On the way to Frederick Fekkai, one of the most luxurious salons in the city, Marie's mother tried to talk with her about the financial crisis-- how the bail-out bill wasn't passed by the Senate, they couldn't afford to raise the 700 billion through tax payer money during an election year-- and so, she feared, our country would inevitably spiral into a “cata-fucking-strophic” depression, the likes of which we have never seen before.

The salon is situated on top of Henri Bendel's, a designer department store. The main doors are so heavy, Marie had to hold them open while her mother skirted by. Marie made it easy for her mother, and together they walked to the back of the ground floor towards the elevators. Every step set off a land mine, sales clerks jumped out from behind mountains of blush and compact mirrors to ambush shoppers. They begged Marie and her mom to sample a sample. Marie stuck her leg out diagonally as she passed by in an effort to subdue her attackers. As the elevator doors opened she had a change of heart and thought, I guess everyone's just trying to earn a living.

The elevator ascended floor after floor as her mother kept talking about Wall Street. “It's going to crack like cheap glass into billions and billions of pieces. Think of how many pennies are represented by all the stocks on the market: that's how many pieces they'll have to pick up.” Marie thought, I've thrown so many pennies away, dropped so many, even swallowed a few.

They reached the fourth floor and the silver doors slid open into electronic, magnet-deactivating house music. A stylist said, “Heaven help those who don't indulge themselves,” while selling a woman her own face, plus pastel pink-- let it bring out the eyes-- and then Marie's mother kept going, “We've been smart, but I don't want to have to tap into our savings, you need to learn where to spend money and how to save it.” The dance mix was replaced by the soothing sound of a Latin king. Marie thought, this is the Eyebrow Pencil City of Oz. She looked at the flower arrangements that would never die. She saw the apples that would never rot inside of their wooden bowl. Every furnishing that could be reflective, was reflective.

“He tried to get me to work for him, to be his assistant.” Marie overheard a woman in a managerial suit and heels. Women slipped by everywhere, peeled from the pages of Vanity Fair and Vogue. To Marie, they were taller than the moon. She took a seat and stared. A frequent client with freshly painted toes limped by, careful not to smudge, like the dark, decrepit man Marie had seen on Broadway.

this is unfaithful
we speak and cheat,
use one word when we love the other
because of what it really meant

we'll take one first choice
until one forked tongue catches another
and you can no longer
this is not who you are

I watch a middle aged man's bicep flex and burn as he picks up a large piece of construction material and produces lactic acid. I think of the muscle. I just walked fourteen blocks. Our appointments, our adjustments, the way we move ourselves through timelessness.

The man who found animals walked with his cat perched on his head like the lions that guard the great Chinese restaurants. He walked quickly enough to quell question and stroked his cat on the tail. He stopped to wave to a friend or spectator and said, I never knew there was more to life than food, until I found where the food comes from.

from budapest

men laugh and become boys, women bare their stomachs and their bras

everyone goes for another drink

men laugh like wolves and pick their scabs, women scream sex even when they are sleeping

people are places, we are islands or we are boats

On a train platform filled with men and women in dark suits, a young girl without a suitcase or briefcase stands in bright colors. She is waiting for the train just a little bit closer to the edge than everyone else.

“Why do you keep doing that?” a woman in navy asks a man in charcoal grey, because he keeps looking up at the sky nervously. “Do you think it's going to rain?”

He tells her, “I just like to know it's still here, it's still big, and it's not burning.”

A page drops from the young girl's notebook and as she bends towards the track to pick it up, the train starts coming and it looks as if it will kill her. She straightens up exactly as the train races in. They look at her, but she knows once they all get seated she will be less of a spectacle. “I could never be a businesswoman,” she thinks, “too much black.”

When the train gets going and she's asked for her ticket, she hands hers to the conductor and apologizes for it having already been torn. He says thank you with loud confidence and smiles widely for her. She is looking out the window. She thinks, “The world's become so small I don't think I'd get lost if I tried.”

for the boards being completed:
record their moves, take only the appearance of numbers
tile, stretch, or both,
and project on four walls and
floor and ceiling.

the audience is surrounded by other people's
brains working, but they don't know it.
it's as puzzling to them as the appearance
of skyscrapers or that the local grocery store
always has milk.

"Why do you always look at me like that when all I'm doing is trying to relate to you?" Jon had wide eyes.

"Because relation is simple and easy. Relating is simple for most people, so it's too simple for you."

"That's not true. We know plenty of assholes who can't relate to shit."

"No, an asshole is relating his experience, too. An asshole usually thinks that whatever is going on, they have it worse than you do. If someone says something offensive or acts aggressively, it's because they think they're being victimized somehow, even if it's only because they have to look at you. Assholes are just heavy-handed with the ways in which they relate."

"I don't know if that matters. What I have to tell you is, life is not an easy thing to live with. Life is hard at times for every single person on the planet. We are born into our circumstance, and all our pains are relative to our solitary experience from that point on. Just because most people have the capacity to relate doesn't mean I'm not trying to help you out." Jon scratched his throat.

