Studying Hunger Journals, page 27
I don’t understand why everybody who’s going crazy at all can’t take everybody else with them. All. I don’t watch the bus or the train. I don’t watch the cars go by. I don’t catch the train. I get in as much as I can. I don’t angle for ups or downs. I meet you meet too. He’s empty and fed up. I’m in a series: no, country, remorse—there’s nothing new about it there’s something careful about it. I don’t get paid. I do get laid and with all that I find the time to send you this note: darling, this message is convoluted, I am escaping to the forest in a few days, look for you there, find you, love, unsigned. Unsigned because there is no message unsigned because there is no design because why, I was right in the beginning I’m continuously I’ve heard from a voice behind him I’m contemplative, blues. So tell me how long do I have to wait so tell me how long do I have to wait, you are emerging but you’ll never be finished be done and if I never finish you I won’t make any money and I’ll have to go on working with sirens around me, blue lights blue plants a fast ride in a car: I am right in front of you, can you see, can you, Bernadette, one by one, will call, please come home, do not sleep, home me.
I am suckling of rare extraordinary breakfast, rivers of one kind salt run into rivers of another sea and then I know what I’m doing when I see that and drink the stream water you give out put out you see because I show it to you and you feel the same way for the moment at least of abstract recognition we’re the human ones and can’t feel where we are until panic vanishes that space, it does it must not natural clear water and all I am doing is waiting anticipating you see I can’t see in. Where Jack Benny pours the drinks at the French Bar, it’s up to $1.70 and you have to buy stamps, two stamps and Kathleen is acting crazy all over the place and Max tells me to suggest to her it’s just her period, she’s sitting in the middle of two men, a bib? Eating? Helen of Troy? And so in this dream we pass Spider on the way to the bar and he gives me money for beer but he’s running, embarrassed cause he’s dressed to kill and made up like a black cleaning lady with red hair and then we try to get a loft in a place like Westbeth, windows on two sides, but the only place left is up in a corner somewhere and it only has vents, I’ve been here before. And Jack Benny is with me again the next night too.
September 10
Nearly threw the book in the fire many fires three fires many lunatic flies, one freeze many frozen: Raymond Radiguet tells me this is shit, give in to it, the monarch butterfly the fear of death or compromise is dry, space you need time. So I’m apt to make fires in my throat, Dora, and smell piss all the time. I can’t stand these thin wet pages accumulating, she weaves, sun and soon I won’t write them anymore, the sun’s hot it’s up to 78 today, 36 tonight: the peppers got black on top last night, the peppers got black on top and some leaves cars pass truck passes by 1:30 am, three bells on the ship captain’s clock, no, you ring in answer if you’re on watch, I suppose I should write Massachusetts is clear in the first person, see it? Moments there are no moments 2 B present in what moments, beer what beer, sure there’s always plenty of instinct instants but no sex and there’s got 2 B an end 2 it, so there is.
When I was in grammar school, that’s the school you went to when you still had a gramma, I used to like writing on the flip side of the page, after all there might be a bee in your shoes when you put them on: I used to like the voluptuous feel of it, soft, already used and caressed, rather than the virgin toady fresh page: I couldn’t help myself if I wanted to feel even an inch above water, high flies suck confrontation-concentration: where’s the water, sir? There’s not enough, you. You keep covered up on a farm hot or no and not moving, new pneumonia, pancakes you eat, new pneumonia you eat your lip you eat your flashing signal you eat your sun-up flares you eat your outfitted car you eat your welfare money there’s an awful lotta people looking for you, there’s an awful lot provided in your work, trucks provisions, hands down trouser legs down, father-owner-what-sis-electrician, say, that’s a coax, what’s the other end for, fly in the shade you fuckers, gone for more plastic sneakers, so they were both geniuses one pursued one thing the other pursued everything and all the one thing wound up being the same things for both of them, thanks, bye. Father-owner-hot enuf for ya?
