THE NAKED ANIMAL

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Yesterday was a challenging day, as autumn came on full blast to heat up the melancholy swelter that always hits me on Sundays, anyway. I had just spent two relaxed but eventful weekend nights, and I felt like I was just starting to get my mojo going when the reality of Monday dawned upon my still-dreaming brain the minute I woke up to the cold, damp gray of a late-October Sunday. Now, I know it's no use perpetually living in the future, because you end up never paying attention to what's actually going on; but I just couldn't kick the dread of Monday out of my head yesterday, and I spent the entire day on the verge of tears.

One bright spot, though that didn't stop me from wanting to start bawling the whole time I was there, was a baby shower for my friends Lisi and Sandra, who are about to be the proud parents of a bountifully burgeoning bundle of joy. It even got sunny just for a couple of hours during the party. I must admit that I think lesbians make better parents than gay men, from my own experience. I don't like to generalize in general, but generally, women are more grounded than men, no matter what their sexual preference. I know women are the ones caricatured as flighty, high-strung and absent-minded, but men have their heads much higher in the clouds. And then they're also better bull-shitters, so they can make you think they're grounded when they're not. There now, GOD, does that sound stupid generalizing about FIFTY PERCENT of the entire human race! That'll teach me!

In any case, Lisi and Sandra are such a delightful pair that I can't imagine their child having anything but an ever-more-wonderful kind of life. There were babies everywhere at that party, from swaddlin' to toddlin', seemingly falling out of the sky to putter or pule, putting a new twist on the phrase "baby shower." Then there was the non-breeding crowd, who sat around eating ethnic meats and designer cupcakes and talking about the fact that a pet was quite enough, thank you very much. However, one guest with a Corgi (and various other pets at home) admitted she wouldn't mind having a few kids to add to the family.

I was bemused by my own feeling of being slightly left out, since I've always felt that my not procreating was the only smart thing for myself and the public-at-large. But for just a second there, I thought, sheesh, what's my part in this whole chain of life thing? And then I thought, Ah yes, the artist and the satisfaction he or she is meant to get from her or his creations...the progeny of my fevered brain, friends, is what I freely offer to that chain.

(And can we please come up with a non-sexualized pronoun to use someday soon, people?!)

Back home at dusk, I ditched my chores (doing laundry at a Sunset Boulevard laundromat on a gloomy Sunday is not advised for those with a history of suicidal tendencies), flopped down in front of the TV and watched perhaps the most insistently tragic and eerily beautiful movie I could have imagined: Dolls by Takeshi Kitano. The Japanese have a melancholy streak many rivers wide, and this movie explored several currents that run through it using the framing device of a dramatic and stylized Bunraku epic. It was stately, somewhat inscrutable, and full of moments that reflected perfectly the tension between the sweetness and the harshness of human life, and this combination of effects acted like a skeleton key to unlock the cache of tears I'd been collecting throughout the day. I sobbed heartily for a few minutes...okay, it was half an hour...and simply let myself be sad. Okay, I said, it's all right to be sad, cry it out, wipe your face, go to sleep...tomorrow's another day.

And it worked. I slept well; woke up early--but not in any better a mood. I still dread Mondays, and I do hate playing the role of the "Everybody's Workin' for the Weekend" drone. And yet there's something... somehow...soothing... about it, too... ... ...twitch twitch...buzz buzz...the queen is calling!...must feed the hive...buzz buzz...twitch twitch...

Categories: emotions, friends, film, Japan, work