verticals and horizontals of days and nights, of thought's body and passion's method-twine to delight and dissonance-now I wake, now I lay me down to sleep-where insomnia begins at age 4, saying it-
Olson once said he wished he could learn how to handle verticals from Boulez-horizontals being what we do everyday toward horizons-he had in mind the Second Piano Sonata, the eruptive violence of them-in conversation with Beethoven's Hammerklavier-a rage of rhythm-the rhythmic variations of the notes playing the astonishment of BACH's belief-counterpoints of monads becoming nomads-of rhythm is image/of image is knowing/of knowing there is/a construct-his dream
of compossibility
Leo Bersani, The Culture of Redemption
turn every, singular nakedness to the wall and the wall mirrors nakedness
Weston La Barre, Muelos
semen-fantasies-transformed a moment, say-in Simone Martini's glorious, golden space, 13 3 3, of cusped arches and gables, foliate crochets and spiky pinnacles, the Annunciation, traversed by the words of the angel-Martini's love-fear-astonishmentshimmering-flow into estuaries-
Spicer said-Mella, mella peto/In medio flumine-after Ovidseeking honey in the middle of the stream-
turn every, singular nakedness to the wall and the wall mirrors its labyrinthine nakedness-hyacinthine colourness twining on the wind-the soul becomes a fracture in the old paint-like the surface of a moonlit Ryder painting-running joyous and jagged-here and there-
finitude and infinitude of, say, glass
Nothing distinguishes me ontologically from a crystal, a plant, an animal, or the order of the world; we are drifting together toward the noise and the black depths of the universe ... Michel Serres tells us,
a town-crier,
trying to imagine the intermediary states, trying to imagine the man of the multiple, trying to imagine the margin that separates the multiple from the ordered, the moment when the solid is at the point of setting, in agitated crystals, when turbulence spins in its whirlwind, when life is connected, liberated, awakened, organized ...
this admirable, charmed mind of Hermes
tourbillions, that is, whirlwinds, whirlpools, vortexes, fireworks, the writer writing twists there-his or her chance-possessed breath-blew out the sentinal sentences, ancestral and beautifulthey are now of changed substance-perhaps, of joyous tourmaline, often black, sometimes blue, red, green, brown, or colourless -polished pieces-of jewellers' tourmaline tongs that would distinguish glass from crystal
J'ai plus de souvenir que si j'avais mille ans, including the huge chest of drawers crammed with
God, self, history, and book are, Mark C. Taylor tells us, bound in an intricate relationship in which each mirrors the other-steps over the hills and in the forests since Pleistocene-change one of them-let's say, probability enters among them in the 17th century-and you're in the fun-house-becoming tall, squashed, thin, fat, protuberant-at the beach-and laughing your head off
when Proto-Indo-European trees walked in Eden-delight in life-at the edge of the glaciers, the apple among them, requiring minimum cold for its winter dormance-trying to say, in primitive semantics, my love *abvl- and *mahlo-north and south-walking among them west, some small thing, man or woman, universal and unconfined in its relations-hewing down a tree with a stone axe, the physical difference between an elm and a linden, or even an English and a live oak, would be obvious-calluses-gone to thought-apple-cheeks, my love
1 503- 1 504, Hieronymus Bosch-his garden of earthly delight-studied long and intensely by Michel de Certeau in The Mystic Fable-and I, guessing over it for 4o years, join him now with my magnifying glass-this forbidden tree of life, sprung from the phallus of Jesse, walking in the garden delight in life-coming into meaning and going out-this space is curved inward upon itself, like the circles and ellipses Bosch endlessly generates, there is no entrance, only interpretative delirium, fragments of a language, a lacunary system, a cosmos unsure of its postulates-
displaces units of meaning piece by piece-Everywhere Bosch smuggles in lapsus, disproportion, and inversion-what it means nevertheless reappears endlesslythis Boschdrollen-a figure folding into or out of a dolphin's tail, a man's torso, a duck's head reading an open book-just emerging from a cave, a man, the only one wearing clothes in the panel, points to a nude woman leaning on her elbows behind an ornamented glass-an apple in her hand and her mouth closed with a seal-a pig adorned with a nun's headdress holds out a quill pen to a seated man who caresses her-folded over his leg a document ready to sign-they are approached by a shiny black knight's helmet with spiky antennae, stooping on pudgy legs and claw feet-we've moved across the three panels-de Certeau calls these playlets-my eyes catch a figure caught in the strings of a harp-a figure hanging through the loop of a key-a conversation with a bird-headed moth with owl-eyed wings-a youth, bent backward, riding a spotted, kerchiefed cat, whose balls shine, highlighted-arrows, flowers, sticks, bird beaks stuck up asses-two figures shut up in a mollusc shell, one of them shitting a pearl-another whose face looks back over his body and at us, a broken egg shell with a tavern in it, entered by a ladder, whose legs are also tree trunks-indeterminate realities and imaginings-no entrance-no exit-my eyes strain, even with a guide, through the phantasmagoria, the phantasmagoria looks back-as if Ovid's metamorphoses, without his cosmos, became delirium-