Attracts flies, then faints, then sweats the goats get pinned up, for pin the tail on the donkey at night, then escapes, then freezes the two carefree people nearly froze to death when they left the warmth of the fire on pills at night, flies and iron, a stealth, a warmth, a back-up truck making smoke, I tell the truck: you can do it all the time: you hear an engine stop you collect wood you race to the first clear blue sky you see, it’s a noun, you shake it by the ear, you entertain and plea-bargain, you go in and eat pancakes: “We met him mostly because he didn’t waste words in this country paradise on the shore and she wanted her to go way away but she kept reappearing to catch the last rays of the sun so it was hard to work it out that is the ideal situation and oddly she likes to be alone with him whereas nobody really likes to be alone but some can make something out of it or in it.”
Of all the clinical pictures which we meet with in clinical medicine it is the phenomena of intoxication and abstinence in connection with the use of certain chronic poisons that most closely resemble the genuine psychoneuroses.
Viva la Sangre del Salvadore Allende!
September 17
Spending the night alone: Sleepers: this is one idea and from a pile of sleepers I extract one by one and I eat out the ideas the possibilities, alternatives, from them and then throw them on the used pile, one by one, railroad ties. Or, 51-49 and almost completely surrounded.
And my arm is beautiful, Grandfather, a screen, dies. A woman comes out the door, out of the bushes, she speaks, men riding on horses. So, screen, she cries. He carries the casket, they speak a word, memory, used. He took a pill he’s quiet: you strain your muscles so: and so, speaking of it, grandfather dies (I tell no one I tell everyone and Kathleen is sitting demanding in the Gramercy Park Hotel with a black nurse waiting and I feel like writing to everyone but I will not).
Horribly I have no vision and I can’t make one legible for you, speak now and I will try too many and I say no and I keep on saying no, no to the vision and no to the spokes that try to persuade me by almost completely surrounding, my trust I suppose. And clear I can’t be clear, this is unique and it’s astounding, I have no sex, you will read it and I keep on spending my eyes on his gloom or stone. Hawthorne, were there thorns, were there, you come here or else I have nothing more to spend it to spend on it, so carefully molested, the dream: so carefully wrapped in perverse, no clothing, wrapped: if you speak I will not speak if you are alone then I am not if you are aware I am in space I am a woman so spaced out, so you are not. The smell of the cheese fills the house and I feel like two people are dead because one is and one is fighting like I am fighting for a space but I am not fighting but she is not fighting, I’ve lost my address I’ve lost the you and so, then, this is not worth fighting for, an orgasm, a fight, an erection, a resurrection, a full Easter bonnet: I open the window for the terrified moth and I do not know what I am doing escaping except this: someone’s mother makes a shadow on my page and someone’s father makes my foot swell so I must make a design like a dense breast, mother father, mother uncle, I did it backwards like design always does based on design and not rooted in fact, please forgive me cause I can’t write fast enough and please forgive me cause I can’t do and please forgive me cause I’m not what and please forgive me I said I was greater than I am and you’ll all have to please forgive me cause I have no one else to speak self to so you. I am lighter than a wave, undertow, Andy drowned he did not drown, I am serene, stiletto, she drew it on, Max was knifed he wasn’t knifed, this is not this is what is a reference: you save and you wait. It’s unlike me to leave a photograph lying on the floor, it’s unlike me to listen to the trucks and hear, it’s unlike me to continue in the book without a thought, you thought you were away, washing, and you were here watching: you’ve given up before and you can’t do it: “At least she’s here,” “At least he’s here.” The light adores my eyes and the wind fucks me up: “Throw it away,” “Put her away.” And my hair the hair of my body has no focus, caress it and I say to it, “How long can you live?” I want to leave things wasting, I want to throw them away, I am in between, I don’t do it, I waste between the lamps, I use it all up I don’t caress it, I’ll be sick because this is shedding its use, I’ll only waste time and set you up, you asked for it, there’s no one to caress it but me and what am I talking about, my sex, between my legs, you said it, my heart’s not in it, so I make it easy, just read the truck revs up three times and drives garbage away and everyone is looking pretty like a cat but no cat to be seen, I’m seen, I’m looked at I’m ice, listen: we have a lot of work to do, my knife drills into you, work to do, fuck you, I look at you, I eat the body, in state and no end to the quotes.
