September 2001

I used to go to the theater to see movies with my friends.

Today, as I was walking out of the office, this well-dressed guy approached me with some sob story: flat tire, kid waiting in the car a mile down the riverway, forgot his wallet, needs forty bucks for a plug kit. He was smooth and well-practiced, and I, disarmed and distracted, mind still reeling from work, hastily handed over a twenty and kept moving.

A few seconds later, when I realized what had happened, I decided to tail the fucker to see who he hit up next. He slimed some change from a guy on a bicycle, and then proceeded to actually go up to someone getting into his car, and, as his door was closing, plead his case.

The handoff.

Kid waiting in the car? Uh huh.

Thus far a frenetically busy week, made up of the kind of days which by the end leave you breathless, panting, stumbling up the stairs home to bed where, despite everything, you lie twitching and buzzing for an hour till finally, finally, you fall asleep.

ee cummings: “nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands”

Martin Amis is obsessed with writing as a way to boldly expose “the universal,” and through exposure, to justify it.

Ogden Nash: “The cow is of the bovine ilk; / One end is moo, the other, milk.”

Something in me is instantly repulsed by poems that begin with the word “O.” This must be the same visceral instinct that makes me despise Emily Bronte.

Emily Dickinson:

“Faith” is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see –
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.

Gilligan’s Island:

This is a tale of our castaways
They’ll be here for a long long time
They’ll have to make the best of things
Cause it’s an uphill climb.

Oh, how junior high prep school.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit: “I see a street of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food, tire salons, automobile dealerships, and wonderful, wonderful billboards as far as the eye can see. My god, it’ll be beautiful!”

Last night, things got a little strange.

I’m not exactly sure what came over us.

But early in the evening, we were all suddenly and simultaneously overcome by the same indescribable, atavastic urge…

Time slowed.

And the weasels closed in.

Where Tower Records used to be, Boston.

The eat-to-win diet.

Taylor and a bic.

The Bambino tells it like it is.

Gandhi: “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

05:43AM 20 September 2001 This is wonderful. (1024×716)

Yes. Yes, it is.

Cargo cult creative ability: Acquire easel, paints, brushes, palette and several canvases. Setup easel and canvas in center of room. Place half-empty bottle of red wine on nearest table.

Cargo cult gregariousness: Carry cell phone, rolodex, day planner at all times. Purchase half a dozen two-piece “best friends” necklaces and hang half of each over doorknob. Record up-beat jovial answering machine greeting which includes phrases like “I’m probably out partying” and “I’m running out the door,” and “If this is Mark, Evelyn, Cindy, or Harold, I’ll try to catch up with you either at John’s on Friday or with the gang on Saturday.”

Cargo cult cocaine addiction: Obtain spoons caked with burnt blood and mucus, mirrors dusted with baking powder, and rolled one dollar bills. Strew over coffee table.

Cargo cult interesting web page: Each day, remember mildly amusing gimmick from previous night’s coffeehouse conversation. Tediously write mostly uninspired elaboration as if spontaneously. Refuse to believe there’s no utility to be found in continued beatings of equine corpses. Use slightly unusual words.

“Where correctness is priority one.”

Ohmigod. Adrian Lamo is my new personal hero: “…and through literature, hope.” I can only dream of ascending to such heights. Adrian, I salute you.

Last night we watched this documentary on TLC about these fucking huge machines that are used to stripmine our planet for coal. Picture a modern iron superbrontosaurus weighing in at fourteen million pounds that takes nearly eight years to construct, consumes enough electricity to power a city of 20,000, can move 320 tons of earth a minute, and has a sticker price of over 200 million dollars. These things are so large that when they move from one mine to another, rivers are rerouted and entire towns relocated to clear a path.

On one hand, I had to marvel at the scale of these things and at the colossal engineering work that must have gone into them. But I couldn’t stop thinking: we humans must be doing something horribly wrong to require destructive powers of this magnitude just to sustain our current mode of life.

Maybe Jacob and Moby are right. Maybe everything is wrong.

Boston, from the harbor, on my birthday.

Fight Club: “…picture yourself planting radishes and seed potatoes on the fifteenth green of a forgotten golf course…”

See, the thing about Fight Club that you might not have gotten from the movie is that the point of Project Mayhem was to reset the planet so that it could recover from the damage humanity has done to it. Basically, wipe out the whole societal infrastructure so that the earth would have a few hundred thousand years to grow up and over and through all the superhighways and suburban sprawl and oil refineries and shopping malls that have metastasized over the surface of human life. To cleanse the earth.