an aesthetic exercise (in the sense in which one speaks of spiritual exercise), de Certeau tells us, a reality made up of peaks, beaks, arrows and sharp points: an anal and oral poetics, a marvelous animality of asses and mouths, a greedy flowering of amorous play-
among the lion, panther, camel, bear, stag, boar, horse, ass, ox, goat, pig, unicorn-stork, heron, spoonbill, rooster, hen, owl, hoopoo, woodpecker-pineapples, cherries, blackberries, gooseberries, strawberries, orange, apple, melonpumpkin, squash-fish and shellfish-pearls, topazes, emeralds, crysolites-fairies, mermaids and mermen-de Certeau suggests an encyclopedia of details-become opaque in the phantasmagoria-
proposes this, that Bosch's garden says to me or 'you'-You there, what do you say about what you are, while you are saying what I am?
one might celebrate this unintelligibility that extinguishes itself, like Igitur or Thereupon, old friends
How can a body be made from the word?-language, a shivaree of transparence-jigsaw-glass immensity
Lucretius said we need not fear them-propitiate, sacrifice, or offer pungent smoke
the pleats of matter, and the folds of the soul, reading Gilles Deleuze-
-Deleuze, The Fold
they threw the old rocking chair from the lost house out-but they cut the leather backrest out-with the portrait of the wandering Jew or nomad on it-whose eyes follow me or 'you'into corners-to the end of the boxcar parlour-even into the brilliance of reading under the library table-and sent it to me
What I would be if I were not a writer? Who I would be if I were not a writer?-questions which-within the shadowy places of my love of thought-bring to mind my father's delight in whoopee-cushions. He liked particularly-taking us all off guard-to place these on the chairs of dinner guestsor on mine when I'd returned home for a visit. Consternation and blushes. Discomfort with what one was or with what one was going to say. The secrecy of person answered by true or simulated laughter in gales. Some never came back to the `vulgarity.' I was always a guest-of family, of religion, and especially of language-nothing more, nothing less. That is the reason whoopee-cushions come to mind now.
`The imagination of person'-to adapt Robert Creeley's lovely wording of the same question-is noisy everyday. It's a Penelopean mending job over the years. Weaving. Unravelling. Weaving again. If possible into the heart of things. Perhaps, a composer-to place with.
So what have I been in my fugue of sorts? Tossed. Thrown. Allotted. One through twenty-one instances, just like thathow do you like your green-eyed boy now, mr. death?
i. Delivery boy (five or six) -in a round tin tub, a shingle for an oar, a broom to push across the wide, flooded gully to pick up a can of
Carnation condensed milk from the commissary-described as Odyssean, by Grandmother.
2. Movie usher (twelve) -twenty-five cents an hour, the manager's name Fagan, and I had, since I'd read the book, wanted to be discovered by Fagan. I was an excellent corn popper, very generous with extra butter before the cornoil substitute arrived from Hollywood, and someone said I handled my flashlight with style. Under the Roxy's stage in the manager's private den, I saw my first pornography on a small screen, starring a famous Tarzan and a smiling, Irish heroine. I wasn't supposed to be there, but I watched through a crack in the door.
3. Painter (twelve) -discovered dot-painting (pointillism), did a landscape with crayons which won first prize at the Idaho County Fair.
Movie actor (twelve) -actually a `screen test,' they said, scamming the whole town-I tap danced in a white sailorsuit that almost fit and played at the Roxy along with all the other screen tests, for the benefit of a motherly audience. No one discovered me.
Sheepherder (thirteen) -said to be suffering from a nervous breakdown (actually sexuality edging towards the unknown, but I couldn't tell that to the doctor), I was sent to a ranch in Wyoming to help the sheep lamb in midwinter.
6. Co-wrangler (thirteen) -follow-up therapy during the summer, I was first rate at rounding up the herd each evening and only found out from one of the cowboys that the horse could have done it without me-loved my prowess anyway among aspen conversations, campfire suppers, and cowboy songs.
