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April 1, 2000
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spring rain Woke up thinking of dog walking. But it was raining. The New York Times got soaked. Oh, well...I can always read yesterday's or the day before or this pile of old Living Arts and Weekend sections. We decide to see a movie. Forrest wants to see "Boiler Room." We are baffled by times on the online feature time display that indicate lots of movies at times like 12:50 AM. Lots of midnight shows? Nope...they mean afternoon. We start at Barnes and Noble in the Arboretum. I almost buy a couple of bargain books of quotations and some bargain audio tapes. And a magazine. I talk myself out of all of them, but succumb to a Map Easy of Lower Manhattan and a Streetwise Manhattan. Exactly how many maps do I need for one trip? A bunch, apparently. We dine at Edge City on salads and look but don't buy at Restoration Hardware which is newly opened in the Arboretum. They have some pretty cool things. Tonight we went to see Spalding Gray doing "Morning, Noon and Night." It occurred to me that Spalding is a diarist, a funny one, one who gets paid to do his diary out loud. The audience seemed to like him. Remarkably, we saw only one person we know. One. That is a record. Do you think the people who like Spalding don't run in our circles? This piece is about Spalding's life with family, a new phase for him. His first son, born out of wedlock while he was married to someone else, is named Forrest. The kid is either amazingly clever or, more likely, Spalding takes some liberties with their conversations. My problem with fiction (or my journal for that matter) is one of truth. In spite of my paraphrasing disease ("Warning: what is represented as actual conversation here is most likely paraphrase. I can't remember exactly!") I try to tell things like they happened. From my viewpoint anyway. I know the truth is gray, but it still matters to me. When I've tried to write fiction, I would start agonizing over the most amazing small details which, if not true, would torment me as not being even possible. I have a confession to make. I've tried to get over this addiction, but it still tortures me. I believe in office supplies, storage solutions, containers, shelves, bags, etc. I think that things which hold things can cure my disorganization, make my life beautiful. I'm a sucker for boxes, files, acid-free envelopes, notebooks, folders, bags of every description, special shelves. Can owning something new be bad if it holds something else? The office supply store is a glut of temptation. Ditto e-bags and catalogs for places that sell storage 'solutions' and archival photo supplies. I know in my heart that stuff to hold stuff is, for all the convenience, just more stuff. There is a chain of stores called Container Store. We have one here. This place is ground zero for my addiction. For all that, do I have everything organized into containers and bags, all loose ends tied up? Quite the contrary. I never quite get finished arranging the stuff in the storage. Bits are everywhere. Because it requires a system. Labels, files and storage systems are all fine as long as you decide what goes where and put it there, consistently. There's the rub. The good news is that I constantly find the most surprising things in the most surprising places. I don't like April Fool's jokes. It gets back to the truth thing. I like the truth even though I know it doesn't exist. Or a paraphrase of the truth. |
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"April is the
cruelest month, breeding T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland |
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rose in the rain
miscellaneous stuff |