I am less lucid than I was before, can you hear me? I am begging you now. Because I have to, nothing else to do, two things: two dead things. That’s all. So I go on? No way, not like before, either way. Nothing to go on one two Max, the spider and the door before, Ted, the spider and the door before, who are the spider and the door before, I fear for my life and everybody laughs because they have to or have too many dreams: “I thought it was what you wanted me to do” and “I assure you I am exactly the same as the corpse on the floor” and “I forgot I was the most important person in your life” and “You have your private space I see so it’s worth it (in money)” and I dream too much for you but if I could really dream too much for you lucid then liquid then, R.M. and B.M., it’s easy to change an R into a B, not me. You do it with a pin.
And bites from fleas from angels from warm-weather beds from fronting a love an affection that could grow from any bed that led to another three weeks or three days in a bed in the country making love with one man: what’s the difference, I can. And I blew it and I’m trying to make it go on as long as I can: residue from songs and pictures and money too. WXLO alone, let’s get it on, touch me in the and so on, so everyone tell me, what has this man got trapped, not time, losing ground, sinking down, well I’ll tell you, it’s no body and it’s no time and no ground except covered and no use wasting your time on stone you see? The radio’s on I wanna feel something so I write down cover and hover and lover, honey I wish there was one. The ceiling flies and a hidden corner and there is something you want to hear.
Black Holes: If a massive star collapsed to a sufficiently small volume, light could not escape from it. A rotating black hole could account for the radiation of gravitational waves from the center of the galaxy.
A black hole is a region of space into which a star (or a collection of stars or other bodies) has fallen and from which no light, matter or signal of any kind can escape.
What is the fate of the original body that collapsed to produce the black hole? Assuming that exact spherical symmetry is maintained right down to the center, the answer provided by the general theory of relativity is a dramatic one: according to the general theory, the curvature of space-time increases without limit as the center is approached. Not only is the substance of the original body squeezed to infinite density at the center of the black hole—that is, effectively crushed out of existence—but also the vacuum of space-time outside the body becomes infinitely curved. The effect of this infinite curvature on a hapless observer, were he foolhardy enough to follow the body inward, would be catastrophic. He would feel tidal forces across his body that would mount rapidly and would reach infinity within a finite period of his experienced time.
I’ve got no book, I give up on memory, GP’s dead, I give up on sex, you won’t get in, I give up on image, you won’t get in, I give up on breath, upper respiratory infection, Dora, we made a great mistake, “limits” and no limits, “chances” and no chances, all the chances, midnight, Friday I give up a meeting, everybody shows up, Smithson, GP, Salvador Allende, Sy Goldes have funerals and wakes, I wake up and give up, I am a fool: Max kills himself but there is another self of him left which he assures me is exactly the same and “I thought that’s what you wanted me to do” and the body is a problem, it lies around, almost waking up, we think of carving chopping it up, I don’t wanna hear about it. I wanna avoid it and then I have to go to high school again so I get home early to Max in the shower and he says without bitterness without design, “Oh I forgot I was the most important person in your life” and he did forget and then, scene, Teresa is splitting up the $96 in tax money with me, “We each take $45,” she says and complains in the crowded busy apartment about how I won’t deserve to pay the rent when…and so I extend the dream further: we walk through the rooms watching people work at small things till finally and it takes a long time (you have no time for me), we reach a large empty room papered with memory (turns corners) and she says, surprised, “You even have your private space.”