7. Truck loader and unloader (fourteen) -in the first years of what was to become Trail Blazers Truck Line out of Twin Falls, Idaho, later to be manoeuvred out of existence by Globe Milling and Pillsbury-because Dad insisted on being his own lawyer-my job, hundred-pound sacks of flour or tongs in either hand to carry as many bricks as I could handle, left me with shoulders.
8. Window washer (fourteen)-for the office of the Globe Seed and Feed warehouse, one hundred panes, inspected for streaks and smudges before paying me a dollar an hour, said I took too long.
9. Seed sorter (fourteen) -a promotion by the same company-one ounce of seed from randomly selected bags, count, record each kind of seed-to verify quality.
io. Biologist, sculptor, painter (sixteen) -in `Miss' Minier's wonderful class-she looked and acted like Mae West, and because I could memorize blood vessels quickly and easily, she often sent me out during class to buy cream chocolates, of which I could have one on my way back-studied chicken embryos developmentally, day by day-sculpted them in clay and painted them according to a colour code. Impressed the PTA.
< i. Latinist and Frenchman (sixteen to seventeen) -the Latin teacher `Miss' Babcock was very shortsighted, so after completing my exam, I'd do two or three others, fixing them at an uneasy B level, so she'd never catch on-she was splendid in Latin and mind-sat by the radio during my lesson with my French tutor Mme. Larsen-paid for by my seed sorting-she was Quebecoise, educated at a convent in Paris and somehow married to a Scandinavian there in Twin Falls-and wept with the Mass in French, since I already knew it in Latin. `Don't,' she said, `when you go to Quebec, speak like that.' Now, I wish I could.
1 2. Salesman (sixteen to seventeen) -Idaho Department Store, men's wear, which had a curious speciality-rose-pink silk stockings for men to give as gifts-no one bought them except the women of the Paramount Hotel-and while I was there, only from me-they didn't like the slipshod come-on of the `hicks,' they said. One of them became a close, secret friend, and it was she who gave me my first lesson in countering cliches-`Never,' she said, `tell anyone I'm a whore with a heart of gold.' One of the older, regular salesmen asked me if I knew I had very red lips. `You know that always means you're queer,' he said. Then, I found out why they'd hired me-to do what they called the dirty work. I was the only one who could wait on the Japanese, who were allowed one day a month out of the Relocation Centre to shop. I did not understand the national stupidity, nor did I think to oppose the injustice. I simply loved them-the manner of their attention and the fear mixed with pride, which I could share for other, still mysterious reasons. I was also the only one who could wait on the Bahamas blacks ('niggers') -magnificent, tall, gentle and exotic with their English accents, who'd been brought in to do the field work, since the resident men were off to war-I bent on one knee to measure, with trepidation, the inner leg for the bright green and sharp blue suits they bought on Saturdays after work-I still imagine themas I found them later in back-country enclaves dancing stunningly to country music with the lonely wives.
13. Lieutenant (sixteen to seventeen) -the rank given me by the U.S. Army during the time I spent in the Relocation Centre-'to keep these Japs in their place'-a small group of us went there to discuss the concerts they had offered to give in town-these were musical minds and talents such as we had never met before, over whom we were to assume authority, whereas the authority of mind and heart was theirs freely given-they never mentioned our youth or ignorance. I recall passing by the Prisoner of War Camp on the way to these discussions where Twin Fallsers slipped food and gifts through the fence to the German and Italian prisoners-and should have-but the Japanese, who had been so recently Americans, I saw spat upon as they walked so quietly through town to shop.
14. Playwright (sixteen to seventeen) -it was a who-done-it, full of secret doors and cupboards, in which Mae West was to be murdered, which made it a kind of tragedyin production, the cast was intolerable, didn't memorize their lines or stage business-slovenly work on what was probably a very bad play, supposed to be funny and sadanyway, some lumber had been piled up against the proscenium, and I grabbed a very long board and tried to break the legs of the actors. Another nervous breakdown. Production cancelled.
i Actor (sixteen to eighteen) -played the professor coming up out of the audience in Our Town; Charley in Charley's Aunt (Oh! my rich aunt from Brazil-in 19 9 3, at the fiftieth anniversary of our graduation from high school, a scrapbook of photographs of the production and newspaper clippings turned up-the owner of the scrapbook said he'd seen it in London but this was the best he'd ever seen, etc.); Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (shimmering white costume imported from Salt Lake City); a little later in 1944 at the College of Idaho, Beverley Carlton in The Man Who Came to Dinnerthough at the time I had no idea who Noel Coward was, I played the piano, sang, and talked persuasively like someone or another: `Shall I tell you how I glittered through the South Seas like a silver scimitar, or would you rather hear how I finished a three-act play with one hand and made love to a maharaja's daughter with the other?' Had a terrible fight with the drama coach when I couldn't get out of the part and carried on as if such were daily routine.
