yo u ’re the machine, not it, and you learn to put two spaces
after the colon and none before it and your hands do that and
your brain ain’t fast enough to stop them and I spend half my
time correcting the stupid thing with white Liquid Paper and
eraser stuff and trying to align it right when I’m typing the
colon back in and I just really want her to drop dead because o f
it. Passions can be monumental. I can barely keep my ass on
the typing chair at her desk; I mean, she owns the desk; she has
her desk, a big desk, and then the desk where I sit, a little desk
and her desk is in her big room and m y desk is in a little
anteroom right o ff her big room so she can always see me but
I’m o ff to the side, relegated to being help in a clear w ay; it has
its own eloquence and I feel it acutely and it gets me mad. I try
to take the typing home with me so I don’t have to sit at the
little desk in the little room with her watching but she wants
me to do it there and there’s this tug o f war. She’s real
seductive and I am too fucking bored to care because if I give in
to it then I will have to be there more and if I am there more I
will have to type more and if I have to type more I will die.
There’s apparently some edge she sees; she thinks I’m
turbulent, she says; I think I’m calm and patient in a world o f
endless and chaotic bullshit, which I say but it falls on deaf
ears; I smile and I’m nice and completely calm except for when
I have to bolt but she sees some street tough or something wild
and gets all excited and I don’t have a lot o f respect for it; she
says I’m pure. I just smile because I don’t know what bullshit it
is exactly. Even if I don’t type she keeps me around. I can
barely keep m yself under wraps sometimes, frankly; I want to
bolt. I smile, I’m nice, I’m calm, but she treats me careful, as if
I’m volatile or dangerous somehow, which I am not, because
in m y soul I am a real sweetheart which is the truth, a deep
truth, an honest truth, I don’t yell or shout or think how to
hurt people and I feel dedicated to peace as she is too. I just get
bored so deep it hurts the pits o f me, stomach and groin
precisely, I feel a long pain and I can’t sit still through it; it’s
hit-the-road pain. She tells me how to be a writer and I listen
because as long as I am listening I don’t have to type; I listen,
though often I’m bored, and I haven’t mastered the art o f inner
stillness, though I will, I am sure. Then there’s the lovemaking
part, a moment comes, and I slide out from under, with a
certain newfound grace, I must say, and if I can’t slide, I bolt,
and it’s abrupt. She keeps me on, even though I never exactly
get the typing done or the filing done and she never nails me;
never. It’s a long walk to her place to type and I walk it often,
because I fucking love to walk, even though it’s stupid and not
safe and you have to be a prophet who can look down a street
and know what it’s got in store for you, and I do it happy and
proud and I fucking love the long walks. I go there and back
early and late and sometimes I get there and I just can’t bear to
stay so I leave right away, I take some cup o f coffee or food,
fast, with her, she’ll always make me something as if it’s
natural, and the typing doesn’t get done but I don’t have some
money either. Other times she gives me a cash advance and I
have it burning in m y hand and if I’m feeling slow and
stringent with m yself I get it to the bank and i f I'm feeling
restless, all speeded up, wanting to spit in the eye o f God, out
drink Him, out fuck Him, I keep it on me. I type, I walk long
walks across town, ballets on cement, jum ping and hopping
and then a slow, melancholy step, solemn or arms sw inging,
in the face o f the wind or in drizzle or rain or in sun, in calm,
cool sun. I walk m y sweet and jubilant dog in the neighborhood protecting the pads o f her feet from the stupid glass the winos leave all broken all over and the fucking junkie shit
that’s all over, and then there’s the time each day I sit down in
purposeful concentration to write in a notebook, some
sentences on a buried truth, an unnamed reality, things that
happened but are denied. It is hard to describe the stillness it
takes, the difficulty o f this act. It requires an almost perfect
concentration which I am trying to learn and there is no w ay to
learn it that is spelled out anywhere or so I can understand it
but I have a sense that it’s completely simple, on the order o f
being able to sit still and keep your mind dead center in you
without apology or fear. I squirm after some time but it ain’t
boredom, it’s fear o f w hat’s possible, how much you can
know if you can be quiet enough and simple enough. I m ove
around, m y mind wanders, I lose the ability to take words and
roll them through m y brain, m ove with them into their
interiors, feel their colors, touch w hat’s under them, where
they come from long ago and w ay back. I get frightened
seeing what’s in m y own mind if words get put to it. T here’s a
light there, it’s bright, it’s wide, it could make you blind if you
look direct into it and so I turn away, afraid; I get frightened
and I run and the only w ay to run is to abandon the process
altogether or com prom ise it beyond recognition. I think about
Celine sitting with his shit, for instance; I don’t know w hy he
didn’t run, he should’ve. It’s a quality you have to have o f
being near mad and at the same time so quiet in your heart that
you could pass for a spiritual warrior; you could probably
break things with the power in your mind. You got to be able
to stand it, because it’s a powerful and disturbing light, not
something easy and kind, it comes through your head to make
its w ay onto the page and you get fucking scared so your mind
runs away, it wanders, it gets distracted, it buckles, it deserts,
it takes a Goddamn freight train if it can find one, it wants
calming agents and soporifics, and you mask that you are
betraying the brightest and best light you will ever see, you are
betraying the mind that can be host to it; Blake’s light, which
he was not afraid o f and did not betray; Whitman’s light which
he degraded into some fucking singsong song like he was
Dinah Shore or Patti Page, how much is that doggie in the
w indow; the words didn’t rise up from the light, only from a
sentimental wish, he had a shadow life and in words he piled
shadow on shadow so there’s this tumult, a chaos o f dreams
running amok; dreams are only shadows; whereas Blake’s