Hi Bert.
I still tell the story of what I did in your apartment. It was spectacularly clumsy, as in, a literal spectacle. Nothing like that has transpired since. My habit of doing consistent harm to property hasn’t changed, sure—I slowly whittle away at the works of man, breaking a decanter here, a keyboard there. If you have me as a houseguest for a month, usually I’m replacing one of your glasses, and buying you a bottle of some amaro by way of apology. But what I did with your stuff is special.
I’m sure you remember. Quite sure you remember. In the course of a month: your spatula, your toilet, your sofa, your plant, all destroyed, shattered, dead. This was not a reflection on you, I hope you know. If anything, this betrayed a preternatural comfort that I enjoyed in your presence, and the presence of your specific absence, in your dwelling. I was comfortable enough to flail violently.
The sunlight on the wall was so lovely. Drinking North Korean moonshine with you and hearing your theories and plans was so, so lovely. And I rewarded you with a mess. Sorry.
My theory about the sofa is still that there were keys jutting out of my back pocket one night when I was on drugs with K. My theory about the plant is that I was so trapped in my head, eight years ago, so profoundly inattentive to everything except my ‘career’ and ‘social stratus’ that I simply accepted persistent, needless death as another thing hurtling by me.
So I think about you when I think about damage, which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
I turned 34. This is a really funny age. Not young, not old. I don’t have to be in a hurry to start reproducing, but I should start considering my sperm quality. In better shape than I was at 23, but knowing that won’t last forever. Feeling the damage in my body, which is real, though I’ve lived fairly softly. A few slightly crunchy and indignant bits of connective tissue left over from grappling, which hiss at me occasionally. Some temporary marks on my face that weren’t temporary. A slight rumble in my voice from my formerly smoke-bathed larynx that hasn’t quite left even though I haven’t touched a cigarette in years.
In some ways I’ve lived a life of damage more than construction. Moving my stuff from city to city, as I’ve been doing, is fairly easy—I don’t really have any stuff. I’ve learned a lot from my romantic relationships and careers, and I can make that statement definitive because they’re almost all over. Sure, what I’ve written counts as something built, but it’s been produced by woodchippering everything else.
But, to be fair, I suppose this has been in service of a construction process, in a way. What I’m constructing is my experience. And hopefully, by hammering away at all of these potential lives, I’m turning towards myself, becoming a thing that is more me. And without illusions about my nature, I could be more capable of building what I’d like to—a life of helping someone great propagate their genetic material, a house in a forest or desert somewhere, more and different words on the page.
Part of my damage, fortunately, is to my naïveté. I no longer feel like a scared little boy confused about how the world works. Some things make me feel boyish—I still am capable of being animated by the sparkle of lust—but I just get my day done, well or poorly, and enjoy the consequences. This is a quality I admire in you: instead of wondering at the bizarreness of civilization, or the hypocrisy of us all, you just develop strategies for merrily getting what you want. You helped me talk my way into a beautiful complimentary hotel room in Lisbon, and, beyond that, to consider all my resources, all the potential angles—a mindset I haven’t forgotten. Damage has helped me incline in this direction further, by knocking away the superfluous.
I was heartened to learn, recently, that when a metal object rusts, the mass of the object does not decrease. The air and water composing part of the oxide—I don’t really know about chemistry—is trapped in the surface, adding to the weight. The iron slowly mates with the atmosphere. So if you like the look of damage, you just get more of it to love.
Maybe that’s what I’m doing here, as well; becoming a connoisseur of damage, getting more of it to adore. Maybe, more than the beauty of what persists, I, consciously or unconsciously, pursue the beauty of doomed and fleeting things. The hemlock spewing embers in the fire. That person turning to kiss you one last time. The arc traced by the box of shit I throw into the garbage dump at Landers, the UFO capital of America.
I love going to the garbage dump, especially if I’ve got a big, bangy truck, don’t you? And in a way, admiring transience is a step towards recognizing the beauty in all things, don’t you think? It’s not as if the seemingly more solid objects, the ones I haven’t discarded, aren’t also borrowed from the void. This marble column here is drying and crumbling as much as this loaf of bread there, just on a different schedule. Even if my imaginary sons produce a long line of progeny, they won’t outlast the sun. Time itself will disappear when all the light in the universe is scattered. Knowing this animates the still and seemingly dead. Really, it’s not dead yet—not like it will be.
Nonetheless, at some point soon, I would like to start engaging in some of this slower decay, to tend to a few fires for a longer period. It would be nice to watch the enchanting damage accumulate in some particular love, or some particular set of timbers, for a few decades instead of a few weeks or months.
Maybe this will start soon—in a small way, beginning, perhaps, with the rekindling of our acquaintance. I will see you in August in Montreal. I look forward to hearing of your damage, and I will do my best to not add more to your life, except the good kind.
Warmly,
-Alexander Chapin