I open my eyes and I see, but I have seen so many times, that I don’t see the way I saw love, blue of eyes, blinded, blindfolded, the first of times. I see love interested in how old are you, can you take care of me when I am old, I’m growing weary, will you feed me — so love is not blind madness — to be blind as love is blind is to be mad as love is mad and mad is blind — and love is mad if it follows the pattern of your life, I can assure you he is blindfolded, Cupid is mad, mad of love for you, he wants you to love calculating each of the steps you take, and then you lose your chance, and you only live twice.
Can you finish your thoughts in a round about way. How can I play a fair game. Clear of gasses after red meat. Clear of thoughts that come to pass so full of paradigmas and estratagemas. So bloated and inflated of presuppositions and impositions from the dignitaries of discipline. Mandatories of embassies — always sending us messages — for avoiding troubles — when they come with the troubles they send to avoid newest buildings of monumental troubles and sorrows. I blew the horn to survive, and I blew the whistle to make it shine, and merried myself while shining the silver — and then I stopped believing in silver — and changed my money to wine. I drunked the horses of moneys I got — and troubled my monkeys with horses of blue. Velvet blue and malgre tout, I love you, my cherie. Où sont nos amoureuses? Elles sont au tombeau! Oh, please, get me free of meee. Free of taxes and free of impossibilities and free of presuppositions and free of impositions and free of preposteritions and free of prepositions and suspicions and ammunitions and recognitions.
I feel free from freedom, free of the statue of freedom, enslave me in a statue of freedom, my kingdom is a cry to freedom, no te salió bien, freedom, I want to enslave my freedom, con freedom, free alone is better con freedom than alone con freedom y sin freedom alone no hay freedom alone I am not alone free.
Where are the stinky feet that I am missing here? If I smell a stinky soaking sock and I suck and suck the smell that sucks these stinky sucking wet sucks that stink the socks of the smell I suck. I tell you, it’s rotting stinky. It sucks my blood, and it stinks of rot, it rots my stink, and it stinks my feet with stinky soaking wet socks, it’s dried and soaking wet, but if you soak it while you dry it, it sucks while its stinky smelly feet soaking wet become dry and hot at the same time, and it is stinky, soaking wet. Sucks.
Sucks and Sucks.
Have you thought about me lately? Thought about you. Or suck about you. Sucks the smelling stinky thoughts are sucking wet while drying — fumes — the smelling stinky thoughts, away, the dry and stinky smells of earth, of paradigmas and chiguaguas and chinas mías — and naranjas — gandules and beldades — brisas — risas — son — risas las mías son stinkies — las tuyas son finas — brisas caídas de la tumba a la nada se caen stinkies son las mías.
— How did I perform?
— Didn’t you hear them laughing. I had to keep pausing. They were always laughing. And the ones who laughed hardest were the students. I enjoy performing for the masses.
— Students are not the masses.
— They know what’s in and what’s out. Youths are closer to life because they’re not frustrated by their jobs and their children. They still have hopes of becoming something. Art is hope.
— Art is history. If you don’t remember, you don’t have a past.
— Who wants the past. I want the future.
— And when you grow old, what will you have?
— More past than future. But now I have more future than past.
— Future is an illusion. A bubble.
— Bubbles are nice.
— Youth understands nothing worth understanding. It took me years to understand James Joyce. I understood his youth only when I became younger and lighter with age. The older generation should understand me better if they became younger like me. Were their parents serious.
— They were laughing too.
— I should have picked a profound piece. Am I funny? Am I a clown? Who the hell do they think I am? What are they expecting from me? I can’t please you. Sorry, but it’s not my intention to make you laugh. Sorry, but you laugh, okay, I accept your laughter. Does this mean you are accepting me? Well, let me tell you, you’re going to have problems with me because I’m not going to keep up with your laughter, why, just because you want to laugh, do I have to make you do what you want. You’re imposing your laughter on me. You’re not making me laugh. I’m deadly serious right now. And you think I’m funny. It’s really insulting. I don’t have a sense of humor. Respect my wishes. Don’t laugh just for the sake of laughter. It’s just a nervous tick. And I don’t like it.
— Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
— It was too complicated. The language barrier. Plus I was dressed in gray silk. I should have worn wool solids. And I should have slept before the performance. To be fresh. To get inside the character. The audience distracted me. Who invited Cenci to the reading? Did you see what he was doing?
— Next time I’ll tell him to leave the room.
— Shuffling his feet to distract me.
— No tiene educación. Se lo voy a hacer a él la próxima vez.
— Y Olmo-Olmo, did you see what he did?
— I was minding my own character.
— Arms crossed he flared his nostrils when they clapped. I have never done that to anyone. Envy, pure envy.
— It’s not envy. It’s annoyance. They don’t appreciate your poetry.
— Come here.
— Me.
— I want to congratulate you on your reading. You have a mellifluous voice, curiously deep and melodic. By no means am I suggesting that you could make it as a singer or an actress, but you do read well.
— I think of myself as an actor and a singer. If I had the chance, if someone discovered me.
— Dialogues come easy to you. You should write plays.
— Screenplays, a psychic told me my next work would be made into a film.
— Transformed, maybe but I don’t see you as a screen-writer. Go for the Obies not the Oscars. I suggest you frame the dialogues with stage directions to usher the voices. Who is speaking. I am speaking. Then name the speaker.
— Why? How does a conversation go. Do I say: Suzana: and then Suzana speaks. Is this a classroom?
— For clarity’s sake so that it will hold up on the page.
— This is a musical composition.
— You don’t need an editor. You need a director. I’m going to introduce you to a friend of mine. Sam, Sam Shepard.
— Paris/Texas. I love him and Win Wenders too.
— And me. Do you love me?
— You’re one of my favorites — of course I love you. Why is everything nice and great and shining blue in the sky. Why did I have to tell him I love Sam Shepherd and Win Wenders and why did he ask me if I loved him. And why did I answer — of course, you’re one of my favorites. I want to puke this whole party. I want to vomit 57th Street and all its commerce. I want to retch one thousand coins — worth nothing — because even if I’ve bought all the silks and satins, and disguised myself — I’m still not made of the stuff dreams are made of. My soul, where among the attributes of brandname hot tamales — where is my soul, wounded like a deer — wounded — not dead — although I myself have tried to disclose it and close it — I have tried to become like them — or at least correrles la máquina — sacarles la lengua — drop myself at their feet — feel at ease. For what, for Hecuba, for fiction, for frivolity.