Wandering thots that are at once dull & obscure

Dear diary,

Boy meets girl. The idea is that they fall passionately in love. Then they wed. But eventually their passion dies out. The marriage bed is now a place of desolation, overrun with cobwebs; the owl and the raven dwell in it.

So the spouses both go find significant others. The idea is that they fall passionately in love again: not the same husband with the same wife, but each with their respective paramours. And they do not wed this time, because they are already married; each new couple remains enjoying their illicit affair. Yet, once again, the passion fizzles out. The adulterous beds become as desolate as the marriage bed: the vultures gather there.

Everyone involved in this steamy entanglement therefore goes forth and seeks out additional dreamboats and mistresses, and they all fall passionately in love with these new souls.

Strangers have an air of mystery about them: potential, possibility. They are swathed in a nimbus of enigma; this makes them alluring. When you get to know a stranger, they become your acquaintance and ultimately your old friend: at this point, you understand what to expect from them, and their allure fades. I have at least two questions about this:

Why do humans fall in love only with unknown persons? And why does knowing someone well always translate to tedium?

The libido says “I only want to increase and multiply that which is beyond my ken.” It also says: “Let all that I truly understand die out: do not renew it or reproduce it: it is an abomination.”

Because I know this about the libido, the libido bores me. I say “Take it away.” And I feel deep interest only in the most familiar aspects of this world.

But don’t you find it curious that life is, as it were, programmed to shun normalcy and to keep changing? It almost makes one want to become bigoted and chauvinistic, just to provide some resistance.

And yet if change-for-change’s-sake is the name of the game, and I claim to have dedicated my heart to the tried-and-true, then the most firmly rooted stance I can maintain is to embrace the unknown. Dive into the beyond, after my timeworn custom.

That’s why I prefer the company of radioactive mutants, on the one hand; while, on the other, I’m attracted to bluestockings and old maids. I sport a periwig and horn-rimmed spectacles over my flashing eyes and floating hair.

Monsters, maids, and me. We get along with passionate tameness; keeping our bedroom aflame, despite wedlock, by using it strictly for reading aloud poetic tales, and never quite consummating our group-marriage. This lifestyle is titled “The Well-Nigh Honeymoon Suite.”

It’s like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: when you finally clasp it in your hands and carry it into the bank and deposit it, it turns out to be five hundred eighty-seven dollars and twenty-three cents. It’s like the dog who caught the car. And like the dog who killed the mailman. And the man who killed God. And the God who got born again. (To the selfsame virgin.)

Long live vertical cities 

Swimming pools on the tops of towers 

Challenge to the hordes of vandals 

Hard symbols of fake loves! 

Long live green ice cream 

Turning pink under the tongue, 

TVs and limousines 

Diaphragms, lovers, 

Lost in the sewage farms 

Bird catchers and murderers  

Carving their names in bark 

Their shadows in Polaroid!

—from “Ganymede” by Pierre Martory,

 translated by John Ashbery

I like trains that travel on tracks, because trains have sleeping cars. I also like dining cars. I like all movies that have scenes on trains, because I like pretending that I’m there riding along with the other passengers, opening the window and smoking a cigarette.

But, in the olden days, you might not even see your wife in a close-up shot until it’s time to beget the heir to your kingdom. So someone could swap out a foreign starlet for the woman who is supposed to be playing your spouse; and you would never know, unless one of your wise counselors tipped you off. After all, royal couples sleep in separate tents, on the regular.

So now you’re on this electromagnetic locomotive and reproducing in the wrong womb. It should be seductive, because it’s 100% unprecedented; but, instead, you’re fretting that all your belongings might funnel toward a non-sovereign line, seep through this broken branch of the family tree, ooze out like sap into a basin, and prove syrup for the masses. (Are you really concerned about this? Then you deserve to be teased.) Here’s a suggestion: Just visit your wife occasionally; have coffee, talk about the weather.