies beneath… that because the person that you pretended to be… became, somehow, the person that you are.”

It feels unbelievable… incorrect, even. But time… small increments of moments and then; the whole thing… I mean, if you stick around long enough… it sounds retarded, I know, but it starts to feel possible. …And sometimes, when one takes stock… if one’s privy to that sort of thing, one realizes that, in one’s own continuous manner, it’s been happening the whole time, maybe? Slowly; molasses-ass slowly, but happening none-the-less. I don’t fuckin’ know. I just know that I’m different now than when I started this whole thing (when I thought that I’d never really be able to do the adult thing; do the responsible-thing… I’m a great actor. I could pretend tremedously, but would also only ever be excited by what I really am: a drug addict)… I just know that it is possible to change while still remaining the same… if that makes any sense to anyone. And I do believe all of this rests on time… the passage of time.

pink elephants

save me

okay, so maybe addressing things that haven’t been addressed… in 100 or so, much-reluctant posts about things… about me… on a much-reluctant blog…

might

possibly be

helpful?

…yeah, I can drug-addict one to death. blah, blah fuckin’ blah.

but maybe…

…but maybe

…you know, it’s nothing. Those things that are more mundane. These things that I cannot WIN absolutely. …that I’m not so good at. that others could do with minimal effort and even more minimal care.

…these things that, at one stellar moment, I captured and, in turn, was. And these things that, in a naive thinking of immunity, I thought that I could never be. …but am to this day.

I’m sorry.

I’m really sorry. I thought that I would go there.

These things need to be said. Voiced. That’s what Americans do. They speak. And I’m the most  blue-class working artistic American…

and, again, I apologize that I even quote this, but:

from the most capitalistic american novelist that seems to have this need to work and work and work…

(and I’m, maybe 11, at best when I first read):

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them —  words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understaning what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

Yes.

I don’t speak about certain things.

…certain major things.

and I did think I could just do it right here. Right now.

But I can’t.

or I wont.

I don’t see them as major, maybe.

Maybe it’s “pride”… whatever that is.

Maybe I don’t comprehend the aforementioned’s stamp on me. Maybe I think it’s ‘whatever’.

… but it’s becoming more and more clear that it’s not “whatever”.

and it’s becoming more and more clear that the pink elephant… will soothe and comfort and save me… but it will never come to the forefront.

…I mean, it’s the pink elephant.

It doesn’t exist.

Powers of Ten

 

freaks me the fuck out

 

And here I thought that I was all about, “The Nines“.

…I mean, which I am.

But…

then, there’s this:

As a genera,l though very flexible, rule, even numbers freak me the fuck out.

They are round. Or rounder… ish. Than numbers are designed by their very function to be?…

To explain-ish:

Numbers are numbers. Cut and dry. Scientific. Angular and speedy. Efficient.

When said numbers take on a sort of continuously graduated silhouette (as many even numbers do) this sort of compartmentalized disconnect between angularity/efficiency and a degree of feral humanity collide in a way that… I’ll say it:

“does not compute”

Yeah, I can’t deal.

And this is the latest and greatest.

Waiting for the End

Image via Wikipedia

So… I like this song.

…I do this alot.

What is this?

Oh, yeah, you, the proverbial audience of one or two or most likely, zero, exist outside of my own thought process. I am so self-absorbed that I frequently ‘forget’ the wall between kiko-thought/conveyance of aforementioned thought (via speech, action or through any other physical manifestation) otherwise known as ‘communication’/reception of thought by 3rd party A (again the proverbial “you”) through 3rd party A’s particular schema of the moment.

words words words.

I believe this is what some people refer to as a stall. eh.

I like this song. I sit on a bucket seat in transit (forward-facing and fancy-free) and randomly hear this song. I’ve never heard this song before. I am on that other coast on an early-ish train to a Wall Street address (where the production company has set up shop) and continue my employment as a denizen of the world… albeit, artistically so.

