Many years ago now when my cousin Jack and I were coked to the gills on a variety of psychotropic substances in Santa Monica in Los Angeles, we stood along the beach at midnight and observed the ferris wheel spinning on Santa Monica Pier. Its rainbow lights illuminated the dark beach below and lit up the undersides of a cluster of grey clouds which hung over the pier. The wheel spun slowly towards us while the lights performed some preprogrammed light show. It was beautiful but there was also something a little somber about the whole thing. The tight clockwork precision of its lighted spokes felt jarringly artificial to us now that we had rocketed through the exosphere and into the blackness of outer space. We agreed that the little glimmer of sadness we were experiencing was because we could sense that the ferris wheel could not feel time.

Years later I would tell this story to my friend Judy. Judy was from LA and for whatever reason we were talking about that very ferris wheel. I told her that now every time I see any ferris wheel, I can’t help but feel a little sadness knowing it exists outside of time.

Before I left for Berlin in 2019, Judy came over to my house and hand-delivered a letter to my sister while I was away. In it, among other things, she had written about the ferris wheel. I remember being surprised she had remembered something so insignificant.

Two days ago in Seattle, I felt a shadow pass over me. I had awoken that morning to find that my right eye had darkened, which is something that happens every now and then when I get particularly stressed out and sad. I groaned knowing it would be some time until my vision cleared up again, an event which is as spontaneous as the darkening of the eye. It could be six months from now for all I know. I felt the oppressive hand of some cosmic cataclysm hovering above my head . . . something up there was moving backward and taking me along with it. I put on my jacket and boots and went for a walk.

Having no alternative, I plunged myself in my deepest reveries and began walking. My body automatically pointed itself toward Elliott Bay, towards water. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever . . . and so I went in the direction of it, thinking its ancient gentleness would help alleviate the mysterious psychic pain I had felt all morning and afternoon.

Along the Seattle Waterfront I passed through crowds of happy people . . . the rain had let up and the weather was nice. It was relatively warm for November. Being out among people, I began to feel all right again. I put my hands in my pockets and walked as close to the water as I could. I watched the water-gazers and gazed along with them. In no time I found myself at the ferris wheel there.

Some part of myself was protecting me just then, and so I did not think much of it. I stopped and took a picture and then kept walking. I walked for hours along the water and the streets surrounding Pike Place Market . . . I bought postcards and a cup of coffee and looked for a place to sit down and fill them out. But now the world did not feel as kind as it had hours before. The temperature had dropped and I felt a strong urge to get away from the crowded streets . . . I wanted to be with Felix and Jupiter back at the house. So I began to walk the many miles home in the cold dark. I felt that same misery from earlier for reasons I could not readily place.

Retracing my steps, I once again passed the same ferris wheel from before. This time it was lit up red white and blue . . . the lights expanding outward from the bullseye in the center, the same animated pattern looping mindlessly over and over. I felt a little sadness that the ferris wheel existed outside of time. It could not feel it like I could.

The part of my brain in charge of protecting me from my own memories had shut off for the night. I felt the full weight of my own history press down upon me like a curse. And gazing up at the ferris wheel illuminating the darkness above the lonely square where I stood, I remembered my friend Judy and began to cry.

Judy died nearly four years ago now. I stood there thinking about the last few times I’d seen her before I never saw her again, which was around this time of year. I thought about how she’d texted me in the middle of the night just hours before she died and how that still haunted me. And I remembered that letter she had written me years ago, the one in which she mentioned the ferris wheel and how she’d had a dream about me. At the end of the letter she’d said she was sad that I was leaving and that she cared about me. Did Judy know I cared about her too? That I dream about her still? I never told her how much all that had meant to me, and now I never can. Now Judy exists outside of time too.

The ferris wheel churned counterclockwise on its axle above Elliott Bay. Its movements were utterly silent. I watched the animation on the lighted spokes shoot out from the bullseye, saw their ghostly reflections waver upon the dark water below, and felt the artificiality of it all. It had begun to drizzle. I turned up my collar and walked home alone in the dark with the light of the city behind me.

Back in May, when I was in London, I accompanied my friend Nicole (The Olivetti Girl) . . .

. . . to a pub where our friend Bex was playing a little show that night. She and I had accidentally ended up in the same train car when taking the tube there. We walked from the station to the pub and felt very good just then. Once inside, both of us dressed in black and wearing dark sunglasses, we got a drink and sat down. Of all the things I could have brought up, I asked her if there were a Dark Nicole somewhere inside her, as I knew there was a Dark Ryan inside me. I had been ruminating upon this part of myself a lot around that time.

