I just began the process of applying for unemployment.

It was somewhat easy as things go.  The questions, at times, like filling out your income tax forms, could seem tricky if you didn't read carefully, or if you "think too much" as I do.  Sort of like "Were you unemployed in the last 18 months and if yes did you work all or part of that time period?"  That's not an actual question but it's in the ballpark.  I have been unemployed strictly speaking for six months.  In that time I have come to learn some things about myself and also to realize there are still more things to learn and understand.

When I first stopped working it was in the dead of winter.  My first few weeks of idleness began in short, snowy days.  I watched a lot of TV and did a lot of shoveling. My mental state I can say now with more perspective was that of a person home from work on a holiday or a vacation--or a snow day.  It was more about laziness and acting out of a sense of entitled relaxation. I was still possessed of the self-confidence and the good humor of the gainfully employed.  These things have all burned away with the coming of the spring, slowly and methodically, in a manner nearly imperceptible, until you wake up one hot summer day, like today, on the other side of yourself, and it's something of a different you.

Starting with the superficial: I have acquired new housekeeping habits.  I have an anxiety about things not being in their place.  If I'm moving from one place in the house to another I make a point of looking around where I am to see if something could be moved along with me.  If there's a pile of laundry in the bedroom area I try and take it down to the kitchen where it can be later moved down to the laundry room if I'm going to the basement.  I look for empty bottles or used dishes.  I organize papers and bills into neat piles.  One of the more satisfying exercises is the walk from the mailbox, sorting through the deliveries as I go, straight to the recycling bin where 90% of what arrived goes immediately into the bucket to be put out every other Wednesday.

Jerry Seinfeld has a bit about stuff and how our houses and really our whole lives are about the processing of stuff from initial purchase to eventual trash.  Maybe it was borrowed in theme from George Carlin (I think Jerry calls it "trash" whereas Carlin calls it "stuff") but the idea is the same and of course a metaphor for our very selves.  And that's something that another comedian, Louis CK, is even less abstract about when he says basically that we're all really just dead people who haven't died yet--we're going to spend a lot more time dead than we did alive.  The moving of my stuff from room to room, from table to bin, has made me more aware of the other aspect of things, as has the lack of "stuff" for my brain to be occupied with.  And of course I've started to wonder about it all.

Jerusalem Boogie

I keep thinking I see Jonathan Franzen on the streets of NYC.

I want to be able to say that I know it's not him but I'm not convinced.  It would be more normal to not think I keep seeing him but I don't know what to tell you.  

Yesterday I thought I saw him walking his kids to school on 72nd street near West End.  Corduroy, plaid, and the black frames; a certain attitude--not impatience or frustration with what he was doing necessarily, but more like he had something better to do or wanted at least to appear that way.  Although I will say that Franzen seems to me to be doing a really good job of at least seeming like he doesn't care how he looks to the world outside of at a minimum needing to at least look like a writer.  

I wonder why he keeps appearing to me.  Assuming he is appearing to me of course and that it's not something I'm imagining.  Why me?  Why him?  Is he aware of it or is he only an unwitting pawn in the drama of my life?  I like to think that last part is true.  That would explain a lot actually.  

I suppose I should start reading his writing.  I should really understand him better because you never know how this will all play out.  Maybe I'm supposed to meet him or know him somehow. And when that happens won't it be important that I be able to say something about his books or be able to say at least that I've read them?  Or maybe he won't care.  I suppose it must be very tedious to be spotted all the time and to be talked to about your writing.  I would think there might be something especially important about anonymity to a writer, or a certain amount of it.  A desire to not have to talk about oneself or to explain what motivates you.  To have your art taken for itself, or understood without explanation from you.  To have the reader just interact with the voice you used to speak into the ether, like hearing the ocean inside a shell.  Or, have you ever seen those things that court reporters sometimes use...like cones they speak into to record their voice?  They sit on their chair in the courtroom like an instrument of the justice system letting their ears do listening, passing sounds through their brain, processing the sound and forming it into words that they speak into a hooded microphone.  And then the recording machine will take up the banner and translate the sounds into some electronic etchings into tape to be played back later and steno graphed by some other version of the court reporter--a less robotic version.  

I wonder if Franzen thinks about these things; questions of muses and instruments.  Does Franzen hear God's voice?