Studying Hunger Journals, page 41
And I dreamed a large pachyderm moved into the house, but, a giraffe who was all black like the monster of Loss, I mean, Loch Ness. And he crawled up a tree and pulled the cover up to his neck and I said to Florence how shall we feed him and she suggested cheese and lettuce and so on and I said yes but where should we put the water because giraffes can bend over to drink but not in such a small space. Caviar, maybe. Eating, maybe. And I eventually dreamed that a huge white horse (I could eat a horse) was taking no chances coming in my door. And (remembering device) Jean Seberg was my teacher and the whole class went to Washington D.C. A.C. to take the final exam by jet (rink, Giant) and Seberg went up and down the aisles in a beautiful low-cut gown (forget it) and her shoulders were very skinny and square, I stared at them, somehow I was exempt and after the handwritten exam, she collected the papers and said we will have to go back to New York now to type them out and I complained loudly. Why had we come (to Philadelphia) in the first place?
And someone said to me and her, well aren’t you both television producers. And I reneged on my part (living alone). And Meg was there and we went someplace to eat and drink, down a stairs, except, in a whole room covered with white tablecloths, they were also showing old movies, or, some famous old movie, the last lines of which I remembered. Maybe Casablanca. Romain Gary. Seberg as nymphomaniac. Philadelphia—Godard. “You’re a walking encyclopedia, so why don’t you talk?”
And I was sitting out on the windowsill like a whore in the red light district of Amsterdam when Holland passed with her dog, I waved to her, she waved reluctantly up, back. And Spider passed and because of the yellow-orange light behind my head he didn’t recognize me, he thought I was a different person, smiling. And I was smiling. He passed, and rang the bell, and that was the end of my visitors to my purple room. And Stanislaus was sitting in Dante’s café while I was in the park with Spider and he had a vision, at least he swore he saw us and he described our clothing, passing by. But we had never walked down that street. But five minutes after Spider left, Stanislaus threw a penny at my window, because he had “seen” us on our way “home.” And I called Spider to make sure he hadn’t seen Stanislaus because he had been threatening suicide again and he hadn’t. Meanwhile Belial was waiting to hear about his mother and Florence was telling me that was the end of the visitors to my purple room, I always get a color. I seem to be at least in my shades better off than they all are: Stanislaus is miserable, Spider is obsessional, Max hysteric and Belial just fallen. At least I am all of those problems.
Delicious foods, soups and pastries, street urchins, fish and steamed clams, asparagus, strawberries and chicken, like a starving mammal, fruit and baby food in glass jars. Sardines. Heavy cream, pasta, at your leisure, with butter and cream. Coddled eggs, to make art.
June 2
Dream Max is planning to do all the sports all summer, he has teams set up and so on. When I tell him this dream he says, “Well it’s good to keep busy isn’t it?” That’s what I was afraid of in the dream. Dream he asks to wear my sunglasses for a minute even though it’s raining so he can catch sight of, get a thought of…something. No more reason to suffer, no reason to be inflamed. Dear Max, I am terrified of you and you of me now that I got my “freedom,” what a unexpected development, I won’t stay at your house, too scared of your waking in the morning and going, leaving, out to work. I always leave men who work. And I tell you this fear and say it’s like going back to the scene of the crime (“I was enjoying my vacation,” do I ever know who I’m talking to?). And you say you didn’t know there was a crime, now, how can you say that after seeing “Spellbound?” And the paradigm Parradine Case. You say, write a story. Instead I will make a schedule of seeing friends you don’t particularly like and a way of living you’d scarce approve of, indulgent and hedonistic at the least. I made it. How could it be high in the 50’s and then high again in the 70’s with the humidity 90% and no rain coming, who’s coming. Still sort of the same scene, no, no, no, I had fallen asleep reading with the air-conditioner on, due to smoking. A bare supper stolen, pork and potatoes on a small plate, I must catch my breath before I eat it, tomorrow I must get some wine, washed my two shirts, extended the poetic line as far as it will go, throwaway stuff, and talked on the phone from 11 p.m. till 5 a.m. And Florence thought I was giving my heart away. Can’t say no more, or, can’t write anything, dawn Holland, stays up later now and makes enough noise to invite me, I think, but I am too busy stealing potatoes and installing new typewriter ribbons and talking gibberish with Rico and Stanislaus. I am upright, I am frightened of Max, I am strong in my resolve to know my mother’s feelings, but, when I get out on the street, I walked seven blocks today, with one stop. Long