Some people want to be Bill Gates. Some people want to be Jesus Christ. I want to be Joan Didion in New York and California in 1970, surrounded by terror and clarity in a strange world, with the ability to ingest it and turn it into paranoid poetry. I want to live in a house with an avocado tree, living in fear of a serial killer that stalks Hollywood. I want to be Raymond Chandler, holed up in a studio with a whisky in a tall tall Wilshire Blvd. deco building, with lamps and couches and barren walls and a brass bed single and I want to stand at the window and part the curtains and look out over the lonely 1930s city. I want to be Fitzgerald in 1920s Paris, wandering the damp cobblestone streets and drinking a bottle by the river and watching the water move slow and deep and dark and dirty. I want to be Marlene Dietrich, I want to be Jean Arthur, I want to be Betty Davis, I want to be Greta Garbo, I want to be Myrna Loy with William Powell and Asta at my side, I want to be Maureen O'Sullavan dancing with the Marx brothers, I want to swing with Gene Kelly. I want to see Cuba in the 1940s, I want to see New York in the 1950s. I want to be the beautiful buildings of downtown Sacramento, I want to be the open rice fields there. I want to be free, I want to be likeable, I want to be easy. I am just not sure I want to be me.
3 comments:
In my opinion, you are ALL of those women, places and times because they are a part of your self-identity.
i understand your being ambivalent about being you, but i am sure that "you" is no more a fixed, unchanging entity than the United States is (as my man Obama pointed out in the famous speech of Tuesday March 18). Since one is a work in progress, one can always become more who one wants to be.
personally, i wouldn't want you to be anyone but you, whoever you are, were & will be.
"I want to live in a house with an avocado tree, living in fear of a serial killer that stalks Hollywood."
I love avocados but I hate Hollywood, which just means I secretly love Hollywood stalkers and all. I'd like to watch the dark dirty water you speak so beautifully of. You make it sounds so lovely and mysterious. I suppose I like love and I do love a good mystery. Needless to say I like your words and a good cup of tea. Perhaps a sit down with both one day?
Thanks for the great read, you are too likeable. You are probably more you than you know it.
you write bette david but surely you mean bette davis.
perhaps you cannot avoid saying my name? :)
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