Memory of an Imagined Dinner Party

I am on the corner of Prince and Mott when I call Roberto Bolano. They have set up a market in front of me and people are trying on hats, stepping back to admire themselves in a mirror propped against the church wall.

He answers just as I think the line will cut off. Roberto, I say, It's Tom. Ok he says. What time is it, I ask. 1973 he says. Listen I'm having a party, I'd love you to be there. Give me the where and when he says. Le Dome cafe in Paris I say, 1931. I hear him flicking through the pages of a diary. Ok but I'm bringing Mario. His voice clicks to silence.

I hadn't expected Mario, but I think it will be ok. I try to map out a quick seating plan. I'll head the table, and then clockwise from me: Roberto Bolano, Mario Santiago, Vsevolod Garshin, Henry Miller, and Arthur Rimbaud. We'll have to push a couple of tables together.

I arrive a little early, around December 1930 and making myself comfy at a table near the entrance, order a glass of Stella.

Garshin is the first to arrive. I see him trudging slowly toward the cafe, his hands behind his back, his eyes scouring the pavement. I wave him over and he turns to look behind as if I must want someone else. He joins me and orders a vodka. We sit in silence a while. I start the conversation badly. I explain that I've only read one or two of his stories but that I love his portrait at the MET. That's not my work he says, if you wanted to discuss art you should have invited Repin. I nod thoughtfully. An awkward silence falls. Miller arrives just in time to break it. He stumbles over a table close to us, sending it's contents flying into the street. Are you drunk? Garshin asks, but I see his eyes are alight. No, no says Miller gesturing apologetically to a waiter, well yes but only on air, on water don't you know. I can get drunk on water alone. Watch this. He takes a glass from a neighboring table, downs it in one and promptly falls to the floor.

Poetry is being shouted from somewhere. We look up. Poetry in Spanish. I see a man stood on a chair at the far end of the terrace. Long unwashed hair, arms waving. Bolano I call. Bolano, Garshin echoes. The young Chilean poet leaps from the chair and slouches towards us. Santiago is close behind. We shake hands and take our seats. Where's Rimbaud? Miller asks. I was keen to see him don't you know. He's late. We decide to order without him. Garshin and I choose fish, Miller picks out a steak dish. Bolano orders a bottle of whiskey. Miller, not to be outdone, orders a pitcher of tap water.

The meal begins well. We make small talk, we toast each other. We edge toward dessert and Rimbaud still doesn't show. It's a shame says Bolano, I'd have liked to have seen him. You should have invited Wilde Mario says shaking his head. Someone decides to call him. I have his number here somewhere says Miller rummaging through his jacket pockets. Santiago becomes very animated at this. Call him! Miller hands me a piece of paper with a number scrawled across it and I go inside to make the call.

It rings twice before a very thin and weary voice answers. Oscar? I whisper. Yes dear boy. I'm so sorry, is it late? He sighs. Yes I'm afraid so, at least 1897. I'll be stuck in this frightful place a while, there's simply no way for me to join you. I wish him well and hang up, a little sad at the news. When I return to the terrace all hell has broken loose. Gogol's Nose, out for a stroll along the Avenue de la Bourdonnais, spotted Garshin and has now joined us. The two have ordered a bottle of Vodka and are proceeding to dismiss Bolano and Santiago as frauds. What do you know about art? I hear Bolano scream, magic realism is the fraud, this nose is the fake. The nose seems offended. He explains that he is not the nose from the story but Gogol's actual nose, out to catch the air and relax a little. Therefore I'm real he yells. Where's the magic in that? Santiago upturns the table and the two South American poets disappear into the night. Miller is laughing. Garshin excuses himself and goes inside. Gogol's nose shrugs. I ask for the check. Miller overhears and says, give me two minutes, I must take a leak don't you know. After twenty minutes I decide they're not coming back. The nose agrees. I ask him if he has any money on him. He pretends to search his pockets. Well er, I really only had two shots of vodka, we're not splitting the bill equally are we? It hardly seems fair. I tell him to forget it. He tips his hat and hurries back out onto the street.

The following evening I receive a call from Rimbaud. Where the bloody hell are you? He says. Where am I? The Dinner was yesterday Arthur. What? Didn't we say Thursday evening? No Arthur, we said Wednesday. Oh for Christ sake. The line goes dead.

