The Return of the Amazing Dr. Funkenstein and his Psychedelic Paraphernalia

I found this old Richard Nixon mask of my father's in the closet once and decided it was cool. So now I keep it on a stand in my room and wear it every once in a while. Like at parties. I impersonate Richard M. Nixon at parties.

There was this one party, a short while ago, at The Bowery Poetry Club. I was there as a special guest of Bob Holman (the club's owner and a fairly famous poet in his own right). And we were watching this woman create some interactive poetry (I forget who she was, she's unimportant to my story) using us to create a happening. So (to create the poem) we were all going around the room asking each other to tell another person something you've never told anyone before. Bob Holman turns to me and asks me, so I get up and announce to the room

- I impersonate Richard Nixon.

And everyone laughs. I pull the Nixon mask out of my bag and put it on. Bob becomes hysterical. He stands up next to me and yells to the guy in the sound booth to put on some conga music. A hot little number starts to play and I yell out

- Conga with Nixon!

I swish my hips around to the beat. Bob puts his hands on my shoulders and follows me as I start groovin' down the center aisle of the club. In a matter of moments everyone in the club is lining up behind President Nixon as we were shaking it to the beat, 'round and 'round the club 'till the music stopped.

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Unconsoled
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Vintage, 535 pp.

UNCONSOLABLE CONSCIOUSNESS

Our narrator and protagonist, known only to us as Ryder, arrives at his hotel for the start of the most important concert tour of his career and finds no one, not even the staff, there to greet him. The rest of Ryder's stay is just as anticlimactic and comical as we visit an interesting form of consciousness in Kazuo Ishiguro's new book, The Unconsoled. The story is told from the perspective of a man who's, to say the least, a little absent minded. Ryder doesn't always remember who's who or what he's supposed to be doing--and the reader experiences all things as colored by this insomniac-Mr. Magoo-zombie.

The results come out as a mixture of drollery mixed with surreal comic moments that make this 500-plus-page book entertaining. Readers familiar with Ishiguro's Remains of the Day will recognize the charming, yet purposeful, writing style that allows Ishiguro to get away with having paragraphs that run on for several pages in Ryder's amnesiac brain. A perfect illustration of this occurs within the first chapter (after the hotel staff finally comes out of hiding) and the porter is taking Ryder's bags to his room. He notices the elderly porter (later to be known as Gustav) struggling to keep the bags off the floor, "glowing red with the effort," causing Ryder to say

"'You know, you really ought to put those down.'"
"'I'm glad you mention that, sir,' he said"

The porter then goes on for five pages of solid text, revealing the moral obligation of portering and the code of ethics he developed, after a vacation to a different hotel in Lucerne, as a way of making the profession of porter a noble thing. And that not holding at least two bags in the elevators would cause the townsfolk to ridicule the porters.

The absurdity of moments like these is what gives The Unconsoled its humor. But it's a comedy that comes from real life. Who hasn't, let's say, been trapped by the clerk at Dunkin Donuts because he strikes up an impromptu conversation about coffee and won't stop. In this way the book is just as much psychological realism as it is absurd fantasy, with Ishiguro's writing often mimicking real life speech patterns (i.e. "'There's a very long way to go yet, that's true, but we've often talked it over - we meet every Sunday afternoon at the Hungarian Cafe in the Old Town, you could come and join us, you'd be our most welcome guest, sir - well, we've often discussed these things and each of us agrees, without a doubt, there have been significant improvements in the attitude towards us in this town.'").

Ishiguro is not for everyone. However delightful he might be, he does meander and get cryptic at times. The Unconsoled is an exercise in comprehension, the way that Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse and James Joyce's Ulysses demand a certain fitness of the reader. You have to do those intellectual pushups because the text rambles on in a way that is part Mark Twain's "Story of the Old Ram" and part Seinfeld banter but is entirely delightful when you're up to the challenge--you just have to get through the intellectual matrix first.

To borrow a term from Freud, there's a whole lot of condensation going on. The landscape Ishiguro paints is dreamlike and surreal. We're in a small city in Europe that might be in Germany, or Austria, (or Paris for all we know)--a town that Ryder has never been to--but yet we are constantly meeting people from his past in England, including a possible wife and child. (Gustav, the porter from the hotel, is his father-in-law.) People always seem to talk to Ryder as if he has a full knowledge of what's going on with this city and its inhabitants and, of course, he goes along with it because that's the thing to do. These condensations and confusions are gaps in Ryder's mind that Ishiguro reflects in the text that certainly make reading this book... interesting.

