Friday 20 November 1998

Another rainy Friday. I’m at the Hurst for breakfast, and it’s fairly warm outside. For some reason the rain, maybe along with the relative warmth, is really cheering my up today. The rain always used to depress me, but lately it’s been cheering me up. It’s probably not the rain, it’s probably me. Leonard Cohen is cheering me up, and coffee doesn’t hurt. I need cheering up. I entered into a kind of nightmare depression last night—not nightmare, asleep, but before I went to bed—not a real depression; it was kind of like I was dropping in for a visit at The Depression Hotel.

I was going to stay away from the Hurst, save money on breakfast, let this tired notebook rest, but I can’t. I won’t be able to come here on the weekend, anyway, another weekend filming! Coming in here reminds me of the latest _____ of my recent infatuations. I came here on Sunday night, for the Belmont Street Octet, and because Lisa Denzler, as she will now be known, was working at the door. She is so cheerful, it can’t help but cheer me up, and take me a little away from the intensity of the day filming. Even though I’m not doing anything much, it’s still intense. The music really brings me back into the world, and instead of feeling that obsessive crush about Lisa, I’m just appreciating her—thinking she seems happy, and wondering if she was always so happy while working here. The band creates a really good-hearted atmosphere.

She was sitting at the end of the bar as usual, under the potted plant, which is actually a potted tree—a potted tree on the bar! She was reading a book, as usual, and I didn’t want to know what the book was, as usual, because seeing what someone was reading makes you think you know too much about a person. (My feelings about this probably explains why I’m so self-conscious about what I read in public.) Then, suddenly I noticed her go over to the piano and struggle with this enormous dictionary that sits on top of the piano with some other books, and she brings the dictionary over to her seat at the bar, and then looks up the word she’s looking for, taking her time, and then she struggles to carry the heavy dictionary back to the piano. It’s just one of those moments that, if my life were a movie, would be one of the details, seemingly not that important, that would make the difference between it being a good movie and a great movie. If only my life were a movie. Which it’s not. But as I sit here writing, the owner, one of them, Bill, I think, came up and told me he bought my breakfast, since I’m here so often. “Thank you very much,” he said. That’s reality, no movie, and would not even make good subject matter. It makes movies seem a little base. If this was a movie, it would turn out that Lisa at the door is his wife, and Bill and I would become friends in the morning, and Lisa and I would fall in love in the evening, and my god, drama would ensue.

It kind of makes me feel gross thinking about it; guilty, as is my major theme. We, Heather and I and some others, watched the weekend’s film footage last night—more really good stuff. Trying to work out some formal problems—I hope I’m helpful. I’m really happy Heather wants my opinion about stuff. Then I just always steer the conversation to myself. But she was being mean to me as well, telling me I was like Woody Allen if Woody Allen wasn’t funny, meaning, I guess, obsessive, neurotic, and obnoxious, but without the charm. I guess after you break up, but are still close, it’s a constant danger that one of you will get fed up with the other and get a little insensitive. All human relations are sensitive, but this case is probably the most fragile. So I got depressed last night, but I’ve tried to step back a little and look at it. Heather is annoyed with me for telling her about everyone I have a crush on. I guess I shouldn’t, and I shouldn’t even do it here. But seeing Jordy on the film just added yet another dimension to her already super multidimensionality but admittedly very little known by me self. I take a breath. That’s the coffee making these complex sentences. Time has stopped. The world is rich, brown, and oily.

Okay, so I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Jordy. I got out my half re-read copy of Mysteries, by Knut Hamsun, an incredible novel, to read it for parallels to my recent behavior. It’s striking and disturbing. I had suspected as much, but it was a little worse than I had feared. I’m the man in the yellow suit. Click here to download the complete text. If that doesn’t work, you can find it in a library or a bookstore.

Here is the thing. If I were to actually have a relationship with any of these people I’m obsessed with, if I embarked on that long or short affair—I mean, going out with, fell in love with, and have shared the feelings mutually—you know—it that happened—would I continue to write about it then? Would I write about the relationship? Wouldn’t that really be more interesting than all of this looking across the street, looking across the bar, looking longingly, and obsessive crap? I think so, but I’ve never been able to do it. I’ve never been able to write about relationships while they’re happening. It’s later, ten years maybe, or maybe never, that I can write about them.