Yeah, that’s what all the soap was about.

For me, this isn’t so much about the fact that we’re transmuting our planet into an unlivable barren rock as fast as our big brains can think up new ways to suck non-renewable resources out of its crust. All of that is probably very significant and immediate and terrifying, if you can wrap your head around it. But to me, that kind of apocalypse still seems too distant and impossible to really have any emotional weight.

Paul Simon: “There’s too many holes in the crust of the earth.”

In the North End, Boston.

What bothers me is that, despite modern medical technology, vastly increased longevity, and the relative monetary wealth of even the lowest standard deviation of the first world populace, we seem to be careening towards a global minimum of beauty and joy in our lives.

Yes, you’re right, those of us who live in the rich parts of the world no longer die at 30, no longer spend 90% of our waking lives in abject terror of being eaten, and no longer suffer from cleft palates and bad eyesight our entire lives. Don’t get me wrong: these are all good things. But there’s no reason these “modern miracles” must go hand-in-hand with the dehuminization of “modern life.”

Radiohead: “A heart that’s / full up like a landfill / a job that slowly kills you / bruises that won’t heal / you look so tired and unhappy / bring down the government / they don’t, they don’t speak for us.”

The whole American petroleum culture thing has to be one of the most offensive pieces of this whole issue. It simply does not work. The average American owns a car the cost of which would easily feed nearly 100 starving people almost anywhere else on the planet for a year. And cars are expensive even by US standards; most Americans buy cars that represent at least 50% of their annual salaries.

Try to imagine if all the money and effort that goes into designing, building and maintaining the cars, roads and traffic signals that fill our cities were instead devoted to constructing an efficient public transportation system and safe and beautiful walkways and parks. Try to picture a large American city devoid of cars.

Rhett Nichols: “The world is changing too fast for introspection about what’s going on.”

Callahan tunnel.

Does anyone really want to sit eight hours a day in a windowless walled cubicle under fluorescent lights breathing carpet fibres with unblinking eyes inches from a computer monitor only to spend hours crawling home to a homogeneous subdevelopment through traffic emitting noxious deadly fumes listening to shrinkwrapped pop hits and tear through three layers of non-biodegradable packaging to get to the chemical-impregnated food products that were once blinded bleating veal calves growing into a revenue stream in pens only slightly larger than their bodies while you sit in front of three hundred channels of somnolent mass media crap?

Is this the price of an indiscriminately heightened chance of procreation and a longer lifespan? Please, say that it isn’t. Please, no.

Radiohead: “Like a pig. In a cage. On antibiotics.”

The pinnacle of Western civilization.

Of course, none of this is news. None of this is interesting. For decades, rich Westerners like myself have been saying these same things, and I have nothing new to contribute.

There is some good news, though. The internet, the web, self publishing, effectively instant and continuous communication — all this technology is empowering people more and more, giving each of us unprecedented individual expressive ability. Last Tuesday, blogger.com and similar sites were a better news source than cnn.com or any of the other big brands. I have friends who were on IRC in 1991 talking to people in Baghdad while our bombs fell around them.

And because of the net, I was able to team up with this crazy Mexican to start a company made up of developers in Australia, India, England, The Czech Republic, Finland, Spain, Italy, Estonia, Chicago, Mexico… even Canada. In many ways, life is so much richer now than it ever was in the past. Though of course, just being able to write this for you to read, I’m many times luckier than 99.999% of the globe.

But this doesn’t mean that we’re doing everything right. It doesn’t mean that we’re not on a slippery slope.

Aristotle on tragedy: “…through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.”

When Aristotle said “purgation,” he meant “catharsis.”

Still trying to return to life.

But nothing seems to be quite the same.

Outside a bar in Boston.

And inside.

A rare sight in the US this week.

For those of you in Boston, the Red Cross has asked that you wait until Thursday to donate blood. Call 800-GIVE-LIFE to find the donation center nearest you. Their web site appears to be back up. Dial 800-HELP-NOW to donate money, if you can. My call went through on the first try, but it’s 4:45am now and will be much busier later in the day. You can also give money online using paypal.

Robert Fitzpatrick in the Boston Herald: “There’s a terrorist cell operating out of Boston. They had to have support, they had to have people on the ground, in Boston, supporting them.”

Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts on boston.com: “This was an inside job. We should be mindful of that in and around Logan.”