When I say Dark I don’t necessarily mean some sinister form of one’s self, though maybe there is the faintest hint of this. For instance, I don’t think I possess a single molecule of true evil in my brain, and I am confident Nicole does not either. As I (poorly) explained to her then, Dark Nicole, if she did exist, would just be the version of herself who had to bend reality to get things done . . . to briefly occupy a moral grey area, to do something reckless with your mind and body, to light up your skeleton and run on high-octane jet fuel well past the limits of your normal self.

But in fact there is no Dark Nicole at all. Bless her, upon my asking this dumb question, she seemed confused and pondered it in earnest, finally arriving at “No”. Nicole is as blameless as the day she was born all those years ago in Italy. There is only the one Nicole, the one who is pure in heart, and we’re all very happy to know her.

As for me, I know I am governed by Three Ryans, one of whom is Dark Ryan. A long time ago now a friend of mine wrote an email to our mutual friend about this, although at the time she only sensed two of me. (In retrospect, the third came later . . . it broke off from Dark Ryan and became its own thing.) Tonight for whatever reason I thought about that email again and was able to find it. I remembered this part in particular:

. . . Add to this the peculiar circumstance of his dichotomous nature; one darker, cynical half which charms, intimidates and inspires caricatures; and the other half, which is—well, you very well know—infinitely melancholic, gentle and insecure.

I realize I am putting this in cartoonish terms, but here it is: there is a certain kind of confidence (power??) I derive from Dark Ryan that gets me into as much trouble as it gets me out of. It’s almost like wielding a cursed sword that is supernaturally strong but saps your life upon relying on its power. You can’t overdo it or else you run the risk of veering into the territory of permanent irreversible damage.

Sometimes I think I overdo it is what I’m getting at. I rely too much on that third of myself when I should lean more on the other two. And to be clear, I’m not talking split personalities for God’s sake. I just mean I contain multitudes as any of us do, but mine I can easily delineate. I can tell when one side of me is more dominant than the others. It changes multiple times a day . . . sometimes I possess stripes of each.

And what are the other two? Anyone could tell you, as my friend did above, that I have an “infinitely melancholic” side. There is about thirteen years of evidence on this very website, don’t you know. To me, melancholy is a particular kind of sadness. It is understated and wistful. I can more or less function in this way. Truthfully this is the person I am more often than not, and on any given day, especially when I am by myself. I am this person right now, much as I always am at four in the morning. I feel, as my friend rightly pointed out long ago, melancholic, sensitive, and insecure.

The problem is that this side of me is prone to being embarrassing and overly sentimental and ridiculous to the point of bordering on self-parody. Countless times in my life I have eclipsed myself. You just can’t be that way all the time . . . it’s like being made of glass. Everything that comes out of me is utterly sincere, but that also means I am vulnerable to dropping the castle bridge over the moat and letting the whole world inside to destroy me. I can be far too trusting. And when that happens, as it often does, I am wholly reliant on the other two sides of me to fix everything. In the best circumstances, the brave side of me shoulders the entire burden. That version of me is good and honest and strong, and came about later in my life simply because I committed the sin of having lived too long. I have been broken so many times that I created out of necessity a goodly knight to rescue me (us?) from my (our?) own stupidity. He is a product of surviving Death and continuing that survival . . . why, I could not tell you.

(I am stopping to wonder now if Court Jester Ryan is the fourth quadrant. Or does that fall under . . .)

Then there is Dark Ryan. And when the strong and virtuous side of me is overburdened or out to lunch, only arriving in the most dire of circumstances to yank me out of the morass, Dark Ryan, also strong, assumes the throne to repair all the damage to the castle wall that Melancholic Ryan has done.

Let’s just call the thing what it is for once: Being Dark Ryan is fun . . . I become completely fearless, like I’m a hundred feet tall and resplendent in unbreakable armor. I can do anything! It feels like conjuring dark magic. But this is not energy which is infinite nor freely expended without consequence. As I have said, it is a cursed sword. And as long as I wield it, it will slowly drain me. It’s seductive! and yet it can be dangerous. If I’m not careful, it can get me into an even worse kind of trouble. It could even get me killed.

I bring this up because every now and then I feel like I ought to destroy that part of me . . . almost like an exorcism. I’ve seen the light and I’ve heard the word . . . do I really need this guy anymore? Perhaps this sounds silly or overly naive to you, but I think everyone should strive to be virtuous. This is a task which never ends. I am going to spend the rest of my life endeavoring to be more virtuous than I had been before. But if you have some Dark side of you which you rely upon to save you (or worse, let out of the attic as if releasing an avenging spirit), can it really be said that you truly possess a virtuous soul? I wonder.