And even before this I waste time getting home from school by playing with Gerard and Andy, Andy buys drinks but not for me, is stingy, cranky, when we all kiss I am looking at him, I’m interested in him for the first time. I try to buy food, it slides down the counter, you’re jealous of me, the counter slides down the food I am a fool, I am wasting my time, I don’t want to get home cause you forgot you were…in a big house for summer dinner, everything goes wrong but the scenery and the time goes slow, I don’t want to remember and I don’t want to speak to Patti to Edmund to Spider to Fern to Lynn to Mark to Andy to Max to Larry to George to Ted to Starr to Lucy to September at all to Stanislaus to all the demands they make on you when they bring back the little news and Barry didn’t eat all weekend again cause we were gone and Andy brings money and Spider brings dreams and money and school’s open so all the Kathleens are present here, one to teach one to get married and one Cassandra who can’t be caught and all the dreams that can’t be taught, complement me and I notice who can’t spell and I weave, I’m not well: when I was a sailor, a sailor on the sea, the sky was turning orange, my baby was like me, the sky was turning orange the sky was turning black, I wrote it in my journal my baby wants me back.
And are you brother and sister and is the sea like me and when are you alone and by yourself, you’re alone and left and Chile, Allende, was shot, is dead and you recover from your career, recover, hover, lover is my cover and my incorporation of what draws me back, whose mind is that in? Everybody wants to be married, trumpets blow, that’s the trouble, everybody wants to play house and me, I’d just do it again and again, “Could she really not move?” “At least you really did it” and “What?” “Not move.” Now I really lock the door, one two three four and everybody dies and they don’t know and they need somebody to show how lifelike life can be to them, how deathlike life can be for them, how everybody knows but they would rather eat shit if only I could show them now when I can’t keep myself private enough to know what’s going on when I have no space of my own as in the dream without sound, when I answer all calls when my voice can’t speak, when I answer no mail, when I get ready again to retreat, if only I could put on this show, if I knew how to begin, what to play on what instrument, what to show, how to seduce without making love, how to be cruel without maddening, unfair, I want to be unfair, one by one and just cause I find myself counting perverse, how long will I have some silence, this one, perverse show, perverse lines, you want my collection of real mash notes and suck-off letters, goodbye. “This is more fiction than an essay,” eat shit, and it don’t go no further, fairness allows that someone’s got nothing to do but count points and make tallies in the same Western tradition of bloody coups d’état. So I go to work amusing you and now no one’s got nothing to do and I’ve been to work, a former physician, turned politician, a Marxist incorporating you, working for you, getting on t.v. and then sunk in a trunk like case in the earth dead forever on your side, I’m comparing myself to Allende from my palace in your open loft where my private space seems to be, might be, that’s why you listen to me and when I call you and when I go outside, if I amuse you, you’ll be ready to do nothing with me, it’s better for the poor to know me than thee.
So I’m anger dead here finally cause I’m conscious of you and no body speaks to me and I won’t tell you what’s here on the table, laid out in front of me, same thing’s in front of you, on ice, a body that could make a book or a trip or a story or a lunatic of you, just tell me, can I watch for a while, in pieces, quite spaced out: my own process gets mixed up with yours and how come after doing all this damage like death you have nothing much to say. There’s alone, there’s reasons of state, there’s great dialogues, there’s certainty, there’s devil in the flesh and all love stories, so just read to me at night and take your time running around or running the country. I’m 28 in 1973, I could’ve lived my life twice in this time, I have no privacy back to where we both began at the south, at the north extremities of the pole, earth by earth, we figure out about electricity or something, do it all over again, so many endings for any discovery or idea to happen twice or even many times. I used to share ideas with you and now I hide so it must be over, I need a rapidograph pen, I need not to be aware of any you, I need a custom to re-design, I’ll be right out, I need not to think about you, you make mistakes, you are a fool, me too, I don’t need a dream at all, review the polar ice caps, my fucking throat is killing me, performances. And that’s the design for a new sign, are you still waiting for me to come out, and can I perform still perform still service you, I can’t end it here but I will it’s a free election: so run for your life, that’s my other life.
