chapter 14: the new year

Every year, around the end of December, I spend a good deal of time looking out the window. Like a house dog. “Reflection” is what they call it, but it might as well be coined “Digging A Hole To China With A Utensil,” because once I start “reflecting,” I don’t stop, and I don’t really get anywhere, and my mind and back starts to hurt.

I’m not where I was last year, which is a good thing, I suppose.

Last year, I was toiling with the fourth draft of a short film, doing some freelance film-editing jobs, and cleaning the kitchen for my mom after dinner.

This year, I have my own kitchen. And I haven’t touched a script in months, but I paid for this sandwich I’m eating.

How do I feel?

I feel pretty afraid, actually.

I am looking at my life and feeling kind of frightened by how easy it is to succeed at the things you don’t care about, and how hard it is to thrive at the things you do.

They like me at my job, and they pay me for it and they think I do it well.

But if my salary was connected like an IV to my heart, I’d be banking zero at the job and millions at the script.

But that’s not how life works. It rewards you in the places you least expect it to, and it’s frightening to think that life doesn’t notice if your “heart’s not in it.” In fact, the only one who notices is you.

When Eleanor and I went up to the Empire State Building at 1am, we didn’t speak. We ran out to the freezing observation deck and looked out at the skyscrapers and traffic lights and rooftops and bridges. We reflected in our own quiet way.

In the cab back, we still didn’t speak. And when we went up the elevator to our floor, there was silence.

Eleanor: Goodnight, Doug.

Me: Goodnight.

I walked the five steps to my apartment and shut the door and looked out the window. I considered Digging The Hole again, but passed. Instead, I put on my pajamas and laid in bed and looked up at the ceiling.

Maybe Eleanor felt the same way I did that night above the city: small. 

But in a good way. Because if we’re really that small, imagine how tiny our thoughts are.

And if our thoughts are tiny, our fears are, too.

chapter 12: plot twist

When I suggested to Eleanor at 1am that we head to the top of the Empire State Building, it wasn’t Doug The Finance Guy speaking.

No, it was Doug The Filmmaker. Remember him? The guy who spent most of his life drafting, writing, filming short films that occasionally levitated to production status. I almost forgot about him.

But, like all good ‘plot twists,’ The Filmmaker emerged when I least expected it: at my most intoxicated state, on a pseudo-date with my neighbor, in the middle of the West Village street.

Eleanor: What are you doing?

Me: I’m getting into this cab.

Eleanor: Ha – what? Really? Are you kidding me right now? It’s 1am.

Me: It’s open.

Eleanor: How do you know?

Me: I wrote about it once, in a script. I had to look it up.

Eleanor: A script? What do you mean? You write?

Me: Get in the cab.

She scooted her way into the seat, and after I uttered the words of every tourist to the cab driver, she zoomed in on me.

Eleanor: Do you live a double life?

Me: No, I’m just, living something different right now.

Eleanor: What did you used to do?

Me: Write and direct films. I’ve done it for years.

Eleanor: Were any produced?

Me: A couple. Out of college and through my twenties. They were produced at festivals and such. But it started peetering out slowly, almost too slowly to tell. And then this year it finally hit me that nothing of mine had been produced in six years.

Eleanor: Where were you when all this was happening?

Me: At my parent’s house. In my bedroom. In New Jersey.

Alcohol: it’s a killer.

Me: So I made the decision at 40 to end it and take a stable job. So now I’m here.

Eleanor: Living across from me.

Me: Yes.

She looked at me with her eyes crunched slightly, and turned her head to look out the window. We were shuttling straight up 6th Ave., hitting every green light.

Eleanor: Funny.

Me: What.

Eleanor: Why are people always so afraid to share the most interesting things about themselves?

Me: It’s not interesting. I failed.

Eleanor: You didn’t fail. You’re on hiatus. Like a TV show.

Then she looked at me, and I watched the flicker in her eyes happen again.

Eleanor: Do you love it.

Me: Film?

Eleanor: Yeah.

Me: I thought I did. I really felt so happy in the making of it all. You know those moments? When you’re in it?

Eleanor: Yeah. ‘Flow,’ they call it.

