Friday night I went out with Stefan and Teddy to a bar down the block and Stefan bought me a celebratory glass of champagne, because he is a dear person and a good friend. That day he and Kate and I had decided to move the party I was throwing for them and their new
books to September instead of June, which makes me think that I should maybe just get out of town for the summer since my rent is so expensive, only where would I go? Who would have this wayward soul for the summer and what would I do when I got there?

I have no idea what I’m working on next. I thought I knew but now I don’t.

On Saturday I walked in the cold across the bridge to yoga class. My cheeks were pink and chilled when I arrived. The yoga instructor was this German man with nice blue eyes and soft-looking brown lashes. He’s one of my favorites at the studio. He told this story about how he had just visited his mother in Germany, and whenever he stays with her they always end up sitting around watching a lot of television together, and one of the things they watched was nature shows. And he said that often the narrator of the show would explain the actions of the animals as a means of seduction of their mates. But he liked to imagine that sometimes an action was simply an action without any motive, that a bird might just be singing in a tree because he liked to sing. And then he asked us to chant just because it felt good, and it did, it felt pretty good.

Later my young hip friend from down the hall in my apartment building asked if I wanted to go dancing and I said I did because I did and then she said, “Great, we’re leaving at 11,” and then I didn’t go because 11 is too late for me to start having fun.

On Sunday morning I got an email from Penina, the curator of the Franklin Park Reading Series, which I am reading at next month. She had sent the list of my co-readers to me, and Benjamin Hale was on the list. His name sounded familiar. Maybe he had gotten a good review recently. Maybe someone had tweeted about it. (My brain is simultaneously full and empty.) I added him as a friend on Facebook, and then I went to work at the bookstore. While I was straightening the new releases hardcover shelf, I saw his book. I opened it and read the jacket copy and his bio. “It’s a book about a chimpanzee,” I said to Jenn. I was standing on one of the plastic seats from the children’s section we use as stools. I pulled the other copy of his book from the overstock and paired the two books on the shelf.

All day it was the usual: adorable children playing by the front paperback table, a wealthy foreign man grabbing at moleskins, some incredibly handsome men in wool hats and thick coats looking good and smelling like smoke, and a handful of happy couples coupling on a sunny Sunday afternoon. We sold out of Cloud Atlas again. Same with Just Kids. Also I texted some with Ron who was trying to convince me to come to Vieques for a while (where he is staying till spring), which I wouldn’t mind doing if I had a cent to my name.

I went to meet Molly after work at the Pencil Factory though I had asked her to give me an hour so I could read a little bit and make a phone call to my parents. And then I walked in the bar, and there was Summer Smith sitting with Victoria, a publicist with Riverhead. I like them both very much, and was excited to see them. So I didn’t get to do the things I meant to do and instead gabbed with them, finally making my way to the bar for five minutes before Molly showed up. We had just a few moments together before I turned and realized that the man standing next to me waiting to order a drink was Benjamin Hale.

I said, “Are you…?”

And he said, “Yes, and you just added me on Facebook.”

And then we chatted and he was young and cheerful and sweet, and he told me about apes and monkeys and chimpanzees and I said, “You must know a lot about animals,” and he said, “Yes, I do,” and then Molly and I joined his party, and he and I talked about some other strange coincidences, and then Victoria came over and re-introduced herself to Benjamin because she had met him at some writer’s conference, and she congratulated him on his great reviews and told him she had loved LOVED his book and while it is the job of publicists to gush over books I don’t know if I have ever heard her gush quite like that. So I guess I have to read his book now. And maybe he is a person that people will talk about with excitement. I can get behind that.

Yesterday Molly and Kath and I drove up to Dia Beacon and it was empty and sunny and we felt like we owned the joint. My favorite piece is the big pile of glass by Robert Smithson. (It has an actual name, “Map of Broken Glass (Atlantis),” but I just like to call it big pile of glass.) I find it extremely satisfying and logical in a different way than I find the Sol LeWitt installations extremely satisfying and logical. I also love to get lost in the Richard Serra sculptures. I had a dark moment of the soul in one of the maze-like structures. Like I felt something sink in me. “Oh, this is very sad,” I thought. Maybe I will never find my way out again. But then I rounded the corner and there was a wide open space and light and I was still all alone but everything was fine again.

In my notebook I wrote, “Is all art math?” Which seemed to make sense at the time.

When we came outside everything was melting and I said something to Molly and Kath about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and I took their picture. Then we drove to Cold Spring and had lunch at the same sandwich place I always go to in Cold Spring and I told Kath, my long-time friend who I first met in algebra class in junior high school, about not being able to go dancing with my cute neighbor friend (even though I really wanted to) because it was just too late, and did she think 11 was too late, or was it just me and I was losing it, forget it, I had lost it entirely, and she said it was too late for her too, and it made me feel better.

I like to get up early because my brain works better then.

On the way home we we marveled at the ice-covered river, and my girlfriends gave me shit for being passive-aggressive in two different situations and I accepted their criticism, and we made great time, which is always a triumph, and one of the tollbooth operators gave me a red tinfoil-covered heart, which reminded me it was Valentine’s Day, because I had forgotten.

(02/15/11) | 2 Comments »