WCVB Channel 5, 5:04am: “Boston is becoming one of the focal points of this investigation.”

Boston.com again: “In 1999, the major airlines at Logan and Massport were fined a total of $178,000 for at least 136 security violations over the previous two years, though an air travelers group said at the time that the violations were likely typical of major airports. In the majority of incidents, screeners hired by the airlines to staff checkpoints in terminals routinely failed to detect test items, such as pipe bombs and guns.”

Massport Media Advisory: “Logan International Airport is closed until further notice. Massport has activated the Logan Airport Emergency Response Plan.”

massport.com: “The policing and security of all Massport properties is provided by the Massachusetts State Police, Troop F. These properties include Logan International Airport, Hanscom Field, Massport waterfront, and the Tobin Bridge.”

Boeing’s technical specs on the 757-200 report that it has a maximium takeoff weight of 255,000 lbs (115,680 kg) and a maximum fuel capacity of 11,276 gallons (42,680 liters).

The terrorists were aiming to maximally disrupt our country and economy. Let’s not give them that satisfaction.

Back to work for me.

I have nothing to say, no words of any real value to offer. In Boston we are shocked, sad, and embarrassed to see the worst aspects of humanity projected on such a massive scale.

My heart goes out to all those touched by this horrible event.

From a mail sent to a friend of mine in Europe, trying to give him an idea of what’s going on here at home:

There are about 15 people here in my apartment watching the TV. Lots of crying, people just shell shocked, trying to figure out what the fuck this means. It turns out that some of us knew one of the people on AA11, the first one to hit the WTC, maybe at 8:48am. He was Danny Lewin, the founder of Akamai. One of the guys here works at akamai and is pretty upset.

Lots of information flying around, much wrong. There were erroneous reports of a Camp David attack and a State Dep’t bombing. The commercial airliners hit the towers 18 minutes apart. They have incredible footage, from about 6 different angles, of the second flight — UA 175 — hitting the second tower. Lots of eyewitness accounts; this is a very public tragedy. It’s fucking unbelievable.

I woke up this morning a bit after 10:00 and called my secretary to figure out when my first meeting was. I couldn’t get through, and about 2 minutes later she called me: “The United States is under siege. There have been attacks on New York and Washington so far. They think it might be terrorists. Airplanes are hitting buildings. Call your father.” For about a second, I was blank, and then I hung up and my first thought was: be ready to run. I put on my pants and shoes and ran out to the living room and turned on the TV. Images from what looked like fight club, the reporters were trying to figure out what was going on. They didn’t realize that one of the towers had disappeared at first. I’d never seen such plaintive confusion. Speculation that the plume of smoke was from an explosion, then a pause, then one reporter says “There’s only one tower standing,” and I ran to wake up Taylor and Miguel. They didn’t believe me at first, wanted to go back to sleep, and then we came to the living room and about 10 minutes later the second tower collapsed.

I’ve been following the coverage online, which is the best source of information. A bunch of us are gathered on IRC sharing info, minimal misinformation, no speculation, just sharing data from various sources, like fucking journalists. There are fighters, what look like F18s, circling Boston and lots of sirens going. Lots of tears here.

I went out and bought a few cases of beer and people were crying in the streets, collapsed in the liquor store talking on cell phones, or trying to get through. Apparently kids laughing about it in Davis Square got smacked around by some businessmen, and Arabs are being attacked in the New York streets.

All appointments today were cancelled.

All sorts of people showing up here at the apartment, I’ve been making food and passing out beer and cigarettes. Apparently all CNN’s servers are down.

I am struggling to hold on to that first feeling, that “what will be hit next?” surrealism. The need to put on my shoes, to be able to run. After I got my shoes and pants on, I put a maglight and some food into a bag before I ran out to the TV. I was ready for fucking *anything*.

Lots of cynicism too. No one knows what’s happening.

Everyone is comparing this to Pearl Harbor. Bush’s quote is fucking shrink wrapped. To call this cowardly misses the mark so completely.

Everyone smoking here now, people who quit, who don’t smoke ever, smoking like it’s armageddon.

But mainly silence. Shock.

It’s awful here. I can’t even conceive of what it’s like for the others, the victims, those touched most directly.

No one knows what this is the beginning of.

ComputerWorld has an article about us.

In the men’s room of Algiers Coffee House, Cambridge.

I’ve always wanted to do a comparative study of the graffiti in men’s rooms vs. women’s.