The Flood of the Mountain

The glass pane shudders in the wooden frame as the ripples of a sound wave hit the windows. The explosion in the clouds closely above speeds through the air. Thunder for the human soul that is shaken in the blast. The clouds are so thick and dark that I do not see the flash of lightning that announces it. I humbly shiver, my head pivoting on the thin needle of the vertebra, is shaken, my shoulders cramp toward my ears. Inferior is the brain here. Hail is released from the same clouds that are fog, that are air, that are rain, that are wind, the gods icy breath. The rain rattles the earth, the concrete ceiling of my house, the walls are drenched with water seeping through the invisible cracks, saturating the walls, within minutes water penetrates the cement. The light bulbs flicker, then, they too, give way. The hail stones hit the ground so fast, they jump up capriciously in unpredictable direction, hit the glass, hit the stone, while the rain, still, pouring, flooding. The houses of the village are gone, the sea and the horizon have disappeared, all absorbed, gorged by the hellish bright fog of the heavens flood. The mountain is washed from the earth canvas. Three nights and three days, every hour seem to last. I offer an incense of strawberry wood and olive branches, kindle the flames of the fire that stirred quietly before me. My only solace, my single hope, rose into the damp atmosphere of the chimney. On the crown of the mountain, it is not the sea that I fear, it is the heaven, broken open above, the sky of the mountain Ziggurat.

Cityscape 1: New York

1.

A Hush of wind.

Birdsong dying away, then rising again to answer distant crying horns.

The whine of brakes or the sigh of an unseen animal.

2.

A group of men stand outside the Catholic Worker on East 1st Street. Smiling, one singles out another, "Don't talk to this man. He's a lowlife." The men laugh and punch each other playfully. "This man's a lowlife son." The repeated joke causes silence. Was it a joke? I pass through as they search each other's eyes for an answer.

3.



"Where are the cafes with only three small tables, and tottering chairs? This is Gulliver's country. But I, who love human scale, small objects, small intimate cities, small trains, small cars, small restaurants, small concert halls, do not respond to giant scales."
Diary of Anais Nin, Volume 3, p. 12. Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

4.

A sign at the Bowery Poetry Club reads:

'Rob's Word Store: Letters 50 Cents, Words 1 Dollar.'

5.

A street called 'Extra Place', once the service entrance to CBGB's. New apartment buildings tower on either side. Construction workers noisily remove the sidewalk close by, sending plooms of dust into the air. A small hand written note taped to a window directs people to a bespoke chocolate store, three doors down the alley.

Life Re-Created

Synthetic Genome Brings New Life to Bacterium

I have no father. I have no mother. But I am not an orphan. Technically speaking, my mother is a petri dish and cow, my genetic parent is a computer program at Vita Novis. Practically, my father is a lawyer and my mother a pediatric. I grew up with the people who ordered me, in a family like any other, and received all the love a child is supposed to. My classmates behave awfully immature and call me names. I cannot really blame them, they are only biologically human, some not only are mentally mediocre as a result of their innate dispositions, but suffer from horrible genetic diseases and shortcomings. I can only imagine the torment from such traditional state. Their parents must haves been awfully narcissistic and selfish, to want to pass all the flaws and mutations of their seed on to their children.

Rivers of the Underground: Acheron

I crossed the river of pain. Some say it heals, for only when one passes Acheron, will one no longer fear the flesh of the body. Tightly clenched in my fist, I still hold the coin. This is the realm of the spirit, where I hold angels dear. For many this is the realm of death, where they feel nothing anymore, know nothing. This is a time to greet, for joy, for welcome. The water is a stream that nourishes the dead who only sense emptiness, they, Lazarus, pray like baboons. But I fear not, no need to fall on my knees. I do not shiver, but frivol. Those who think of death as life, those who fear, they pay a price when they cross, they cannot return. But to me, death is in life, with the spirit in which I joy resurrected.

The Diaries of Arnon Grunberg

“If you don’t love me, it is better that you hate me,” Arnon rebuffed.
“Don’t you care about what people think of you?”
“Of course, I do, I would prefer them to love me, follow me like docile sheep and perform my wishes. But if I am not worth all, I am worth nothing. I am not interested to compromise myself for a little bit of love.”

“Have you ever loved?”
“I have loved, I love and I tried to love at length.”
“Than are you saturated to care so little?”
“Insatiable rather, drops of water don’t matter in an empty ocean.”

“You see happiness is a pitiable state.”
“But more so is sorrow.”
“No, no, there is happiness in sorrow,” Arnon smiled contently, thinking of such bitter joy.
“Maybe you did not try enough.”
“It seems now I failed.”

The Diaries of Arnon Grunberg (9)

“Hey Arnon, what are you reading this time?”
She asked it with such kind sincerity, that he knew he was going to finish the book this time.

He was, he thought at least, now present here for almost five years, a lustrum, time for celebration, but more so for reflection perhaps. He was however, to say the least, as well uncertain of his time and place that he filled in it. The question of the meaning of being, his very presence, and here especially, of all places, was in question itself, not only by him self, yet until recently very much not certain to be answered. The ontology of being, that was certainly the question.

