Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-08-09- 5:46 p.m.

If Only I Could Fly

If only I could fly, I would soar high above this city, and perch on the spire of the Chrysler Building. I would look down and the people would be too small to see. Manhattan would seem ghostly, abandoned, and I would not feel the weight of my rent and overdue bills and friends I’m losing because I can’t manage to keep in touch. I would forget all about the stores I can’t afford to shop in and the plays I can’t afford to see and the millions of paintings I can’t be bothered to visit. I would forget about the clubs I’m not handsome or well-dressed enough to get into, and I wouldn’t wonder what parties where happening that night that I wasn’t invited to. I would lose sight of my envy of some and of my pity for others. I’d feel weightless.
In Central Park, at the Navy Fountain, rests the angel Bethesda, angel of healing. She sits perched above the fountain, unable to gain flight with her stone wings. Her healing hand is stretched out in mid-reach, the motion one of aid to a supplicant below.
In New York City today, it is hard not to feel like the entire city is in need of healing. We have cleaned the wound downtown, at long last, yet we can’t fathom what we might possibly allow to grow there in the future, so we allow the scab to remain, were tourists visit and buy t-shirts that horrify me. I wonder if these same people would purchase t-shirts from Dachau and Danzig if they could, to prove if nothing else that they visited death as tourists. Scant blocks from there lies the economic heart of our city, which suffers repeated infarctions from the years of plaque laid down by corruption and lies. And throughout the rest of the city, these new wounds leave the old ones ignored; poverty, inadequate housing, the petty meanness of our own hearts and minds.
Perhaps that’s the trouble in this unfeeling age. All our angels are made of stone; unable to take flight and do their divine duty, whether to heal or to inspire or even to smite us with holy wrath. There is something desperate going on. I think of politics, of how most of America embraced Bill Clinton, including myself. I think there was something like relief in all of us; we knew all about his sins, and we knew them to be venal and not mortal, and we were relieved. With what we know now, about Nixon and Kennedy and Reagan, we were just hoping that his evils were sort of benign. Now I’m not even sure what we hope for, unless it is simply a leader who will proclaim that he too is a sinner, and yet sin has little ability to impugn the will to lead. Perhaps that would make me feel something.
Of course I’m no better and no less in need of healing than anyone else. Right now, I’m nervous and edgy, and I’m so for the strangest of reasons: I leave on vacation tomorrow. I’m preparing for a week in Cape Cod, which is not only a lovely destination in and of itself, but my first real vacation for its own sake in three years. I deserve this, and I plan on enjoying it. But it’s making me edgy as hell right now, like I will leave Manhattan and it will all be washed away by the time I return.
This shouldn’t be this hard. Normal people do this all the time; they go away, with friends and girlfriends, to nice places and have nice times and look forward to getting away from the hustle and the bustle, and from simply the infuriating ordinariness of it all. I worry that perhaps I’m just addicted to the routine, or afraid of the unknown. But most of all, the panic that I feel can be traced to my inability to control these things. My relationships with those I leave behind will stubbornly refuse to allow themselves to be micromanaged while I’m away. Similarly, what I’ll be doing while I’m away refuses to allow me the option to opt out. I’m stuck there, and there is no possibility of running away. Or, worst of all, I can’t dismiss the nagging doubt that I will actually have a really good time, and that I simply won’t want it all to end.
And now, an update into what my fortune cookies have been telling me lately. Since going on hiatus, I have received “There’s a good chance of a romantic encounter soon”, “To be happy, you need to express yourself creatively”, “Every truly great accomplishment is at first impossible”, and “Love is worth the risk.” All of them topical, all of them offering advice (and I hate it when fortune cookies offer advice. I’d much prefer they just say things about me, like “You have an analytical mind”. It creeps me out when they tell me “Confucius says you look like grape in purple sweater”), and all of their advice seems good.
What does this mean? Well, absolutely nothing at all. It’s a fucking fortune cookie. Except perhaps it tells me that desserts stay in your mind more, or are more entertaining, when they come with reading materials. Hmmm. I wonder if I’d like baked Alaska better if it came with a fortune. Although, considering how aggravating this is becoming, perhaps I see why it doesn’t. But now that I’m thinking about it, this may be the solution to America’s education problems. Remember how you used to actually read the cartoons that came with Bazooka Joe? I’m thinking you could get kids to read War & Peace if you stuck it paragraph by paragraph into Starbursts or something.

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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