There is a logic at work in the events of the book that is never fully defined, but fully consistent. Ryder is at times confused by what's going on, and at other times a vital part of the confusion. For instance, Ryder does find it strange when Mr. Hoffman, the manger of the hotel, calls him down to the lobby to tell him about the death of Brodsky's dog. But when Hoffman suggests they must get moving along, Ryder leaves for the party in his dressing gown. He then arrives at a fancy dinner party in his night clothes and prepares to give a speech which he thinks of starting "collapsing curtain rails. Poisoned rodents. Misprinted score sheets." Ryder later flashes the guests when he gets up to make this speech and no one seems to mind.

What Ishiguro lays out in The Unconsoled is straight from the brain of his protagonist. There is no clean resolution to the plot, no unveiling of what is really going on with Ryder's brain. Bob Barker only reveals what's behind door number one--there is no behind the scenes tour. But that's the mind, isn't it? Ishiguro planned this out as an experiment in thought. The consciousness of Ryder is unconsolable, but rather a masterful execution and a fun read. So sit back, let Bob Barker make his little monologues, and enjoy the experience.

Or Macao? Or Musee Grevin? I know they arranged the letters for him, I know the story is true, but I have so much taking Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as "the ultimate truth". I mean, having just been involved with that bold-faced liar Lauren Slater, I believe Lying more than this book.

Ever hear the phrase, "the truth is stranger than fiction?" Well, it's damn true. I consider myself something of a writer (stop laughing) so I know that books do not just fall out of one's ass as paperbacks. They all go through extensive drafting periods--things get moved, changed, rewritten--and then the publishing editor gets a hold of it! I just have trouble believing that Bauby could of had control over those processes too. (Maybe I'm just being dense but) Diving Bell is too incredible for me.

"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet"
- T.S. Eliot "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

And that face must be perfect, or not at all. If I can't put forward a mind-blowing effort, that will earn me much praise, I have to blow it off entirely. Pretend I made no effort. I'm just slacking.

I love excelling, and there's been so few times this semester where I've had time to do something noteworthy with my work. (Or even do my work, at times.)

I do try, but if I can't be the best I feel I should be lousy. In this way my face is always perfect. I make all the proper reactions. I'll never let you know.

My eyeballs feel like they're floating in hot gasoline that's constantly evaporating through my eye sockets. My brain is shriveling up and the back of my brain like a charred piece of lunch meat. I just have to make it through this class. Don't let them see my hands shaking. Don't let anyone know that "The Mask of the Red Death" is upon them. I'll just look down at my book. No one will see me.

- Are you alright? Professor Tougaw asks. Your eyes don't look like they're your own.
- They shouldn't. I bought them off some guy in Chinatown this afternoon, I muster.
- Is it contagious? Arielle asks.
- Well, I licked your water bottle and all your things, so you'll find out.

Everyone laughs at that. Hopefully that'll take the focus off me and get us back to class.

- Are you sure you can make it through this class? Tougaw wants to know.
- I'll live.

That was close. Tilt in your chair. (But don't fall out.) Don't let anyone know you can't focus your eyesight to see properly. Act like you're actually looking at your book. Don't let Andrew see your hands shaking--grab your pen. Look like you're doing work. Just make it through these two hours. (Class is only two hours, right?)

Hiya conscious peoples!

I just wanted to put my project proposal down in a hard blog entry for y'all to read. (And what better place than right here?) Basically I'm going to be executing the idea I was talking about last class. I'm going to be writing a surreal short piece of fiction from the first-person perspective of a strange man as he goes through a crisis.

Basically I'm interested in different perception. The strange mind. How does that surreal brain perceive things differently? As we learned earlier in the semester, people impose their ideas when perceiving an object, so how different will the qualia be in the unique, surreal brain?

I'm hoping that I can make clear what's going on--because I can't come out and tell the reader what's "really" happening. No one's consciousness has cliffnotes that explain to you why things are coming out different than you expect it. I feel this story will be a lot like Lauren Slater's Lying--and surrealism is like autobiographical lies--in the way that you know that both have a falseness about them. However, I feel they both capture the true nature of what's going on with the experience.

Surrealism is a figurative method. You can't point at something and say that didn't happen because it'd be useless to do so. That world is what it is, but you can still get the idea of what's going on. Basically I hope I entertain y'all with this.

I ate too much. (Although, it is Thanksgiving, so it might be redundant to say that.) It's that time of year my sister does the one thing she's good at (aside from complaining, being bitchy, and knowing everything) which is making turkey. A twenty-pound bird- stuffed, rubbed with butter, marinated a champagne (although I think my sister gets more of the wine than the bird does) and wrapped in bacon before being roasted golden brown. (Man, that reads even better than it eats.)

But the sides are becoming very pedestrian to me. Same stuff every year. Bland mashed potatoes. Greasy stuffing. The affluent concept of shrimp cocktail. I tire of holidays and their "traditions". I say if the routine bores me I should do something else. I should do something else. Move out of my parents house and live like a bohemian, where I won't be forced to uphold any traditions. But I'll just roll over in my over-sized holiday sweater (engineered entirely to stop food from landing on my pants) in this coma. I don't even like turkey. Why did I eat so much?

