The Desert (Excerpt)

The first thing I did was buy a big dog.

I named the big dog Kurt Gödel.  I know almost nothing about Kurt Gödel except that he formulated the incompleteness theorem and starved himself to death.

I want to meet a girl who knows the same amount about Kurt Gödel that I do.  Probably.

The second thing I did was find a desert.  David Foster Wallace said that Tuscon was one of the only places he ever felt at home in.  He hung himself on his front porch in Bloomington, IL.  His dogs were barking.  His dogs were named Drone and Jeeves.

Harold Bloom covered all of this in The Anxiety of Influence I think.

Next I found an apartment near the desert.  I lived with a couple who fought a lot.  Sometimes I would break up the fights.  I would separate the couple and tell each of them that they hated each other and the best thing to do for all parties was to end things amicably.  I told her he says these things because he loves you and is passionate.  I told him she hits you with hangers because you she knows you won’t hit her back in any serious way.  My windows faced the desert.

A window that faces the desert looks different than a television show set in the desert.  The desert in your window is one color.

The dog liked the desert.

I always imagined I would see guys in the desert with metal detectors.  I always felt that sand and metal detectors went together.  There is an episode of Pete and Pete where the dad brings a metal detector to the beach and finds a Cadillac buried in the sand.  The family spends all day digging out the Cadillac and then they drive home in the Cadillac.  How did they get to the beach though?

This was the period where I often did Yoga.  It wasn’t real Yoga because learned all the positions from a Google image search for “Yoga.”  It was stretching, with grace.  This was back when I was trying to be happy.  This also explains why I bought the dog (Kurt Gödel).

I did lots of jumping jacks too.  One time I recorded video of myself doing jumping jacks to see if I was getting the timing right.  I stopped doing jumping jacks after that.

I started waking up at 9 o’clock.  Waking up at 9 o’clock makes you want to do things like get a haircut.

I got a military style haircut.  People looked me in the eyes and said “thank you for your service” and I would say “You are welcome.  Enjoy your freedom.”  One time a boy asked me how many people I’d killed and I had to tell him none.  The boy was disappointed and his disappointment disappointed me.

My dog got pregnant by another species of dog.  She gave birth to cytoplasm-filled water-balloons.  She wept and I held her and said “poor Kurt Gödel” like two hundred times.