Arizona Ten Years Ago

When you float, you feel the pull of gravity.

One morning on a walk, Richard said, “I was thinking about the time when you will be dotty and trip on rocks.” I said, “Why do you think I will be dotty before you?” Then I remembered I was four years older than him. The trail was rocky, and stones jutted up. Every trail in Arizona is rocky. Richard was thinking about the difference in our ages when I didn’t know he was thinking about the difference in our ages. I wondered what else he was thinking I would never know, and I didn’t care. I liked talking to him.

Once, I was briefly involved with a man who wouldn’t play tennis with me because he didn’t think I would be good enough. That wasn’t the reason we split up. He dumped me. From his point of view, in general I wasn’t good enough. Have you ever saved a piece a cake in the fridge and then, when you finally allowed yourself to eat it, the frosting had gone hard around the edges, and it tasted stale? It’s always time to leave Paradise. You can die of boredom in Paradise.  

After the walk, we went to Starbucks. In those days, most of the tables in any Starbucks were occupied by wedding planners and sad-eyed brides-to-be. Richard and I found a table and wrote in our notebooks. After we finished, I said, “I once sat next to Shari Lewis on a plane.” I could see myself in the window seat, and I could see Shari to my left, her hair a cloud of curl, like the clouds outside the window. She didn’t look much older than she had on TV when I’d watched her as a child. Shari and her sock puppet, Lamb Chop. Every child knew there was something wrong about a puppet named after a cut of its own meat.

Richard said, “Suzanne sat next to Shari Lewis on a plane. They had a long conversation and exchanged emails.” Suzanne was Richard’s ex-wife. I said, “Do you think I stole her memory?” I could see Shari’s foundation makeup caking in little creases around her eyes. I said, “Is it possible we both sat next to Shari Lewis on a plane?” Richard said, “No.” He said, “In language, you can steal things that can’t really be stolen.” I wasn’t sure what that meant.

On our way home, he said, “I’m a moody person.” He was reading a book about Byron, and he thought he shared something of the club-footed poet’s malcontent. I said, “Okay,” meaning yes! That night we had dinner with Quinn, the ex-wife of Richard’s best friend Paul. Quinn was in love with a man, who had traveled from Turkey to see her. The visit had left her feeling blue. Her hair was long. She was tall and slim, one of those women who looks like a girl until you notice a layer of life has settled on her.

At the restaurant, she said, “I need a therapist to get me over this guy. I buy my own plane tickets to see him. I wait in hotel rooms until he can get away. I met a brilliant man online, and I’m important to him. We text and Skype several times a day, but  where can it go? What am I doing?” I said, “You’re exciting yourself. You’re doing what we do to have a life.”

On the way home, Richard said, “I don’t understand what she’s after. She’s in love with a man who doesn’t love her back.” I said, “Desire fulfilled is desire destroyed.” He said, “Do you mean you need to be uncertain of a person in order to be hot for them?” I said, “I don’t know what I mean.” He said, “I don’t need that.” I said, “Okay, but Quinn doesn’t want to be 50 and alone in Arizona. She fears this frustrating affair is the best she’s going to get. When she looks back on her life, she wants the memory to go through her like an ax. What does anyone want to remember but the times we were out of control?” Richard said, “I don’t want to remember that.” I said, “You don’t have to.”

He had something in common with Jane Eyre. There’s a scene in the novel, where Rochester begs Jane to live with him as his wife, even though he’s still married to Bertha Mason, the mad woman living in his attic. Rochester says, “Who will care?” meaning Jane is an orphan. She’s wearing her wedding dress, having just learned of Bertha’s existence. Evenly she says, “I will care,” and you thrill at her self-possession, even though you have to ask yourself in real life has anyone ever make Jane’s choice?

