1/14/00
Hey sweets,
I suppose the first thing to say is congratufuckinglations. Are you simply drowning in happiness? Will you change your name? Alexandra Southwood, wife and former individual.
Sorry, I said I wouldn’t criticize, didn’t I? As long as you’re happy, then I’m happy. What else is going on with you? Are you embracing your nice British life? Is teaching everything you dreaded?
I’m okay, I think. A bit lonely. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing or who I am. Life was simple when there were semesters and deadlines and lectures to wake up for. Without that and without you, I’ve lost my structure. Let’s build a magical, Narnia-esque portal between “old” and “New” York so I don’t have to bum around this callous city alone.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Manhattan. I’m in crisis, but I’m also enjoying it. Does that make sense? I’ve always thought the best art comes from misery. That’s my excuse for these hangovers anyway. I think maybe I should give up drinking. I worry I can’t enjoy just one, that I’m looking for oblivion. I wake up in the morning with that terrible shame in the pit of my stomach where I wonder if I’ve made an ass of myself, exposed too much of who I really am. I lie beneath the blankets working through what I remember, terrified I might have divulged my deepest darkest secrets to someone. Alcohol makes me feel both smart and confessional—perhaps not the best mix for someone like me.
Maybe I’m not so smart anyway. I’m making very little. My head’s so full of other stuff that art gets further and further away. Art’s what I want, what makes me feel alive, but it seems like the stupidest thing to pursue. Obviously, rationally, it is. It’s never going to pay my rent. I look at you getting married and settling down, with your teaching job and your real life, and I feel dumb for wanting to keep running after that stupid little dream we had at art school. It seems insane.
On the other hand, when I quiet my mind, I realize I don’t have a choice. If I don’t run after it, what the hell were either of us there for? What was the point? The terrible, torturous, beautiful truth is that I can’t see myself being happy without creativity. Without rebellion. Without an avenue of protest.
I guess because I don’t yet know where art fits into life and life into art, I’m playing with these ideas of invisibility. Pieces as part of the reality people live in, so that maybe they’re not aware they’re even experiencing art but it influences their lives nonetheless. It’s all about what I can get away with, probably more prankster than artist, but it feels like an appropriate way to begin to make my mark on the city. I send instructions to people. Usually I’m not even there at the time, so it’s kinda me influencing the place from afar. I tell delivery boys to leave five boxes of pizza around the corner from where I know this one homeless guy sleeps, or I pay a student to leave a trail of M&M’s all around the East Village. Then I post challenges on this amateur photography forum asking readers to photograph specific streets at certain times and upload what they see. It’s great because some of the photographers are so oblivious that they take these arty shots of empty chip packets and graffiti tags, but you can still see the piece in the background. Others think it’s just a weird New York coincidence and snap happily away. There’s this great shot of a bakery owner coming out and throwing all the pizzas in the trash. Like, what the cock? Another time, though, someone caught a passer-by carrying them over to the homeless dude.
What else? Last month I wrote to the Postal Service and asked if they could write me a letter. They sent back an automatically generated reply on headed paper saying they were unable to respond to my inquiry. It’s pointless, I know, but it’s kinda fun and makes me feel less like the world is slurping my brain through a straw.
Love
Am x
SATURDAY, JANUARY 1, 2000
I nodded and called him an idiot. We grabbed each other over the spiky crustaceans. The toes of our shoes dipped in the rock pools, our jeans soaking up seaweed slime. It was winter. The icy wind whipped off the sea. I shivered and smiled. We sat there most of the day, huddled in our coats, watching the tide head out and people come and go. We could have gone to a pub, but we didn’t want to move. Every now and again I’d slip my left glove off to inspect the antique ring. I looked at the opal and wondered who had worn it before me, who they were, who I would be with it on my finger. Because this made it definite, didn’t it? This was who I was now: Marc’s fiancée, someday his wife. I’d chosen my fairy tale, my future. I thought these thoughts not with regret or uncertainty, but with a sense of awe. I’d made a decision.
I grinned at the ring and murmured about my happiness until my fingers turned blue. Marc replaced my glove, rubbed my hand between his.
“Stay here,” he said and climbed off the rock. I sat alone, watching a small dog hop in and out of the surf, its owner striding ahead. I listened to the seagulls circling above me and the roar of the waves. I tried to picture Chicago out on the horizon, the hurry of the streets and the sound of the traffic, the ice on the lake and the slush puddles at the end of every sidewalk. I thought of the lions outside the Art Institute and the view from the top of the Hancock Tower, the rush of wind as you stood on the platform between the tracks at the red line stop on Washington and State. The images felt distant, like poorly reproduced postcards with trite sentiments scrawled on the back. I wanted to press my bruises and imagine for a second what my other life looked like, but I couldn’t. It belonged already to the past, to a different century, a different millennium even. All I could see now were the waves and the rocks before me; all I could feel was here.
Marc returned with fish and chips and polystyrene cups of tea. We fed each other, calling ourselves Mr. and Mrs., catching colds that kept us in bed for the first week of the year.