Sure, sure, there were more practical concerns, but certainly none more urgent. Like there was the question what to eat tonight, how the weekend had been, how he was doing, if he would like anything with my coffee, what was up, what the weather was going to be today and what to wear, etcetera, atcetera. All deeply relevant, sure, but honestly my friends, all trivial, no need to beat around the bush. For all we know, the only knowledge that is not in doubt it the question of being. The essence of our being is first and foremost, a question of being itself, a quest for the ontic value of our presence.

Today was a beautiful day, the winter had appeared to have been thrusted from the stage a few times already, but each time it had turned with a vengeful and moist, eastern wind on us again. More than once this temporary jostle with spring had caused Arnon to suffer from another sinus infection that left a weary sore lingering around in his head. Nature too was not accustomed to the inconsistent temperatures, and many winterdays choked the budding blossoms to fall off. But today, spring had finally revealed itself. Arnon wore a hundred percent wool and laine pair of trousers by Club Monaco, one he recently had bought at Broadway, a withered black t-shirt with a facial silhouette of Putin above the text ‘vshyo putyom,’ meaning ‘we go together’ and navy blue asics tiger sneakers, which he mainly loved for their cheap simplicity. He had gone into town around eight in the morning, ordering a large, black coffee with two sugars, no bag. He was doing fine just like the Bangladeshi coffee vendor, although a little out of breath from running up the stairs, which quite right, was normal with the subway laying so deep here, but since he looked quite young still, and the Bangladeshi vendor worked hard however, they were both going to have a nice day.

He had started reading Heigegger’s Sein und Zeit, mainly because his life had gotten clogged with trite encounters, like life does. He had become unable to resist a boredom so existential that it had to be real and his only escape was a complete abstraction from reality, he was past the simple remedy of a Cartesian doubt, of a shallow negation of the facts, he would have to grasp deep into the muddy pool of thought this time. But the pool was muddy indeed, and he only understood half of what my eyes were absorbing, being easily distracted. The first fifty pages were going to be like this, he realized this, starting in an estranging language again, even though the language of his far forefathers, and having to repolish his presence to his German self. But here lies too the answer to both the ontological question for the meaning of being and the ontic pendant of boredom that dominated Arnon’s being. He was not present here, but could only imagine he was.

The Diaries of Arnon Grunberg (8)

Arnon walked south on LaFayette street toward one of his favorite bars in downtown Manhattan, called Kremlin. The bar was located in the basement of a brown-stone house, its entrance bolstered by an iron-clad entrance with at the top of the staircase leading down, a red lantern with Cyrillic fonts reading kremlin. Here Arnon would sit down at the bar on one of the stools near the wall and he would have Randy the bartender shake him a random, sweet cocktail.

For Arnon it was the ideal location to read and ponder in the late afternoon transgressing into the early evening. Sometimes, he would get hungry and order some tapas, sometimes he drank his hunger surge away with a Bloody Mary. The bar was ideal to spot the crowd for the archetype New Yorker of his age, without portraying the abnoxious, overweight 30-year old ignorant male, which he had no interest for. True, that obnoxious, ignorant yet conceited male made up half the population of Manhattan, but they were not the average New Yorkers. This conceited pig was perhaps imported from New Jersey or had floated to the surface from another location out of New York where it was easy to believe you mattered, a taste of the city they would allow you not.

At the Kremlin the average, modest youth came to enjoy the air, like a climber who sits down on a rock just below the top and resuscitate from the climb. The place had an air of mediocracy, but an uplifted mediocracy, of a height reached not by a long climb or by one’s own merit, but reached by haven taken the ski-lift to half-way and enjoying the view. From such a view the wideness of the horizon is deceiving but real and it was this view of the viewers that Arnon enjoyed.

In a way the Kremlin bar was like a modern setting for Mann’s sanatorium in the Magic Mountain. Here too the exhaustive conditions of the working day and the reposes found cause the New Yorkers to develop a chronic illness of whom none know the true nature except that we all find the treatment extremely pleasant leading us to believe that the illness therefore must be really there. We cannot fight this disease, because it is intertwined in our system and we are helpless against it. Thus, Arnon ordered another cocktail.

The Diaries of Arnon Grunberg (7)

A black man, in a faded black t-shirt and black jeans, shuffles toward me as I walk along the pavement. In his right he holds a makeshift carton box, folded in such a way, that the top covers his chest. His face prostrates behind the top of the carton. The top of his head is bald, the sides trimmed short, but long enough to look fuzzy-wuzzy.

As I approach him, I see him mumbling something, but with such an attempted kind voice, that he speaks too softly for me to hear what he’s saying from the five meters distance from which we still stand. I approach him swiftly.

“Excuse me?” with the typical willingness of the white man’s voice when he speaks to a poor black man, a tone too friendly to be real, but friendly enough to cover the historic guilt with which each white man is loaded without any personal wrong doing. The black man undoubtfully is aware of this overweight he holds, certainly, the man in front of me is.

