Free I'll Seize the Day Tomorrow by Jonathan Goldstein Page A

existential.”
    Writer’s block descends like a … something or other.
    TUESDAY.
    Still unable to write the story, I take a break and read the latest New Yorker for inspiration. I arrive at a poem that contains the following lines:
    Seasons repeat themselves, but the tree Shading the yard keeps growing.
    Ideally, how should a New Yorker poem be read? The same as you would a New Yorker cartoon? Because it feels inappropriate to partake in a beautiful bit of verse filled with simple, profound truths about the human condition and then return to a profile of Lady Gaga on the same page.
    And so after finishing the poem, I take a walk in the snow.
    WEDNESDAY.
    Writer’s block persists.
    I decide to nap, and while asleep I dream I’m riding an old-fashioned bicycle while sporting a handlebar moustache drenched in mustard. It strikes me as a portentous omen. I awake and immediately call up Tucker to go for hot dogs.
    Tucker says that hot dogs seem like a good idea, that they may buoy his spirits. He says he’s been filled with somuch self-loathing lately that he considers starting each day by spitting into his own coffee.
    Tucker’s self-revulsion might be part of a growing cultural trend—one that can inspire whole new markets of enterprise. I can imagine seeing these special coffees sold at Starbucks for five dollars a pop. Call them “prison cappuccinos.”
    I tell Tucker my idea and he says that if it were to bear his imprimatur, he would not want it offered with soy.
    â€œI’m tired of hearing everyone talk about how they’re switching from milk to soy.Why doesn’t anyone talk about switching from milk to whisky?”
    Soon Tucker will bring his trademark iconoclasm to the hot dog joint where, as usual, he will eat his wiener by alternating his bites from one end to the other end until he is left with his final, middle bite.
    Tucker’s hot dog technique recalls what Jean-Luc Godard had to say about film: there should always be a beginning, middle, and end—just not necessarily in that order. And like Godard, Tucker upsets expectations. So much so that the counterman, as always, watches him eat while waiting anxiously for the whole confusing spectacle to end. I watch, too, making my peace with the fact that sometimes the middle is the last thing you reach, in hot dogs as well as stories about pie-eating.

Padding the Dream
    (30 weeks)
    SUNDAY.
    As my wallet is beginning to smell like a junkyard Barcalounger and look as misshapen as my father’s, I’ve purchased a new one. I go through the old one and empty it of the shards of plans left undone. Business cards for services meant to improve my life, unfilled medical prescriptions meant to improve my health, and fortune-cookie fortunes that were meant to inspire me but instead only made me hungry for Chinese food. A dream deflated does not look like a raisin in the sun. It looks like an old emptied wallet.
    I slide the new streamlined billfold into my back pocket, turn around to look at it there, and realize that, without a wallet full of hope, my once shapely buttocks are a thing of the past.
    WEDNESDAY.
    Howard and I have ordered pizza. When the delivery guy hands over the bill, Howard suggests I break in my new wallet.
    The food arrives cold, so I go into the kitchen to reheat it.To my horror, I discover that my oven, which I’ve not opened in months, looks like the inside of a hot dog factory chimney.
    THURSDAY.
    My neighbour Mike calls up. He wants me to come over and eat his wife’s chicken soup while Boosh pees on his living room carpet. Why? Because he’s superstitious and wants to recreate the exact circumstances of my visit last month when the Montreal Canadiens beat the Florida Panthers. I tell him I can’t make it, that I have an oven to clean.
    FRIDAY.
    I wake up and find that a small card has been tossed through my mail slot. It’s from Mike.
    â€œThanks for making the Canadiens