I was driving the car. Richard was looking out the window at the resort hotels and strip malls we passed. He said, “You’re outside the lane.” I eased over to where he thought the car should be and didn’t mention the thing he does when I drive. I don’t mind it as much as a person should because it makes him seem crazier than me. He said, “I’m just trying to be helpful.” I laughed. He said, “Be careful.” I said, “Of what? You have to say, ‘Be careful of the rabbit’ or ‘Look out for the truck fishtailing on the left’. Otherwise I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

We drove past towering palms, some banded with tiny lights that made them look festive and displaced. Richard said, “Remember the scene in Lear when Gloucester is blind, and he thinks he’s on the edge of a cliff when, really, he’s only on a mound of sand? I often feel that way. I’m trying to feel the edge. I know I’m supposed to be generous, but often I offer too much and then I resent the person for it.” I said, “I don’t know where the edge is, either.”

The next day we walked in the desert again, and after a while I said, “I’m hungry.” Richard searched his bag and handed me a packet of nuts he’d been carrying around. He popped a few in his mouth and said, “These nuts are interesting.” I ate one and said, “These nuts are rancid.” He said, “Rancid is too strong a word.” I said, “Nuts get rancid. That’s what nuts do.”

We passed a saguaro that had dried in the shape of a human figure. Its arms were raised and its back was stooped. The mistakes I make with people are wasabi peas that burn my brain and I keep eating. The other mistakes are Bunsen burners that explode in the lab, the smoke clears, the money is in the wind, and I don't care. I said, “You could find someone younger than me.” He said, “I could, couldn’t I?” I said, “Do it soon. I’d rather have my heart broken now than later.” He said, “Why?”

La Piscine

Last night we watched La Piscine (1969), starring Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, and a gawky Jane Birkin as a teenaged visitor. The scene is rich people’s France. The gorgeous couple we see lounging in the sun, as if skin cancer is a good idea, are daytime vampires. The way you know you are in a world of sad empty is there are no books. No one reads anything.

The couple look good having sex because they have nothing else to do. There's a bored, rapturous vibe of European movies of the 1960s, a vibe à la Antonioni without the comic dash of Buñuel. I was thinking about Romy saying to herself, wow, I have to slither all over Alain Delon hour after hour, it’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it. Romy looks so good you could die.

If Alain is in a movie, he is going to be Tom Ripley. If someone gets killed, he will get it done with sudden-murder mistakes. We had a good time watching. Jane Birkin’s French accent sets a new standard of domage.

The fabulous house where the action takes place comes installed with Emilie, who cooks and carries around breakfast trays of coffee, bread, and jam. You remember those breakfasts, left outside your door in little hotels in Paris. You remember them even if you never stayed in one of those hotels. What is Emilie thinking about the vampires and their pretty ennui? She’s thinking what anyone who has ever carried a tray is thinking. She’s thinking what I’m thinking.

Alain Delon, b. 1935, d August 18 2024.

Michelle!

"We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth."—Michelle Obama

Oh baby, oh sister, you tell it. Verklempt.

Duke!

“No, this is not piano. This is dreaming.”—Duke Ellington

Biz

The other day, I was speaking with a hugely successful novelist who told me she has made money from only three of her many many books. The past couple of decades, literary writers have been paid by universities to teach creative writing to people with talent and many more people who pay thousands for a degree who knows why.

Two years ago, a friend suggested I start a Substack. He had started one and was making enough money to live on.

I could not imagine what a subscription model would offer a writer like me. I do not go through life expecting money or other markers of success.

This is the beginning of year three of "Everything is Personal." At the turn of each year, subscriptions end or people renew them. When people renew a subscription, it feels like love. That’s the only word I can think of.

It also feels something more important than my stack in particular. It means a new way for writers to live outside the academy. A new way of controlling the means of production. I have never been part of the academy.

The subscription model for writers like me—and there are a bunch of us on Substack—is another new life. A form of crowd sourcing on a rotation basis. Readers take a turn at supporting you. You have to hope you’ll attract new people to take their place in the churn. Will I?

Suspense is the best friend of every sentence.

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