November 2019

I would have loved to have a name like John, or Matthew, or Philip,—a name at once meaningless as all things that have become too common, and too encumbered with histories and connotations no man can and should be burdened with. I feel my helplessness while I utter this, how inept I have become after a century of silence. I remember a time when they called me the Christ of Montmartre until I shaved my beard one day to spite them all. I remember being happy, but that was a long time ago. For two years now I have not written a word,— I remember sitting on the floor in the bookstore across the town square (or what passes for a town square in this dolled up strip of wasteland) while I wait for the sun to set so I can roam free at last, unseen among the multitudes at dusk, reading the poems of a dictator’s biographer, as if it were gospel, so I can repeat it one day and call them my own: I remember nights spent walking along the quay, smoking menthol cigarettes, looking at the horizon, not seeing anything because I didn’t have my glasses on: I remember the smell of donuts, then the smell of piss on the same quayside: I remember wanting to die. It would have been easier if I had a name like John, or Matthew, or Philip: it would have been easier if I weren’t me.

I hate Serge Gainsbourg. I hate the idea of Serge Gainsbourg.

These things have made me happy recently: going to the grocer’s on a weekday morning, walking home from work, eating off single-serving strawberry yogurt cups while staring mindlessly on the random Office episode playing on my computer screen, the smell of fried cloves and cumin. It is not happiness as much as calm, tenderness even.