My contacts stick to my eyes as per the ‘yuse’. I nod and and wake… again, as per the ‘yuse’. Production is killer, man. If I ever needed to remain awake for days at a time… this would be it. And, of course, no needles, no Frank meth… but that is another story.

So… KROQ FM. That west coast place… car culture‘s mecca. I miss it…. the station. I used radio as my version of time. And, at that point, I needed some version of time. Numbers and clocks freaked me out too much. Representations of numbers and clocks via radio-things… it could all work out…

flashforward… I am no longer in the west coast place. I miss the mask of time that I so lackadaisically though stringently relied on. But I can deal with time now… to a degree… I just miss the ‘mask’. I download this spotty shoddy radio “companion”… nobex… or something? and so, in blips that stop then start then flow…

I hear… CLICK>> waiting for the end <<CLICK.

I slowly dig.

really dig. bopping my head….

Then, I realize that it maybe… yes…

is it? can it be…

it totally is… linkin park.

Fuck it, I don’t care.

For all of their avril lavigne candy-chord-rape ‘o da masses, their mundane watery techno-esque-alterna-rock-ish fusion, that stupid little shit chester or whatever his name is… I like the song.

I like it.

Somehow, I’m obsessively listening to it.

…and it may be exactly because of this aforementioned “candy-chord-rape ‘o da masses/mundane crack-whore appeal to the most primal of feel-gooooood head bop shit” that I am.

But fuck it.

And so, the this that I do alot is become pre-obsessed with a song, film, etc. before I actually know what it is.

But now I think it’s a good thing.

I don’t fuckin’ care…

right now… before it becomes anything… before others can put some sort of cultural stamp on it, I’m saying that I like it.

the end.

its the risk that i take… biatch.

“I said no to drugs…

…but they wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Greg Giraldo is dead.

I’m not a comedian-person so much. I mean, I like funny stuff.

And this guy? I mean, what the fuck? I don’t particularly like him as an artist… not into his ‘style’ of comedy… don’t really feel the roast thing…

I just remember… and this was before everything (before drugs and even generally evident dysfunction… if you could even dig that… generally evident, though (like publicly)… I mean, first signs of disordered consumption manifested the day after I was born)… this one quote.

I think he was on Conan… when Conan was in New York and I was in New York. I thought it clever (the quote and all)… I remember being a very very… very sad bergoning writery individual.

And I thought it was clever.

I had no idea just how pertinently clever until years after, at which point I dismissed it as retarded. …and again, just something a comedian would say. clever, in timing and language but floating in the mire atop any material substance that it could have.

I kind of know nothing about him and I don’t care. And people die all the time. And they die of O.D.‘s all the time, all-the-more.

But I think we take these things with us somehow. I mean, if they hit us at the right time and all.

It was just some version of mild electric-fence-shock that happened when everything in my affect was serendipitously open just enough.

I mean, I don’t even care if he rests in peace (I mean, beyond the fact that I don’t have a concept for “rest in peace”). Like, if I did, I wouldn’t care… if he did.

Just thought that I’d mention it.

• Greg Giraldo, Insult-Humor Comic, Dies at 44 (nytimes.com)
• Comedian and Just for Laughs fest regular Greg Giraldo dies of overdose (timeoutny.com)

On being Sane in Insane Places

The Rosenhan Study

Related Articles

• The Rosenhan experiment examined (frontierpsychiatrist.co.uk)

a stranger in strange times…

aka ‘the text, the livingroom on ludlow & the homeless-penn-station-shuffle’.

14 Aug 2010
A Stranger in Strange Times: This is what I am.

To begin:

Late in the week: My friend E texts me…. doesn’t know where I am. Nobody really knows where I am these days. This is not metaphorical, mind you. There are literally a handful of people that actually know my physical location. And this, simply because I’d neglected to mention the fact. Where ever I may be, the aforementioned text also says that, where ever I am, he would be in both of the potential places that I would be, at certain times and invites me to 2 separate soirees in two separate cities on two separate coasts… you guessed it, approximately two weeks apart.