"I know you're trying. You can't change anything for me, though." He wasn't bitter about the relating or the empathy, and he couldn't expect his friend to play God. What annoyed him was, he knew Jon was subconsciously happy that he didn't have to go through any of it. Jon was smiling somewhere inside of himself, knowing that his only consequence would be listening and responding to the experience of another. The pain wasn't his, and the trauma wasn't his. After a while of thinking about how Jon's sympathy was based in bullshit, he finally said, "I know you probably couldn't be in pain for me, though you might say you wish it was you instead of me, or some martyr semantics like that. Regardless of what you're trying to get me to feel, you have to be happy that it's not you. But I'm okay with that because I know your life gets all kinds of fucked just like everyone else's."

Jon took a sip that eliminated half of his cup of coffee and said, "You're lucky you have me. Not only so you got someone to hear your bullshit, but also so you got someone to stick around afterwards. Nobody but me would put up with that kind of talk."

"Well, I've known you for a long time. When you tell people about your problems, if they are bad problems they are interesting. If they are really bad, they are uplifting because you are discussing it with someone who isn't you and will never have to be. You should thank me."

The room felt a lot less tense than it should have. Low jazz was coming from hidden speakers, and Jon guessed it may have been Coltrane. He listened closely until his thoughts took him away from the music, and finally he said, "Connection comes from shared experience. As humans, we have the ability to put ourselves in the position of another person. This is why books and movies and television are so enjoyable, and also why our relationships can sometimes be incredibly profound, shared experiences. It's important that we reveal ourselves to each other, and that we educate ourselves about each other by studying these revelations. By learning each other, we go beyond our limited experience. Our experience includes us alone, but our others have their own experience, and together we can transcend our personal limitations."

"But you aren't learning another person, you are hearing a testimony. It's not a revelation because it's not objective. I've known you for thirty years, that's why I talk to you. I talk to you because you know the people that I'm talking about. I reveal things to you about my thoughts because they might be relevant to your life, not because they will teach you anything. I tell you so I don't have to talk to strangers. Maybe I tell you so I don't talk to myself. But I’m not about to take your input as Gospel. You told me Sarah was a deceitful bitch five years ago and now you’re about to marry her."

"Well, keep talking. What happened last night?"

"I listened to my mom snoring in that bed, and every so often she'd take a gasping breath for air because she stops breathing in her sleep. What do they call that? I think it’s sleep apnea. Anyway, every single grueling, desperate inhalation brought back memories of that day, and the feeling of every tension. As if there were a taught line between Mom and each of us. If you moved even slightly, you'd feel the pinch. The trouble was, there were so many of these lines connecting people in so many variations, it felt like nobody could move or breathe without complaining of their personal torment. It was to the point where nobody was thinking about anybody else anymore. They were tired of doing that. They felt like they weren't getting any benefit from being selfless. They felt like they needed-- no, they deserved to speak their mind and take care of themselves for what seemed to them to be the first time in ages. I guess once you start thinking that you're the victim, it's hard to stop, but in reality, outside the solipsist dramatics, everyone was expressing a mouthful of shit. Everyone except Theo, who silently ate more than he should have at every meal and painfully struggled walking to every event. When we were walking to the ceremony today, he couldn't even move for more than a few minutes without having to sit down. Every time I stopped to make sure everyone was together and moving in the right direction, I turned around and saw him sitting. And when he saw that I saw him, he immediately stood up and began walking again. Later that day, he fell down pretty hard when he was trying to get a picture. He blamed it on weak knees. Even when he was in the hospital after his first stroke and he had a bucket for his piss attached to his bed because he couldn't get up to go to the bathroom, he smiled at all of us when we visited and looked like Santa Claus. A 350 pound Santa with important teeth missing and the most beautiful blue eyes you'll ever see. All he said was how fine he was, but we could barely understand him when he said it. He seemed ecstatic just to be looking at us."

“That doesn’t sound too bad. They just talk too much too narrow-mindedly or they don't say enough."

"After Theo’s stroke he left the club and walked 8 blocks to the hospital. He felt bad because he couldn't stay for the whole show."

"Do you think that's as bad as Gloria? She sends every meal back because it's never what she ordered. When it is what she ordered, it's not the right temperature. She's never the right temperature, even. Either she's too hot or too cold. I remember her coffee at breakfast one morning was not hot enough, and she acted so terrified that one waitress was going to give her warm coffee for a refill instead of steaming, scalding java that every time the waitress came over and attempted to fill her mug she would cover the top of it violently with her hand and say, 'No no no! I don't need any of that, thank you. Get away from me with that! That man told me he would give me fresh coffee and he said it would be HOT!' You can't have a meal with that woman. Nothing is ever alright."

Jon was getting depressed. He knew he shouldn't be. He knew that people just behave like people, and everyone has something unfortunate to contend with. He knew his fellow humans weren't all bad. He knew that even the worst person was capable of doing something good, and that great people often commit sinful acts. He knew he should love and respect people for their finer qualities, not automatically condemn them for their flaws. Despite all this knowledge, he couldn't help sometimes feeling like the gift of life should come with a gift receipt, because there were times when he just wanted to give it back.