Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

I’ve found an ingenious place to think- inside cool, dark cathedrals of Paris. Of course believers as dumb as patriots make conversations but conversations quiet as they’re w/ God. Stupid how we think God only hears our thoughts when we address them to him in particular& not when we think our dirty little thoughts in everyday scenarios such as I hope Fred dies soon so I can have his office, it really is much nicer than mine. The meaning of faith is our understanding w/ Creator that he will not eavesdrop on our mind’s whisper to itself unless invited.

Café Gitane

Months since last written. Crazy with solitude crazy with indecision crazy with imaginary eyes. Days filled w/ walking thinking reading eating drinking smoking & generally trying to pick the padlock of life but it’s difficult when you’re the blunt weapon left out of every war. Hope I won’t suffer same problems in the future, can’t think of anything worse. (Not that I’ve anything against problems, I don’t- expect to have them all my life- just don’t want them to be the same problems. Hope for different horrific affliction to mark each new year.) I think your early twenties must be the age you stumble onto patterns that will ruin your life.

A Thursday

Talk about volatile combinations now LUST & LONELINESS have fused in a haunting unbearable way my body screams my soul screams to touch to be touched around me are countless chiseled & flawless couples look like they’re off to start new unendurable race of ex-soap stars there MUST be someone for me somewhere.

2:30- Midweek?

Every day- same café, different book to read. I don’t speak to ANYONE & keep my eyes in strange places when I order my coffee but they know my face here. The patrons smoke anything flammable & the bartender asks you what you want to drink as if you might be his old nemesis from high school but he isn’t sure & I sit at a small table near the radiator thinking here I am again wanting to be invisible then furious when ignored.

Out the large window I look at life. What a fucking lot of bipeds! Australia – bipeds throwing a ball. Paris – bipeds in turtleneck sweaters. Pessoa called humanity “variable but unimprovable”- hard to find a better description than that. The waiter comes by with the bill. I argue w/ him & lose quickly. No wonder key existentialists were French. It’s natural to be horrified at existence when you have to pay 4 dollars for coffee.

Undated Time

I imagine Judgment Day to be God calling you into a tiny white room w/ an uncomfortable wooden chair that you sit in & splinter yourself as you shift anxiously. He comes in smiling like a train conductor who found you without a ticket & he says I don’t care what good you did or what evil & I don’t care if you believed in me or in my son or in any other member of my extended family & I don’t care if you gave generously to the poor or if you gave to them stingily with closed fists but here is a minute-by-minute account of your time on earth. Then he produces a piece of paper 10,000 kilometers long & says, Read this & explain yourself. Mine would read as follows:

June 14th

9:00 am

woke up

9:01 am

lay in bed, staring at ceiling

9:02 am

lay in bed, staring at ceiling

9:03 am

lay in bed, staring at ceiling

9:04 am

lay in bed, staring at ceiling

9:05 am

lay in bed, staring at ceiling

9:06 am

lay in bed, staring at ceiling

9:07 am

lay in bed, staring at ceiling

9:08 am

rolled over onto left side

9:09 am

lay in bed, staring at wall

9:10 am

lay in bed, staring at wall

9:11 am

lay in bed, staring at wall

9:12 am

lay in bed, staring at wall

9:13 am

lay in bed, staring at wall

9:14 am

lay in bed, staring at wall

9:15 am

doubled over pillow, sat up to see out window

9:16 am

sat in bed, staring out window

9:17 am

sat in bed, staring out window

9:18 am

sat in bed, staring out window

9:19 am

sat in bed, staring out window

Then God would say Life is a gift & you never even bothered to unwrap it. Then he would smite me.

New Year’s Eve

All Paris counting down to Christmas now counting down to New Year proving that not only are we more obsessed with time than ever we just can’t stop counting everything. Our perception is that time is moving forward but scientists tell us we are wrong wrong wrong in fact they say we are so wrong they feel a little embarrassed for us.

It’s New Year’s Eve & I’ve NOTHING to do NOBODY to touch NO ONE to kiss.

January 1

What a night! If anyone feels sudden potent tremors in the world they come from me having finally sideslipped into the aromatic hairy pocket of the other gender. Yes it’s official- I am a fornicator!

Sat on bench in Montmartre cemetery opposite Nijinsky’s grave & made a list of resolutions. The usual bunk- quit smoking & be happy with what you have & give to beggars but not pleaders & don’t grovel even to yourself & piss wine & shit gold blahblahblah. Banal list of promises to myself numbered an even fifty & as I tore them up I thought New Year’s resolutions are a confession that all along we know the fault of our unhappiness lies w/ us & not w/ others.

Walked the streets until midnight among the people of Paris gorging on joy & I felt stupid & inadequate in my unhappiness & it seemed very clear to me that loneliness is the worst thing in the world & people should ALWAYS be forgiven for all the compromises they make in love.

At midnight I put my fingers in my ears but it didn’t do any good-

I could still hear it. The countdown to the New Year was the worst thing I’d ever heard.

I walked on. The window of regular café shone out of the fog in a circle of dotted lights. As I entered fat bartender poured me champagne smiling. I took it & wished him a happy New Year in French. Regular patrons all turned eager to know who I was & plied me w/ questions & let out gasps of shock when I said I was from Australia – my country to them no closer than the moon. Got drunk & returned questions w/ questions & found out who had children who was divorced who had bowel cancer who won a small literary prize for a poem entitled “The Tripe of Life” who had crushing financial difficulties & who belonged to the Freemasons but don’t tell anybody.

4 am- noticed a woman standing at the other end of the bar. Hadn’t seen her come in. She had a beautiful angular face & wide brown eyes & wore a black furry hat & when she removed it hair fell out all over the place over her face into her champagne. She had a lot of hair. It went down her back. It went into my mind. It covered her shoulders & my thoughts.

I watched her as she drank & thought her face was one that you have to earn- there was a world-weariness in that face as if it had seen all the acts of creation & all the acts of destruction & had gotten stuck in the bottleneck of history & crawled out naked over miles & miles of broken bodies & machine parts & wound up here in this bar for a quick glass of champagne to rinse the taste of holocaust from her mouth.

The alcohol gave me courage & I went over without preparing an opening line.

– Bonsoir, mademoiselle. Parlez-vous anglais? I asked.