1. That Saturday (three days?), he will be downtown at the Living Room on Ludlow playing with his band.
2. The aforementioned some later time, he will be in that opposite coast place, at his apartment/duplexy home, co-hosting a barbecue.

In keeping with the adult theme (not like dirty adult… just like actual ‘taking responsibility for your person and your actions and thinking beyond the next 2 seconds-adult), I want to be where the barbecue is. I want to go to the semi-domestic-type barbecue that I’ve been invited to with his girlfriend and young-adult chatter. I want to pretend, again, that I already am something that I’m, currently, half-commited to be. I really really really kind of want this.

Alas, I am 0 for 1. I am not in that opposite coast place now; far away only in space… but space counts, I suppose as much as time as far as practicality goes. So…

Going back to number 1, I will be downtown and available to see a friend on Ludlow Street on that Saturday. No substitute for the adult-soaked Mid-Wilshire barbecue and/or a growing semblance of evolution, but as good as I can get at this point? Sooooo, I go.

Annnndddd…. ACTION!

It’s really not like that, however. I decided to tell E where I was and actually go and not just surprisingly show up somewhere a la kiko of years past because I was rockin’ the adult thing. And because I thought that I may be able to transcend location (space, whatever). With my friend E, I feel that I had started this sort of thing. Respect and general relatively mundane adult behaviour. …I say ‘relatively’ mundane …to syringes and speed and benders that went on for days. In any event, I kind of really didn’t have any sort of business going at all, what with my no-money and no-job and no-actual anything and all. I went because it seemed like an adult thing to do. Or atleast, it resembled the closest thing that I could grasp as adult. Sooooo….

Subway downtown.

And this is where “action” should really be called.

For routine’s sake, I suppose… subway downtown, wine in a Coke cup with a straw. Didn’t need to get my drink-on… just thought: It’s wine in a cup with a straw. It’s also around 9:30pm and I’m completely sober… these things somehow = ‘this behaviour is okay, makes sense and therefore, I don’t really have to think about what I’m doing, ergo… learn and adjust potential behaviour’. Really, it’s embedded routine and a taste of autonomy vs. chill the fuck out (this is not five years ago, you’re not going to W 4th to see the guys play The Bitter End, you don’t care about being fleetingly fun and cute and… whatever).

Anyway, in the end, as traced from the beginning “fleetingly fun and cute and whatever” wins out… routine, man… it’s fuckin’ routine, man. And now, I can’t say that I don’t know how it happened, all wide-eyed because I’ve just told you.

*The rest is mostly written LIVE-like on a blackberry wordpad as I progressively get drunk. (that’s why it reads like I’m on crack)

Later…
I walk up the stairs from the subway… somewhere downtown. …somewhere downtown east, even. hmm… Disoriented (as exiting any subway station, for anyone… even the most embedded of denizens of this city are), I am ‘between’… among, a sea of others. …must ….manage ….energy of ‘winning the stairs’.  Must go up as fast as humanly possible. However, vertically, horizontally, everything-ly, I am between… among and possibly burdened by the external. …however, it’s not a burden; it’s a sea of people that move. One adjusts their speed or pace and ‘winning the stairs’ in one’s real-time, becomes, a concept though so singularly focused, comfortably adjustable here-and-there. In that way, I might, leg-half-lift’d, wait a millisecond more for the person in front of me that might also wait for the person in front of them in the same manner as I  (or conversely struggle just a bit with the pace). But the sea of people move but we all adjust and somehow become one. But somehow, we all remain intensely individual.

So now, I slo-mo clop up the stairs in the intensely individual pseudo-socialistic adjustment bureau that I find myself in. It smells like NY… late summer. This is comforting. This is something familiar; something familiar that strikes one over the head like an all-engulfing mallet (smashing an entire hemisphere of one’s brain to absolute minutiae) with no effort on the part of any party on any side of this ill-conceived metaphor/simile.

