I’ve been reading Thomas Pynchon again, and something about this election made me want to fast forward past everything else in the film version of InherentVice and skip straight to the spanking scene. Of course I know there is no cutting to the chase in Pynchon. Surely what makes it so hot (and certainly what is at stake in his work is not hotness. Not exactly), is the build up. So I did the next best thing:  I re-read the book. This time I stretched it out, lingering on every joke, watching the layers find each other.  And I got to live in glorious scummy 70s LA on P.I. time for a few days, but then I finished it and found myself back on the business coast with my watch synced to the hyperventilating belly of the beast. I also know that All-Of-The-Things-That-Were-Allowed-To-Matter-When-I-Was-Still-In-Academia, thought processes that work at cross purposes with a fairly heteronormative daily life organized around running a small business and parenting, I want that mattering back. I don’t want that life; I just want the space for the details to matter as much as they could then. The thing is, there’s not time, and that trips me up. On top of that, I can no longer trust my body to sleep in designated areas at appropriate times, so I’ve come up with a career that requires me to be in motion all day. Some days I drive, but mostly I walk and take the train. I show up kind of ontime to different places all over the city for jobs that must be completed on time. I like to be at the flower market around 6, and when the coffee shop finally opens at 7:30 I know I need to get moving.  So I was bummed when my shrink said, you’re narcier than I’ve seen you in a long time. What’s going on? Narcier=narcy=narcolepsy, which I have and which rather than the sexy blackouts you might be imagining, tends to manifest as a kind of junky nod-off, making me look bored or fucked up when I’m really just trying to concentrate. Sometimes I’ll be writing or talking and it’s already set in and I can only tell when I see someone’s eyebrows shoot up and respond, “Um, what did you just say?” And I have to admit, sorry, I guess I was sleeping already. Already. The always already of the permanent possibility of sleep. One day on a flower job a coworker told me, “You’ve been given a gift.” I’m not really arguing with that, but I would love to know who’s giving it to me. I have a few ideas. The most interesting one was presented to me once by a psychic: you need to cut a connection. It’s exhausting and you won’t heal until it’s been severed. Okay, this is a productive metaphor, I think. How do I get rid of what actually sucks? What’s pulling on me so hard that I’m in a kind of permanent overdrive? The short list alone is convincing enough, but I’m the one with the Joseph Cornell heart. I’ve maintained these attachments because they don’t run on money time. They are gigantically inefficient on purpose, but now I’m on the couch, a place I very much want to be talking to someone who is very important to me, and I’m rubbernecking.

I dislike both forgetfulness and forgetting. When I started my flower business, my dream was to only make flowers for funerals. I wanted to be able to have conversations with people who knew they were dying, so we could have that last party be the most beautiful–as important as any shower or wedding because it is important to pause and remember someone as they were. The arrangements like the careful process of crafting bespoke perfume. I thought maybe if that moment could be special, mourning might come easier. I thought, if I can teach other people to mourn, then maybe I can learn how to do it, too. I still want this, but it’s kind of an unusual business plan.