Mr. Sullivan, there seems to be a man from Liverpool standing on your marquee.

"What are those people over there staring at? Something in Times Square?"

"There's a huge crowd out there." The windows won't open, so we press our ears to the glass, leaving a print. "Sounds like... U2? But not a song I recognize."

We look up who was to be on Letterman that night. Oh my goodness: it was the Walrus. Goo goo g'joob.

"We have to go down there. He was a Beatle for Pete's sake."

The elevator is silent, full of 5:30 departures staring off into different corners of the box. I whisper to my co-worker. "There's this woman who was like an older sister to me growing up. I wish I had her cell phone number in my phone; she loves Paul McCartney."

The man behind us snaps and points his finger at the woman standing next to him. "Paul McCartney! That's who it is." The elevator booms with noise. They were only waiting for confirmation.

We find a spot a block away, in between the barricades and the street. I start texting furiously. "Paul mccartney is on top me the lettesman marquee!" "might be late. watching Paul mccartney on top me the ed sullivan theatre." Then I look around me. Everyone has some sort of device out. Every other person looking at their curled up paws clutching glowing screens. (Maybe at this point we need to revisit Joanne McNeil's post on the ubiquity of devices.) I put down my phone.

Well, the rain exploded with a mighty crash as we fell into the sun,
And the first one said to the second one there I hope you're having fun.

I can't help it; my head bobbles like Paul's.

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Amazing. "This one's about a place that no longer exists."

You don't know how lucky you ah-are.

And then it's over. All of midtown walking away with a bounce in its step. And we hear it everywhere around us, shouted into every little glowing device: "You'll never guess who I just saw! This is why I love New York."

(For Becca, who used to kiss his picture.)

"I don't want to go on any day."

Try as I might, pouring whatever words I can muster onto the page, attempting to grasp onto the one fragile straw that will describe exactly how I feel about mortality, I will never, ever be able to do it as eloquently and as perfectly as John Banville does in this minute and a half clip.



(via Maud)

Sunday Zen

In Which I Offer You A Pewter Unicorn, Maybe

Well, now! Wasn't that uplifting. Godot, existentialism, old age. Please tell me that if you read yesterday's post you immediately went outside and looked for shapes in the clouds. Because that's what I did. Threw some Dennis Wilson "Rainbows" on the iPod and stood at the bus stop, staring at the sky. Shopped for coffee beans, thanked the woman in the Italian shop where I stopped to buy some amaretti for asking me how my day was going. Read myself to sleep with a Shirley Jackson story about a girl who uses legal jargon to trick the devil into selling his soul to her for a dollar and four cigarettes.

This is what I love about blogging. It's a format that tolerates the constant change of mind, the constant change in emotions. I can start a paragraph with weeping intentions, and by the end feel compelled to crack a joke. And somewhere in the middle I might ask you to help me remember the name of a book.

Which brings me to.

There was a series of books I read at my local library in the mid-80s. There was a blond boy on the cover, and I know he had some animal sidekicks. Possibly a unicorn. Or an owl. It may have involved an enchanted forest, or at least a picture of one on the cover. The books were extremely goofy; not at all serious. When I try to think of the series title, it seems very long and kitchen sink-y, like it could be "Wizards, Witches, Warlocks, Unicorns, Dragons, Magic, Potions, and Cauldrons." But that's not it.

That's all I got. If you remember this series, or know someone who might, please, put me out of my misery. As a reward, I would consider buying you a miniature pewter unicorn figurine to place next to your wizard holding a crystal ball aloft.

Or, you know, not.

We have time to grow old.

Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?

We left the play, all of us, with a little cloud over our heads. A cloud that changed colors, emotions, the more we thought about what we'd read, and what we'd seen. None of us could stop thinking about what we were waiting for.

First: "It all seems so urgent. So much more urgent than I had initially read it." And then: "I need to get a new job." And later: "It makes me think of that Rilke poem: 'You must change your life.'" I went home and tossed and turned in bed, unsettled. What am I waiting for? How am I biding my time? At one in the morning I turned to J and said, desperately: "I don't want it to go too fast."

I start to wonder if it's destructive to dissect things. Destructive, and possibly pretentious. (Certainly the latter when talking about anything related to Beckett.) The fact that I have the luxury of these thoughts is even more pretentious. Filling in the void of real worry with this false worry, this sense that something is approaching faster than I want it to, even if I have no idea what it could possibly be, or when it will come.

A few months ago I read this Doris Lessing quote at Crooked House:

When scientists try to get us to understand the real importance of the human race, they say something like, "If the story of the earth is twenty-four hours long, then humanity's part in it occupies the last minute of that day." Similarly, in the story of a life, if it is being told true to time as actually experienced, then I'd say seventy per cent of the book would take you to age ten. At eighty per cent you would have reached fifteen. At ninety-five per cent, you get to about thirty. The rest is a rush -- towards eternity.

I related this quote to my mother, who studies aging, hoping she'd say "Pah! Nonsense." Instead she confirmed it. "It's UNBELIEVABLE how fast it goes. You can't even imagine." The thing is I don't want to imagine it. I can't stand it. I won't have it. I listen to these characters in bowler hats talking about crawling through the muck and all I can do is wish for more muck and more crawling.

We want to live forever. And then we grow old.

As I leaned over the railing in row EE, trying to get a better view of a flailing John Goodman, I devised in my head a staging of the play that takes place on the grounds of a nursing home. Each character burdened by his own age-related affliction: Estragon's Alzheimer's, Vladimir's incontinence, Lucky's Parkinson's, Pozzo's failing eyesight. Godot as death, waiting in the wings, never coming fast enough. The boy reminding them of what they once had. What they gave up.

It's possible I'll fear mortality less the older I get. Understand death better when things stop functioning. (Certainly the older I get, the better I understand Woody "I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens" Allen.) But for now, in my final rush towards eternity, all I can do is wish for more muck and more crawling, and the sense to make something beautiful out of both while I still can.