Ottawa.

Catherine Camus, on her late husband: “This mixture of austerity and sensuality, the will to speak for those not able to speak for themselves.”

I finished Down and Out in London and Paris tonight — excellent book. My dad says that it falls in the same category as This Side of Paradise and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: a “novel of initiation.”

A germane entry from my diary:

 Mon Oct 12 00:29:22 1998 We met in front of the church between harvard square and Matt's apartment, right near the theatre. I was standing there listening to some bums on the steps talk. One of them said: ``I wasn't homeless before last year. I used to have PILES of gold!'' 

Peter Mulvey: “And if I sound like all the world, all the world will sound like me.”

Geeks and golf.

I even have an MPEG of Ryan’s graceful swing.

Bunker Hill.

That picture reminds me a little of San Francisco the way it looks in Hitchcock films. Joe and Ryan and I played catch on the lawn with a half-empty bottle of Gatorade until it split along the top and started to leak.

T.S. Eliot: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

A couple weeks ago, I found an old manual typewriter at a yard sale down the street from my apartment. I bought it from a senile, toothless man for five dollars. This weekend, I finally got around to getting a ribbon for it. The output is absolutely beautiful:

(800×570 2310×1644)

I especially like the X-outs.

On the bathroom wall of a bar in Ottawa.

This struck me as a pretty funny sequence:

 Wed Dec 2 00:33:02 1998 Sick. Worried about classes. Can't sleep.. need a few hours shuteye so I can finish my problem sets and be ready for today's quiz. Ugh. Not a good situation. Okay, off to bed. Wed Dec 2 03:34:37 1998 Oh my god. I somehow woke up. I MUST NOT GO BACK TO SLEEP. Staring at screensaver... Wed Dec 2 03:43:51 1998 Still awake by some miracle. Another few minutes and I might be up for good. Suppressing urge to crawl back into bed for "just a few minutes..." Wed Dec 2 03:46:45 1998 Still awake... but I haven't gotten anything done yet. Going to stare out window. Wed Dec 2 03:47:39 1998 Pretty out, but boring. Wed Dec 2 03:50:14 1998 Getting more and more tired. Wed Dec 2 06:49:49 1998 Fuck, fell asleep. 

Sadly, the above is fairly representative of the tone of most of my entries from back then. It seems that I mainly wrote in my diary when I was unhappy, so it’s not a very good cross-section of my life.

This whole posting-old-diary-entries-on-the-web thing is starting to feel hopelessly self-absorbed.

Jacob Berkman, feeling the flow.

Holy shit.

The press keep saying nice things about us: The Washington Post profiled Miguel and SFGate has some laudatory comments to offer as well. It’s like early 2000 all over again.

Maddog came by for lunch today.

Maddog and Ian Peters

More retrospective dreamlogs:

 Thu Nov 19 09:13:16 1998 Bizarre feature-length-movie type dreams. Battling female aliens. Columbian drug lords. Leg sticking through the ceiling. Sliding down spiral escalators amid flickering fluorescents. It's slipping away from me now. 

For twelve months in 1998 and 1999, I went through this phase of trying to “diversify my interests,” and signed up to take piano lessons. My teacher’s name was Peter, this rigid Eastern European math major who instructed piano to idiots like me on the side. In our first lesson, I was showing off that I knew a few notes of Fur Elise, when he abruptly interrupted, shouting: “What? Beethoven? Do not try to express what you cannot understand!”

I thought Peter’s outlook on life — bleak, futile, absurd, but good-natured — was hysterical, and really enjoyed spending time with him. Here are a couple entries which hopefully get some of that across.

 Thu Feb 26 12:04:55 EST 1998 Just returned from a piano lesson. Peter had shaved his head - he and Matt Loper have a lot in common, but with Peter there's this accidental humor: "Nat I'm sorry I must cancel - I hit four children with my car and cannot find the car" but both want to experience life fully and personally. 

And months later:

 Wed Nov 11 02:19:55 1998 I handed in the 18.701 at about 9:45 this morning. Oh, and I had a piano lesson at 8:30pm.. woke up at 8:39pm to the phone ringing. When I picked it up, I realized that it was peter, and so banged the phone around on the desk a bit and then hung it up. ``Nat, it was funny when you answered.. I heard the phone drop, and then nothing, and then sounds like someone crawling around.'' Anyways, the lesson went ok. 

Sometimes I wonder where Peter is these days.

Stupid punk dogs. No respect.