Early morning, still writing, coffee, nicotine and drunk in the ironic joys of frustration. At this time of the day I pretend to write a note, a simple note. This is by far not a philosophical note, neither a philological note. It's rather a pathetic note and little talk. Ari and wife are quarrelling again, and hence a note should come out if and a few clarifications.
We've been for long mistaken in the storyline for wife constitutes no philologist, the only true philologist in the story is not even me, but Ari. The first-born son of the tenth Muse and favourite in the Helicon, that's him. The little lion. The wife is actually a lawyer, the product of consumption and beauty, of the appalling shallowness of urban life, of American life. Yes, are you surprised? Well I'm even more, the last two days have brought into light this terrifying truth, wife is a lawyer. She's one of those you know, with smart suits, shoes and capuccino. She ain't no traditional lawyer, for she's an awful ivy-league product, not sure if Radcliffe or St. John's, but simply a dirty lawyer.
One of those women who was born dreaming about the day of her wedding, her little house and garden, children and traditionalism which obviously contradicts herself being the icon of cosmopolitan life. The working wife, talented professional and almost male sexy individual, an emblem of power. Wife is one of those little women who pretend to change the world, yet not minding a husband, a house and little petty things. She's living in several dualities though, for she can't disregard the presence of Ari and his lack of shallowness, his heavyweight and almost divine wrath, looking at immortality with despise and product of a long bygone morality you can only learn when studying the Classics by yourself, a stranged son of St. Anne's College. Ari is a stateless man, the personification of darkness and a total stranger, Ari is himself by himself and with himself. Wife is standing somewhere else, she's an American, a woman born to predicate the first amend to our constitution, our freedom of speech. Despite her heels she regrets each and every line in the freedom of speech act, being nothing but minimally constitutional herself. Wife is a fan of Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morisette, Tori Amos, even Paula Cole. A starbucks woman, lots of evidentially not surprising facts.
Even so she's unable to disregard Ari and hence her frustration. No wonder Ari's got this natural sympathy for female frustration and wasteful soul searching. How could she ever think of changing the world? Isn't it a little bit of wishful thinking? I mean, that's something people like Ari are supposed to do, yet he's passively letting life take on and enjoying the irreparability of modern life while wife spends endless hours trying to set up new patterns for a new world, which basically doesn't have constitutional ground.
Wife and the journalist have spent some time together in the previous days, and in between cups of coffee (!) and rye they've managed to get along, to talk friendly talk and just undo the world. This mere fact surprises her enormously and her moral as a lawyer and as a woman of the 2000's is deeply injured from the chain of events that led to this encounter. This fact shouldn't surprise us, for firstly the roles were turned upside down, wife in the shade and Ari upfront, wife in hush and Ari in the rush. She curdles up into the terrible of frustration of staring at the scene, from behing the background, from where the lights are dimmed out and on. She felt missing out, slowing down and that, from the perspective of radical feminism turns her into the weakest of figures that ever walked down our plots, a radically meaningless figure, a "dead matter" in words of some philological expert.
Her frustration stems from one very fact: Ari can change the world, his passiveness and allegedly painful awareness change the world, yet wife in her beauty and charm, in her pleasant talk and extremely sensualized feminine motions didn't achieve to change not even the mere course of things, not even a word that was meant to be unsaid. The day slept away and the morning came, Ari and the journalist, wife in the sides. Her unawareness called denial, her radical happiness called denial, her lack of frustration called denial, all those things together couldn't change the world. She's still married, or apparently pretending to be, married to an endless number of pretensions that can be perfectly worn on Friday, even on Sunday. I think she apparently hates him, she hates Ari. This hatred is deep rooted actually, she hates his passiveness and his lack of willingness, his lack of momentum for a change, his lack of success, his storm. But what she hates the most above all is that she damn likes him, finds him an icon of admiration, the self-indulged male on whom any female of the world would lean on without consultation, with icy bites of admiration. If she's a successful woman, born to the modern world, extremely well educated and exotically beautiful, sexy, talented and career-focused, hard working and emancipated. Why couldn't she change this damn world and could he instead?
She tried to find some comfort on Elliot, but the writer deceives her royally by simply silenting up. Is it because he's a gay man? Is it because he can just have meaningless sex and walk out? Is it because he's young and well-fit? Hummm... not really. His emotional landscape is another puzzle which we hardly should curdle up into, feminine enough not to be understood. Last night was a prove that no, this is definitely not it.
He's far more insecure, far more infatuated and far less palpable. In the end of the day he's just fucking twenty, he's not meant to understand all those little issues of wives and house appliances, he's an intellectual too, he's got no time for that non sense. Yet an issue troubles him deeply, he's painfully aware, it's no fun to be a genius specially when you lack of the emotional skills to deal with it, it's no fun to have nowhere to cry. His awareness is nothing but a curse, a curse that isn't at ease. He envies her unawareness, her natural deceiving ability for denial, her self-destructive soul. It's very easy to sympathize with others that way, to befriend people... to awaken pity and simply live up to it. It's no hard task to befriend wife, she's so sweet and charming, she's just all that. Ari lives on a different core, always untouched, always unreached, always allienated. Probably an interesting guy, a sophisicated and high leveled guy yet difficult to chew, too much heavyweight in one man, too much to swallow in one simple go. If so, why does he outreach? How does he manage to change the world being all that? How did he manage to changer HER world if he's all that? Wife is mere simplicity, an easy thing to get hold on, to get rid of. This is her major frustration, a wife that can't take over a young confused man, she just can't. Her lightweight is just unable to fight back, the negative that doesn't beat the positive, it's just helplessness.
Wife the lawyer can't truely understand the events of her life, how could she be just left out? How could a man, an average man, simply not understand everything she's made of? Everything she's fought for? Everything she's worth? Why would her marriage fail? Maybe she just needs another woman in the middle? A haircut that would define her as a radical powerful feminist or a less oversexualized touch? How could her marriage fail, she constitutes nothing but a perfect wife? Who could do better than that?
How could a man be non-responsive to love? How could he resist her delicate touch? Why couldn't he understand her sensibilities? Her maturity. She's not a spring chicken anymore, she must be concerned. It's about time to build a life, to hold onto a man, to occupy some physical space and to embrace the conventions of the world, she's no little girl. Why doesn't he understand her issues? She's just a woman, biology does the job. He's just a man too, what the heck went wrong?
Didn't she read enough self-help books? Or was it just the aggressive suit? Too provokative for a self-centered and overinfatuated man? She just fails to understand. Ari in the other hand laughs in ironic despair, he can just laugh and silent up. How could he ever cope with her life and her posessions much better than she herself did? If she was born for this world. She needs to find some missing screws in her head, she truely needs to and the scotch doesn't really seem to help, the unsuccess of other women doesn't seem to help either.
Don't take me wrong, this is no little story, she's no little wife. This is no cheap plot. We're just heading somewhere else. Wife's got to comfront someone, to bring herself upfront. She needs some help, she needs a therapist, an unorthodox and non-conventional therapist. We'll witness a couple of different sessions (about whose timing and sequence I can't promise anything), she'll be just storming up. I really wish for a better version of this plot because I still lack of the strength to make anything valuable out of it, but I'm truely not so concerned since I have the security this story will be written down many times. I think probably the story shouldn't start here but in the next chapter, for I have the firm conviction a good story starts only by the middle and in the beginning it ends.
Ari
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