Me: Yeah. But then you see what you’re up against, and I don’t know if I have what it takes to compete. There’s so much more training involved now, and complicated technology. I just like to write and film a good story, but I don’t think that’s enough anymore.

Eleanor: You mean, because everyone else is so trained in structure and the high-tech cameras and such?

Me: Yeah.

Eleanor: Hm.

Then she looked out the window again, and I felt that uncomfortable sobering that happens when you realize you’ve spewed forth a truth about your past life at 1am to your unsuspecting neighbor in a NYC cab.

Eleanor: But if everyone else, right now, is so focused on training and technology and formulaic structure, then who’s left to write the good stories?

The cab came to a halt outside the Empire State. I paid the fare and we got out and onto the sidewalk.

Eleanor: Do you know what I mean, Doug? While everyone’s running around like worker ants creating generic scripts that not even the state-of-the-art technology can make look good, then who’s writing the truly good stuff?

The cab driver drove away.

Eleanor: You.

She smiled at me. That was the most encouraging thing I’d heard in a long time.

Eleanor: It sounds like there’s a position open…

I laughed.

Me: Perhaps.

Eleanor: So what happens next in your film? The one about Empire State.

Me: Well, I was writing a modern-day take on “An Affair to Remember,” so…

She laughed.

Me: Kidding.

Eleanor: No, really though. What happens?

Me: They do what everyone does.

Eleanor: What.

Me: They go up.

And so, we went.

chapter 10: hit man

Ever since the holiday, it’s felt like a rippling, red-and-green-striped tidal wave has crashed through New York, and I’ve become swept up in it. My nights have been spent at work until 9pm, trying to stay focused and seemingly interested and capable in an industry I know nothing about, all while dusting remnants of nacho chips onto my keyboard every time I type.

Every time I think I’ve finally mastered something, the task suddenly gets harder and I’m proven wrong. It’s like thinking you’ve beat the boss at the final level of a video game, until he suddenly hurls a grenade you’ve got to learn how to dodge. Life stays interesting.

But does it really?

Sometimes I worry that I’m becoming this one-note person – someone who’s just his job, losing sight of his creative sensations and urges, who doesn’t look up – reach upwards – long enough to grasp what living is.

Why have I not seen Eleanor? I didn’t get her number. And I don’t have Facebook. In fact, I don’t even know if she’s back from the holidays. So now, we’re thrust into this 19th-century relationship where encounters are dictated by fate, not text. And since I’m working so much and hardly home to knock on her door, fate has yet to make its appearance. But why hasn’t she knocked on my door? Or maybe she has – and I’ll never know. “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it…”

The good news: there’s been an addition to the family.

Meet: Sir Hunter Green.

He’s a modest three-feet-tall, stocked with colorful lights and a stuffed reindeer ornament I got at the Union Square holiday market. The lights were too long so I laid the rest of it on my heating vent. I’m not very crafty.

Sir Hunter and I have been listening to Christmas music all day while I’ve laid in bed watching Damages. Have you seen it? It stars Glen Close and Rose Byrne as ruthless lawyers in New York doing illegal things to bring ‘justice’ to the world. The moral of the entire five-season story: trust no one.

And now the lesson has started rubbing off on me. Have you ever noticed that about TV shows? When you become so committed and attached to them, these people become your friends and their outlooks become your own. You’ve got to choose wisely, you know.

Now I’ve started questioning everyone’s intentions: is that guy with the love-struck girlfriend secretly texting her best friend? Did my friend leave last night’s party early to feed his fledgling drug addiction? Did the waiter steal my credit card number to pay off a hit man to kill a roommate who knows his darkest secret?

You see, I don’t want to question people’s motives. Navigating life is hard enough without having to dissect every moment like a Salinger book. But yet – there’s an air of ‘mystery’ that the questioning brings, like there’s some underground scandal I’ve discovered, and should be sitting in an oak-paneled room with a cigar, plotting how to avenge ‘the bad guy.’

I’ve lost it. Have I lost it? Has my life become so humdrum that I’m assuming the thoughts of TV characters? I don’t want to be someone who spends his nights and weekends escaping to a show because his own life isn’t fun enough to watch.

Time to make things interesting.