Self-Sufficiency

Well, they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night. We drove down to see Bob Dylan play Atlantic City yesterday. 207 miles from New Haven to the end of Jersey. Left the lab early and it was all going okay until the Cross Bronx Expressway stopped. As we crawled across the Bronx, I read the Unbearable Lightness of Being out loud. It took 10 minutes to pass under Dyre Ave, the heavy traffic dire. Then an accidental detour in New Jersey cost us half an hour. So it was not until 8:30 that we were driving across the causeway into the strange coast. The tickets said the show started at 8. Tilting my head out the window, I saw giant windmills, sentinels to the city. Then the casinos. Caesars, Borgata, Trump Plaza, Trump Marina, Trump Taj Mahal. The causeway spit us into an unnecessarily large neon sign and an equally imposing Nike swoosh. It felt like we were entering a different planet. One that smelled like sewage. Hardly time to process before parking and running through the casino, past automatons at slot machines, capitalism lost its logic, and into a mostly middle-aged crowd facing a stage where Bob Dylan and a band with too many pieces played. To relief, the usher said Dylan'd only come on 15 minutes before. And then despite the ridiculousness of the place and realizing the harmlessness of the drunk, old fans, the music mattered and the 6 hour drive didn't. I got caught up in the sound of words spit out, the conciseness of hands on keyboard, and the reinvention. He played Shelter from the Storm as a ballad. The melody of Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again was woven into another tune, and I didn't know Blowing in the Wind until the middle of the first verse. Something to see favorite songs, familiar lyrics warped so that they were almost unrecognizable. The new-old creations were not bad, but an intimation of what time does. As we walked out fire-works erupted over the ocean. We drove off to the stereo singing, Well now, everything dies, baby, that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back. Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight in Atlantic City.

Aaron left for North Carolina this afternoon, and I thought how difficult it is to be on ones own after having lost the habit. Yet how necessary that one self should suffice. These two weeks I am relearning existence as an individual, good practice for Paris. Paradoxically, the blog reappears. Because it is too hard to exist only as one, I am writing towards people. Or more importantly, writing merely towards words owned in the world.