Hail to Thee, Blithe Spirit

It's hard to live. This has been noted throughout time. At a Brecht Forum workshop on Marxian (not Marxist mind you) economics I went to on Saturday, it was suggested that a lot of our stress, quarreling, depression, divorce and other ills, are due to overwork demanded by the capitalist system.

It flashed into my mind that my parents got divorced during a period of relative prosperity, and their emotional distance had little to do with too many hours at the office or tension over how to spend my father's salary.

Virginia Woolf never worked a day in her life and she was depressed 24/7.

Anyway, I'd never stand in the way of a Marxian revolution -- in fact I'd work for one, if such a thing didn't seem so far-fetched as to be a dream.

Speaking of dreams, yesterday, my companion and I went for a walk after a long lie-in because a noisy overhead neighbor destroyed our early-morning sleep. We decided, as usual, to go to the Gowanus Canal but for the sake of novelty, I chose an unfamiliar route. It was unseasonably warm, with crisp leaves scuffing the sidewalk, intense sun slanting into our eyes, a few gold leaves still clinging to the trees. But we were both feeling fried from lack of sleep, constant busy-ness and the sense that even running as fast as you can, you can't keep up. We felt as brittle as those dead leaves.

The street I'd chosen turned out to be ugly and bare. I kept waiting for the funky little houses of lower Cobble Hill/upper Boerum Hill to reassert themselves but instead we were in a gully of neglected property and low-income housing. Squinting against the sun, we saw a small group of people on the sidewalk ahead of us. A stocky woman dressed all in white, with such a deep voice I thought she might be a man, was talking loudly and brandishing a bottle of Miller Lite. She seemed to be staggering slightly and wanting attention. "Nothing will happen," I told myself, but as we reached her I saw her hand was reaching up to tug childishly on her puffy white underpants. "How come we can see those?" I wondered confusedly, then realized she had hiked her skirt up around her waist. Then to my amazement and horror she yanked her underpants fully down and leaned over, her giant puffy ass thrust out in our direction. She was exposed so completely that every detail was visible and instantly etched onto my consciousness like the worst Diane Arbus photo you've ever seen.

Dream image: someone shoving their naked ass in your face. But this was real. Somehow the ugliness of the street had come to life in that contemptuous gesture. It was like I'd guided us straight into a physical manifestation of the darkness that was bothering us anyway. We walked on with our mouths open. The sun blazed on, unfazed.