Dear diary,
We went to a party last night. That’s abnormal for us. It was a work party. (A party for co-workers.) People kept asking us about our new house. “So how do you like your new house?” I kept answering that we’ve only been living there one bare week and I already hate it. I want to escape.
Society should allow me to live in a hotel. A series of hotels, a new one every so often, would be ideal.
One couple at the party said that within the first year after moving to their current house, their basement flooded. This ruined the vinyl record collection (over 400 slamming hits!) of the house’s male occupant, whose birth name happens to be Mr. Venice.
Another partygoer stopped us at the door, just when we were about to leave, and he said urgently “You’ve got to make your house into a HOME.” And I agreed with this. We still have all the pictures up on the walls that were left there from the previous resident: I should replace the entire lot with stuff I like. But the problem is that I think Marcel Duchamp’s “Large Glass” (“The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even”) is owned by some museum, and I don’t believe I have the money to purchase it; plus it’s hard to replicate. Most of the art that I love is not too easy to find copies of.
Anyway, so I’ve been thinking hard about how I want each room to look—where I want the furniture to stand. I’d like to keep things sparse.
And a friend of mine said that he would drive over to this new house of ours and trim the trees back from our rooftop. He said he’ll help me in the morning; and then in the afternoon my mother and sister are planning to pay us a visit. The place is still musty-smelling and disheveled, but I want them to see it at its worst so that they can better appreciate the improvements that we make. (Please pray that we make improvements.)
I wish I were more comfortable operating a nail gun and a table saw. I feel that if you can master these two tools, you can…
And everyone at the party has his or her own favorite books and movies. That’s why it’s so hard to start conversations with people. You wish that you could talk about the manifestos of Breton or Tzara, or the novels of Saramago, or the films of Guy Maddin, or a poem by Wallace Stevens; but no other living soul has acquired your taste.
At one point, when we partiers were all standing on the large wooden deck, I addressed the group: “Hey! shouldn’t we photograph ourselves now and post it on the social media? Because I’ve heard that one should always share one’s image when one is attending a party and having a raucous time. This way one’s name-brand can be associated with pleasure & fun, and with laughter & friendship.” And the person to my right said:
“I don’t do that stuff. I stay off of ALL social media. I don’t even know how to get on there with my phone.”
So then I said to the group, “Hey! is someone live-streaming this? For perhaps one of us says something that goes totally viral on the Internet and makes us all famous!” And someone on the far side of the deck said, “No: seriously, turn it off—stop streaming: I don’t want to be on camera.” And someone else told that person that I, Bryan Ray, was only asking about the possibility of live-streaming; but nobody was actually streaming anything at that moment.
Then the manager of the workplace (did I already explain that this party was a work party for a place where I never worked? I am only the spouse of a former employee), I say, then the manager of the workplace approached me and I said hello, and she said “Sorry about your dad” because my dad died a horrible death recently, from early-onset Alzheimer’s, but I answered, “It’s OK—I hated my dad, so it’s a relief that he’s gone,” and then she told me that her own mother died a couple weeks ago: she had cancer of the liver, and also cancer of the stomach, and eventually cancer was discovered all throughout her spine, and in her brain too, and also they found cancer in another organ whose name I now forgot. More cancer than churches. This manager, whom I happen to know from childhood, as she was the flautist in a musical group with my biological mother, explained that the last time she called the hospital to talk to her own dying parent, a nurse answered and said that the patient was too weak to use the phone right now. This nurse (according to her patient’s daughter, the branch manager who was that very instant conversing with me at the work party) must have been standing nearby the patient in question, in the same hospital room with the branch manager’s dying mother, because you could hear, in the background, the sound of the dying mother howling in agony.
Hearing about all the pain that precedes death doesn’t make me wonder why people decide to go on living, but it does make me wonder why people decide to go on living unadventurously. For if you know that you’re inevitably going to encounter a FULL STOP, and that unthinkable torments might plague your final moments, then you should at least spend what remains of your pain-free years sailing, which is to say: exploring the unknown.
They went to sea in a sieve, they did,
In a sieve they went to sea…[—from The Jumblies by Edward Lear]
Or you should follow your dream and become a tax attorney, or a small-appliance repairman. Go out there and participate. Join the farce. Become a member of one of the fifteen local churches that haunt the hillside where you live. (I went on a bike ride yesterday and passed more than fifty-five individual churches, each boasting a different flavor of doctrine, on my way up the very first incline. For we live in a hilly area.)
But, you guessed it: The problem that refuses to allow itself to be solved is as follows. Once you get your house looking just right, so that it solely represents you yourself and is thus your genuine HOME, there’s little that you can do but stand and stare at it. Like an ugly witch admiring herself in the mirror. Nobody cares to eye all the posters that you displayed, because those are your favorite films, no one else’s. Nobody at any party has even heard of Wrong Cops (2013).
Of course, you yourself could throw a party: a get-together with all your familiar co-workers; THEN the multitudes would be FORCED to admire your handiwork. — But throwing a party is difficult. You must first learn how to grill pork; you can’t just leave out a dozen bags of corn chips, some jars of liquid cheese dip, and a keg of four-dollar Chardonnay: this is NOT a balanced meal for a growing party. Also, before even thinking of entertaining guests, you should remodel your bathroom. Basically the rule is:
Take the cost of your house & shift the decimal point one place to the left. That’s how much you should spend on your annual party. Say your present house’s price was the same as mine: $500,000.00 — this means that we must fork out fifty grand on fine pork cutlets, IF we want to maintain our friendships another year. Alternately, we can kiss our friends goodbye and die a painful death alone, when our ceiling caves in.
Yes, just when we think our plan is sure to succeed, verse 8 of Psalm 139 comes to mind:
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
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