16. French tutor (eighteen)-to faculty children, nine to eleven years old-made up tunes on the piano to help them sing the conjugations and paradigms-tea at the President's house once a week, Mme. Presidente, as the children and I called her, in a red velvet, formal gown, split interestingly to the knee-full silver service, every piece and each cookie spoken to in French-later some fast conversations, a little jingly perhaps, since they'd been prepared with the help of the piano. For years after 194,+ or i 945, letters would come at New Year's-in French.
17. Dancer (nineteen) -what ballet training I'd managed secretly in Twin Falls came in handy the first year at Berkeley-1944-194c, before the meeting with Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan and real poetry began-joined a dance group-a beautiful, marvelous young woman and I, painted white, classically choreographed, wove in and out of the Grahamers, we danced among the empty graves and tilted monuments of San Francisco's Victorian cemetery-to commemorate the startling power of it before demolition to make way for the Firemen's Fund Insurance Company, which is still installed on its hillock. No audience.
18. Soda Jerk (nineteen) -everyone knows a beginner by his/her eagerness-every customer ordered a Graveyard Sundae-now the trouble with this is that it calls for a squirt of every flavour the fountain offers, that's the graveyard-but my customers demanded that the squirts come in a certain order-strawberry, ginger, marshmallow, blackberry, etc
.-each order changed the order of the one before-I managed to remember the first two-then, gave up and began squirting anything that came to mindwhen they wouldn't pay for my concoctions, I quit.
19. Library page (twenty-five) -in the Berkeley Library, where I first met Hannah Arendt while trying to help her through a turnstile, the turning tubes of which she hadn't seen before-thin wondrous scholar/philosopher, who would seem to me to be one of my muses, wound up sitting on top of it, one of its spokes between her legs.
20. Librarian (thirty)-at Harvard-saved a distinguished collection of Renaissance books in the basement of a private house near the Yard-during a hurricane, after the furnace had blown up-no help from Harvard maintenance where everything was flooding-found I could tear out wooden partitions and build scaffolding above the water level with just what was at hand-three years later, 19 58, spent nights in Houghton preparing an exhibit-Jonathan Edwards-Emerson-William James -Berg son-PeirceSantayana-Whitehead-to honour the American Philosophical Association-and found by chance a plaster cast of a hairy chest, the tag said Whitman-not for philosophy, I thought then, but I've changed my mind.
2 1. Working in Vancouver, 1966 to date-professor in dis- guise-`resident mystic,' according to the kickback from certain recalcitrants, etc.-the tale is too long of whatever and whomever.
Points on a map of finitudes. Bits and pieces of whatever or whoever I was. Wouldn't it be nice to have a simple, separate self (Whitman would have said `soul') to come home to? The conditional tension of the self is fundamental to these questions. If I had been able to see through and beyond the large arena writing throws me into, I might well have preferred to be safer. But I learned as a young man reading Melville that to say 'I would prefer not to' would not bring me into a safer place, though it would be an honest admission of my destiny. I know writing is in trouble these days-a cultural mongering tells me so. Yet, it seems to me that, in the midst of our cultural depletion, we've participated in a very great period of art. One that could change our experience of the outside of ourselves. It is that I meant one time in using the phrase `the practice of outside.' And I believe that there is a larger audience for this art than ever before. That audience does not control mercantilism which controls public space and the forms of its devotions. I believe in necessary writers. And one of them, Avital Ronell, writes: `Resist the numbing banality of they, the dictatorship of nonreading.' And I find this in another necessary writer, Michel Serres, writing an imaginary dialogue: `Neither the world nor the market knows how to integrate suffering and happiness, nor the question of meaning, nor that of evil.' And on a page of a third necessary writer, Giorgio Agamben, I'm reminded that `Dante classifies languages by their way of saying yes' and find this parenthetic notice: '(What is astonishing is not that something was able to be, but that it was able to not not-be.).' And that is getting pretty close to whatever and whomever we mean by love. What and who are pronouns-interrogative and relative in the absence of a naming noun-what is the neuter of who in the act of writing where going is going is gone-a `monad/nomad' of-which is the word love without the initial consonant. If I had not been a writer-I think I'd have been an ASSASSIN.
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