Notes On Another New Life #15

Love Life

May 09, 2024

We bought our house cheap before Covid from people we affectionately slandered as “serial killers.” The dirt and disrepair they left behind gave off a Unabomber vibe. Dirt, I thought, dirt I can clean. Thus began our Covid project on the inside of the house and the grounds.

Now, it’s time to strip off the vinyl siding and upgrade the face of the house. The other day we met with a contractor at the big Williams in Rhinebeck, a man with experience tearing things down and building them back up. A man we liked, who kept saying this material and that material would last us thirty years.

My mother, when her heart valves were clogged like tubes full of toothpaste, had to sign a form consenting to emergency bi-pass surgery. She said, “What would you do in my place?” I said, “I would want to live.” She said, “What’s so great about living?” I said, “The story.” She said, “What is the story?” I said, “I’m looking in your eyes. A bird is sitting on a tree outside your window. A child is laughing on the street below, and we are having a conversation. That is the story.” She said, “How come you suddenly care if I live or die?” I said, “One of the mysteries of blood.”

When the contractor said the materials would last thirty years, I imagined Richard at 103 and me at 107. It was easy. Why would anything change? In thirty years, it would be time to paint the siding again and apply more sealer to the deck. No big deal. When you don’t have children, your life is Los Angeles, meaning the weather is always the same. Children remind you of your place on the ladder. You look at the body of your daughter or your son, and it’s the saddest mirror imaginable of the person you no longer are. For Richard and me, there are no seasons, turn, turn, turn. Anyway, the lyrics of that song, except for six words, come directly from the Book of Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 in the Old Testament. Are you going to take seriously the wisdom of something written in the Bible?

Richard and I used to watch a show called The Good Place. The characters are either dead or they are demons. After several seasons, the dead people are granted continued existence for eons and eons with a beloved soul mate. They can eat all the frozen yogurt they want and attend as many concerts as they have ever yearned to hear. Each dead person can decide when they’ve had enough eons of pleasurable experience and are ready to be dead dead. They have finally grown bored to death.

I don’t think, in a similar situation, this would happen to me. For one thing, I don’t see myself getting sick of frozen yogurt, and I don’t want to be dead dead, ever. Do you, or do you only think you’re supposed to say you don’t mind ending your existence, as long as your molecules float around as the star dust they came from? Your molecules will more likely swirl around like leaves in front of an unswept door on Broadway. Wherever your molecules float, it won’t mean a thing to you now or when you’re dead.

It’s a con, the idea of stardust. Monks in medieval monasteries, when they looked at the sky and imagined they were being watched, may have felt comfort. For me, there’s no consolation in any concept of what you become after your brain shuts down like HAL the computer in 2001 A Space Odyssey. As HAL, the great, malevolent computer is being unplugged, he sings the song, “Daisy,” with more dread and poignancy than has ever been captured in a death scene. Basically, death is murder. You know it, and I know it.

A moment ago, a woman asked on social media if she was the only one who went to the refrigerator looking for a snack, found nothing, and lowered her expectation of what a snack was. She would eat a piece of cheese or a single grape. I told her this was a universal activity. Some aspects of life are indeed reliable, but you don’t have to like a thing because it’s inevitable. Between eight and six million years ago, humans, chimps, and bonobos branched off from a common ape ancestor. Chimps are warring and violent. Bonobos resolve conflict in their troupes with sex. Unfortunately, the behavior of humans is far closer to the behavior of chimps than to the behavior of bonobos. Maybe that evolution wasn’t inevitable, but it’s a fact, and if you look around right now at the world humans are producing, the chimp-human nexus can’t be something you’d want to celebrate.

I’m having trouble sleeping. This is said to be something that happens as you get older. For me, it started when I was thirty. In my dreams, I’m endangered, embarrassed, robbed, and chased. Who would want to screen movies like this? Bad dreams and sleeplessness are said to be the consequence of a guilty conscience. I was once falsely accused of coming onto the boyfriend of another resident at an artist colony. When I asked the man who’d spread the rumor—and now knew it wasn’t true—why he’d done it, he said, “It was just that you looked so guilty.”

An angora rabbit. Photo by Natallia Saksonova / 500px/Getty Images.

I would like to gather the dead members of my family. That would be all of them. Would everyone tell a Jewish joke? How fast would I want to send them back where they came from? I have been jealous of all my best friends. That’s why I sidled up to them in the first place. They thought I was in love with them, and they were right.

I used to walk the streets of New York as if a day was as long as two days. I didn’t need more sleep than that. I wear a white angora sweater and a pleated skirt, in homage to my sister. I clean the toilets in the house to create a sense of worth in my life. I sometimes feel blurry from the trance of being alive. When someone I love says, “Are you going to leave me?” I say, “Where would I go?” I am honestly trying to think of where I could go.

I used to walk around as if there was all the time in the world to make the same mistakes. This is something I no longer do consciously, but I do it unconsciously. Even if I wanted to leave the room where the members of my family were gathered, and I would, I would want to leave it as soon as the joy of seeing them wore off, let’s say in five minutes—because I would feel the wear and tear of seeing my place in their tiny universe. Even if I wanted to leave them, I would want to call them back from the dead on a regular basis. We would laugh at the same jokes. Building up and tearing down would be simultaneous experiences.