For now I will let it be. I don’t even know if you can ever truly be rid of something like that. Perhaps Dark Ryan is just as much a part of me as the other two Ryans, and if plucked out like a barb, would render me obsolete . . . or outright kill me. And anyway, I’m not entirely thankless. I’m definitely still here and alive because that part of my brain rescued me from myself, or else from a world that would have otherwise pulverized me into sawdust. Melancholic Ryan cannot exist alone! Love him though I do, it’s just the truth. I need him most of all because he is the real me, which is why he needs protecting.

And now of course I feel compelled to quote one of my favorite passages from MOBY-DICK. It is more fitting than ever. I could sit here for a trillion years and never come up with a better way of summing up everything I have just said:

But even Solomon, he says, “the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain” (i.e. even while living) “in the congregation of the dead.” Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

An hour ago I was jolted awake from a series of nightmares and have not been able to go back to sleep . . . unfortunately my fragile unconscious mind had decided to mosey on back down to Skeleton Town. In the darkness, slicked in a cold sweat, I despaired when I remembered I had left all my Trazodone back in Berlin, so now I’m on my own. There is no nuclear option available to me. What I need right now is an elephant tranquilizer in a major artery and eight hours of dark and dreamless sleep. But of course I’m sure I’ll still be lying on my back in agony as the sun rises over Seattle. Certainly there are worse fates (I have endured countless of them), but then I guess you could say that about pretty much anything . . .

Brother Jackson took this photo of me as we strolled Capitol Hill here in Seattle the other day . . .

i was feeling kind of seasick when the crowd called out for more

*its (how embarrassing)

Got stoned to the bone and watched MCCABE & MRS. MILLER, which I love but had not seen in years. It reminded me of around this time in November 2018 when Matt and I watched it probably four or five times in two weeks, or else we’d have it on in the background while doing other things. We missed McCabe when he wasn’t bumbling around on our TV. I can’t help help it: even now, many years later, I am still endeared by McCabe and identify with him . . . he is of course a sort of fool, just like me. I see myself in his foolishness. I am the same kind of fool.

That November was pretty rough for me for reasons that don’t matter anymore, and which were almost certainly all my fault anyway, but it does not bring me any despair to think about that time now, though for some years it did. The only pain I feel from its remembrance now is the pain of knowing that whole era is long gone. It was a good era . . . maybe it was the best one, if you really want to know. I tried to hold on to it as long as I could. I bent it till it broke off . . . bled it till it ran dry! And yet still one day it slipped away. I turned around and it was gone from me. Maybe sometimes that’s just how the thing goes. Hey man, I tried . . .

I am thinking of all the strange little stretches of my life I have experienced since that November in Oakland . . . there have been so many of them. Back then I would not have seen any of them coming, one after the other, and not letting up even until the present moment. I’ve been all over the world a dozen times since then, and yet lately I have had the uncanny feeling that I am currently in one of the strangest epochs yet. Wow! It does not feel like I wandered into it so much as woke up inside of it, that sort of dream-within-a-dream feeling . . . but I can never shake myself out of the original dream, so everything that is happening to me feels like it is still one or two layers removed from reality. A dream that does not end continues to build upon itself. At any rate, I think I have decided I like it.

I am in Seattle with Felix and his sister Jupiter . . .

. . . who are so cute I want to jump out of the window, and mostly I have been watching movies with them, or else reading or writing or doing pull-ups . . . and sleeping as much as possible. I am trying to put on five pounds before I return to New York on the 20th. Since August when I left Berlin, I have been to over a dozen states and three times as many cities . . . have walked and flown and driven and bussed and train’d every which way across this godforsaken continent. I have wondered if my hunger and fatigue have contributed to this dreamlike feeling. Yet even full and rested here in Seattle (perhaps for the first time since I left Europe), I still feel that surreal feeling . . . sometimes stronger than I think I ever did before.

At least the flow of linear time has been more or less consistent. The seasons are the same in my dream. I still need to figure out where I’m going to spend Thanksgiving. I will either go with Caroline and her family in Northern Virginia, or else go off someplace alone, maybe up to Vermont, and do whatever it is I do. Of course, I would prefer to be with other people if I can swing it. After Thanksgiving, I got a few days to kill before I head back to New York for the third time, so I think I will go up to Detroit and Chicago to see Kelsey and Gayle and Sarah and Hali. I feel like I’ve got to keep moving around to stay out of trouble. And anyway, Kelsey has a new cat named Trish I need to meet . . .

All I’ve done today is sit on my ass and watch movies with the cats, and yet I am exhausted. This gummy absolutely sledgehammered me and I have no idea why . . . normally with this stuff I got the constitution of a god damn mountain! Well, what the hell, I really think I ought to go to sleep. I feel like a real fool tonight, and nothing good can come from me carrying on like this for another hour, never mind two or three. The dream I will have tonight will be a dream within a dream within a dream. Not unlike the man himself, it will be heavy, and weird, and seem to go on forever.

in a lonely place (1950)