Every freakin' holiday I have to go into the attic closet and drag out the appropriate boxes and bags corresponding to the time of year, drag them down the stairs, and put them up--with little or no assistance. (Perhaps this would go faster if some helped... or if they didn't send their asthmatic son into the dusty closet so his allergies can flare up.)

The closet's tiny--(yes, there's a room in the house smaller than the space I share with my brother)--and against the side of the house, so the roof is severely slanted on one side. So instead of conserving space we continue to get new crap without getting rid of anything that hasn't disintegrated into particles. (And then we try to glue the dust back together before we get rid of it.) Freakin' pack rats of sentimentality. (I get that way with my things too, but I have limits--I can throw things out... Of course my parents, on one of their whims, made me throw out things last summer--but the closet must stay!) I'm waiting for the time when everyone celebrates Festivus and I can just bring a metal pole out of the closet. (I'm still constructing a plan to have one set of universal wreaths for outside the house.)

But that's not what I came here to talk about. (I didn't want the title to mislead y'all if I stopped here.) Christmas is the worst time of year for closet activities (Dominik) because that holiday has the most crap. And because of the shape of the closet, everything has to be taken out to retrieve Christmas from the seventh circle. I call this The Shift. Everything gets carried down the stairs to the living room and most of it goes back up. My brother used to help me with this stuff, but he has a job now, so he works until evening hits then he drinks until morning.

So I'm doing it myself this year. (Again.) It'd be nice if I didn't have to put up the majority of the stuff that I take down. (Especially because I don't care.) My mother takes on little pet projects, like putting out a snow globe on the coffee table, but in the end it's still me climbing ladders to put up garland and lights on the roof. (And I really don't like heights.)

So you can imagine my shock and alarm when my sister, who was sitting on the couch not helping me bring boxes out of the closet, states that it is actually her who decorates the house, not me. Gee, I don't remember seeing you on the roof last year. (I would have considered pushing you off.) She's so busy with her Full-Time Job (for which she earns constant praise) and her boyfriend that I only see her a few hours a week. (Which is probably the nicest part of this blog entry.)

Point is, we don't have the same schedules like we used to when we were kids--my parents included. The past few years I've just been leaving the boxes out in the living room and we decorate the tree in shifts. (We're getting a punch card system this year.) Why bother?

Remember all those times when you tried to clear your head to meditate or free-write and you just couldn't do it? Well, I've come up with the solution. Introducing The Zen Waiting Room.

Here's a real-life testimonial from some strange man I found off the street.

I was waiting for my friend Joel to get out of rehearsal. And I'm in the atrium of The Goldstein Theatre. So I says to myself, alright, John, time to entertain yourself to pass the time. Let's use that brain to think of something. And I just couldn't do it. Nothing was in my head--now that I needed there to be. Ain't that a kick in the teeth?

Now that I've discovered the secret to true inner peace and quiet I'm going to pass on this service to you. For one payment of $250 I will make you wait for me in a cold, dark room by yourself for an hour--so you can truly focus. What's $250 (plus delivery fees) when compared with clarity of consciousness? Call now! Operators are standing by!

I like to sit in the library at school in those little wooden booth-desks they have lining the walls. Real hermit-style. (In fact I wrote a poem about it once--which uses the phrase I've included in the title, so don't any of you writer-types think about stealing it.) And without fail, there's always something written or scratched into the walls of those cubicles.

I've gotten to sit at many of those seats throughout the library. And I've seen quite a few things decreed there. (And, judging by this, there's quite a few incredibly dumb, racist students attending this university.) What makes a person vandalize something? Do they think they're enacting wide-scale social change by doing this? I hate to break this to you all but the Kennedy family does not visit the Queens College library, there has not been one Rockefeller in the bathroom stall of the second-floor men's room of Hunter College, North Building, and W. H. Auden does not rise from his grave at night to wander into the bathroom of King Hall to see you misquote him on that tile right above the third urinal (on the right).

So I thought, as a community service, I would take the time to respond to some of the queries that have been left for more important folks.

How do you tell someone you can't stand that you don't love them?
I'd think this one would be pretty easy. Try running them over with a car. If they don't get the hint by then, back up.

Kill all Niggers and Jews
Apparently the most ethnically diverse borough still needs more humanities classes. (Or a man with a shotgun. I haven't decided which.)

I Wiz Here
Thank you. You're delightful...

I fucked Pamela. Pamela fucked me. 9.6.06
Good for you. I'm glad charity is still alive and kicking today.

Yea, I fucked her too. She's got big titties and no ass.
Well, we can pretend, can't we?

Shut the fuck up
Make me.