His left hand slides up toward his throat’s Adam’s apple, and as if trying to grasp it, his fingers and thumb form a stiff grip. He waives his grip gently along his throat, bends his head slightly sidewards, like a dog begging, and repeats his murmur.

Standing beside him, I now see two large slices of pizza laying on the folded carton in his right hand.

“Sir, could you spare a dollar for a soda, my throat is so dry,” he begs while his left hand gesticulates still up and down along his throat.

I apologize, but I am unsure if I apologize for not wanting to help him, or if I seek an excuse to mankind for the type of beggar his character has become. I remember the other black males who beg in my neighborhood. They cultivate a culture of poverty because they are compelled to. They see a white person and their whole body shakes and their veins are filled with adrenaline to ask for a quarter, unable to resist until their breath and mouth forms those words of relief that sooths their minds. Only then are they calm again.

The black man in the wheelchair near the phone booth at Court Street. He has no special need to beg, it is just an extra income he generates. He sits and talks to his buddies, and careless of the passers-by he shakes his paper cup with some pocket money to rattle the passers’ attention. Or like the fat black man sitting near the Duane Reader on the brick wall, when the sun shines, he sits and enjoys the beams of light, and as he strikes a friendly eye, his compulsion to ask for a free quarter takes a hold of him. Or like the slender moustached black standing at the Citi bank’s entrance.

This is what they have become to regard as work. They get up in the morning, have a donut, a coffee and go to work. And like others, they get dressed for the occasion, they say goodbey to their wives, and there they stand. One works the corner of Court and Montague Street, the other holds office at the Citi bank, another is off to meet his buddies at the next corner, and while his buddies sell out-of-sale books, umbrellas, or sun-glasses, they shake their paper-cup. There is no lack of pride, no lost self-esteem, no dependency, this is how they make money.

And truely, who bends deeper for a buck? The white man locked up in his 3 by 4 cubicle, chained by a mortgage and the demands of a middle-class life, or the poor black man, who needs to answer no boss’ call than his inner compulsion to beg and hustle for every free quarter, and whose presence is disturbed by none, but the guilty eyes of the bourgeois sensitivity?

The diaries of Arnon Grunberg (6)

With half an eye Arnon was keeping a close watch on the man who stood in front of the front exit of the subway car. Shortly before 14th Street, the Hispanic man, dressed in black polished shoes with wide noses and a black woollen coat that reached down to his knees, moved toward the exit doors. Arnon knew he had to occupy the spot now if he wanted to prevent himself from causing a stir to his own embarrassment in the halfly full train. As soon as the train had halted he moved without delay toward the doors and grapped to the supports on both sides above his head, slightly spreading his legs apart to steady himself.

But as soon as the train started moving again, shaking left and right, Arnon’s stomach turned unstoppable in every direction, causing a strong pulse upward, outward, thumping in his stomach. His head was dizzy and though his eyes and thoughts were clear, his thoughts were absent from registering anything beyond the sickness that controlled his body, and as his sickness grew graver, his thoughts propelled around the abominate anchor that his stomach was.

“Try and hold out until Fulton Street, suck it up, for two more minutes, not even perhaps.”

But halfway Arnon realized that he would not be able to fight the dominance of his physical condition with the theoretical powers of his thoughts. Cold sweat stood thickly on his forehead, he must look pale as the moon, Arnon thought, but people were either simply indifferent or ignoring his suffering owing to their rudimentary unfitness. Arnon threw their indifference straight back at them.

“This is a dog eat dog world, even if my stomach can’t chew on it today.”

The silverly aluminum with the fluorescent light flikkering, swang to the left and right, the iron parts grinded along the tracks closer to Fulton Street but still too far. Arnon turned slowly around, sensing with the absolute conviction of a seer the sure prediction of his intestines. It was as it was written and his actions were merely reading outloud his predestined fate.

Slowly he opened the car doors, bend his upper body forward, grasping the right outersupport with his right hand, then slowly the left handle, and not even two seconds afterward a powerful beam of yellow brownish fluid gulped out. The noise of the wheels squeezing forcefully over the tracks, pushing forward hundreds of people tens of meters below surface, past trash, rats and darkness, overwhelmed all other perception.

Arnon hang crucified between the two outerdoor handles between the seventh and eight car of the train, the tracks raced rapidly below him passing his eyes barely. Again a new pulse of vomit freed itself and splashed out over the pitch black darkness below.

Finally, it stopped, the train slowed down and Arnon wiped his mouth with a paper handkerchief. As the train came to a stop, he slowly turned around, in control of himself, returning absently the woken stares of compassion that were unable to break through their unfit masks. As he rushed through the opened doors, he felt his cold head turn colder as a fit of sweat burst out on his stirn. He reached for the wooden bench, sat down and bend forward, breathing slowly, recapturing his consciousness.