I stare, though. A wide-eyed stare that I once rocked as ‘my thing’. …a million years ago. Similar-to anyway. …the stare. Familiar again in a displaced manner; a displaced tone. The same low energy. This low-energy concerns me, however. I know its not the same… Its not as naïve and sweet and pure.

I may have depleted all of my dopamine or actually, it seems, serotonin receptors yesterday…. at T‘s place. I forget that I’m not the severe, ritualistic alcoholic that I was just a few months ago… Physically. And physically, I handle it in the way that only a novice/born-again-whatever can.

Everything is up for grabs now. This is grand without saying. But the ritualistic and unfamiliar just catches one sometimes… Off-guard and all. …when they are presented in such a stringent and spontaneous-like manner. I’ve spun so many things in so many directions too many times, most likely. And now, when I can ‘check myself’ for a second… Even the most familiar is based on this spin. The familiarity is incongruent, discontinuous, piecey… and dizzying as a result.

And I know enough to know better (atleast I’d like to think so), but its still a jarring prospect that nothing can remain the same.

Drinkdrinkdrink… watch the band. Hug people. Say hello to others. drinkdrinkdrink. Say hi to E, talk as much as we can above the music; but there is something going on. Something that doesn’t involve me, probably. I sense this, so I go… (he tells me that he is kind of offended, though, that I hadn’t mentioned the whole picking up and definitively moving to the other coast)

Even later…
And so, some cute-kiko version of the beast has been unleashed… Moremoremore. And walking on ludow, I need to focus on getting to the F or something. I am not hungry… But I needneedneed, somehow now. And need equals hunger? Then… Katz’s… Yeah-yah! I don’t but I do… Want roast beefish things inbetween bread… Even though I actuaLly can’t fathom chewing and esophageal southward movement of ‘stuff’ to eventually fester in my stomach. Then food pregnancy. But for some reason… I want for anything. More alcohol; consumption of food…. Something… Moremoremore… Something, please. I go in… it’s all confusing… and really all I really want is more drink.

This is not drink. And so, finally, I end up at the Egyptian boy.

Oh, I hadn’t mentioned the Egyptian boy? There is an egyptian guy. Or boy. I am again in penn station and again, I am confronted with time. Slow… Fast… Passage, time. What-the-fuck-ever. The egyptian boy works the place that sells the french fries (grave fuckin yard style… the working of the boy; not the style of the fries). I see this as I pass (off of the uptown a,c,e… Whatever) I am as drunk as my body can accept (abnormally… Incongruently)… I am also poor as fuck.

The rest of the night/day goes:
1. sleeping in the transitional place between penn station, nj transit and armtrack? or whatever that other thing is.
2. major headache hungover, can’t deal.
3. sitting miserably downstairs against a penn pole
4. weird child molester-looking guy talks to me. he is not a child molester… but I feel that he is autistic. I say this multiple times. He says that he is in sports. Um-hmm, sports. He rarely speaks, but when something is awesome to him, he prefers the term “fantastic”.

I don’t fuck him or anything. I mean, this is all just too mundane. and, yes, Leon, I am a stranger in a strange land… in strange-ass times.

Exactly one week ago today, she was a different person.

Exactly one week ago today, she was a different person.

This is a lie.

Exactly one week ago today, she supposes that she was a very similar person to the person she may have been a week before that moment and/or today. It had seemed like she may have been a different person as she sat suspended in time and space and novelty and permanence because she sat, or floated rather, within time and space and novelty and permanence. You know, the whole DeLilloan, “when there is enough out-of-placeness in the world, nothing is out of place”.

The surroundings had changed in ways that it was too hard to make sense of. But that was what was grand. Life-changing. This is what made her feel like a different version of herself. A version that may have resembled the version of herself “before”. This “before” version that all future versions of herself would be somehow compared to.

There was a bit of that comfort. …though she wasn’t really this “before” version nor was she really that different. Probably.