blocks, so what is my mother saying to me, she is saying yes, this is throwaway stuff, so you can finally find out what you are doing. Cheese, so much simpler now, so much simpler, stop. Dressed to drink, smell good, write for too many (audience), too sober. My little dinner’s gone, eaten, ripped from the sides of a lean pork loin, or torn, with a knife, cut out and eaten. Little dinner, little neck, my little neck, where it leads me to reading and reading from you and you and so on, I’m sick of you but I like it here, even though there are lines. Welfare, food stamps, disability, Philadelphia, your darling sense of humor, darling, how I wish for a cold beer, and, “As I was coming up the stairs with my little dinner, in the dark, suddenly, at the foot of Jack’s door, I dropped the potato from the plate.” What a plot. Jack and I both love potatoes. Florence says, I wouldn’t have a potato in the house if it weren’t for him. Jack says, you (me) and I are so alike, we could both just eat potatoes and nothing else. So I tell him about the man I knew in the country who lived on two potatoes a day, one in the morning and one at night, with a little wheat germ oil, and he tells me about the Thais he knows at school. One he asked, how are you? Fine. What did you have for breakfast? Rice. What did you have for lunch? Rice. And what did you have for dinner? Yes, rice. It is not a question of language. It’s rice and potatoes. My room is becoming messier, perhaps I’m about to leave this earth and become the Messiah, that is, without hours. Surely, I will try it after what I’ve been through with capital letters, that is, names for three years, years? Sherry after beer or before coffee. Mrs. Parradine only sipped her sherry while playing the Appassionata before the police came to arrest her. And someone fingered a razor. Yes sherry. If you think you’re going to die, write legibly, as, I smell so good today, I just realized I’m in the red, goodnight.
June 3
It becomes a question of inside and outside of houses, the bath with the door open, washing the clothes, the clothes line. If you have a problem, it’s your house, that’s all wrong. One, two, three, four, out the door, I mean, close the door, and, have everybody visit you in a lamp bottle, in a bottle that is a lamp-base-shade, pinkish-yellow, there’s a lot of pink in this room and I am not afraid as elleville-yellow reflecting off of purple seems to make pink, I’m jealous so you do all the work. He did want wife, and, in a way, he did want wife, so in a way I can’t blame him for taking an elleville instead, and, in a way, he will want wife, all different he’s all misspellings, hate, I hate you, I make a face, etc. And Spider says you’re too busy to drink too much, is that logic to be listened to, a full moon, Stanislaus has nothing to do, nothing shocks you, sleep in clothes all the time.
June 5
Don’t feel nothing but hunger, “What you were afraid of happened.” Should I explain all this, Charlotte read in her Boston Black Chicago beautiful accent, “You’re too nice.” Spider left in a panic-rage. What is a panic-rage in front of or with all those people, in front of or with all those people I always feel I’m in the right or else I always feel O.K., I do not want them to feel starry-eyed or sorry for me, ever them. So where’s poetry. “I was freaked,” whatever that means. Alarm bell has been going off for one hour, what’s not real? Where’s poetry? I need some money. Dream a parody of all the stairways in houses I know. Dream I’m going along and back again, what’ll happen then, where I’ll go. The beer’s still cold, it’s two hours old. There’s a party, there’s planning for a party. Stanislaus calls to ask, “Why don’t you have a flaw?” What is being good at being perfect, it’s performing. It’s entertainment, like, “You tell a good story” and someone says, you make me feel stupid, not stupid but light-headed, agile, a frost, while, I need a job and some money. Never had two parents to pay my plane fare. Some got parents who can’t pay their plane fare. Fern was locked in a room for eleven hours, you levitate, you lose a picture of your face, you aimless and lazy, the right to be lazy by Emma Goldman, back in the talent, back in the U.S.S.R., back in my room, I am telling you I will never be finished again! Done yes, strong yes, tough maybe, but never done, never used, throw it, never seen, use it, I may have come close to repeating myself, you see, you are the ones who’ve heard it all before and addressing you is all…wait, you could be fathers to children, you are all repeated or repetitive, immigrant or design, even stopped short of address just the whole Bowery, bow er yeee. Now I will finally solve the problem, who am I speaking to, and, what am I speaking for, the problem was solved by the following dream which you can use or steal, also: I dream I am in a corridor filled with light. The stairs are constructed backwards so that the illusion of them is like a mirror image. But they can be climbed if you’re double-jointed and can twist the lower half of your body completely around like an owl’s head. Then I am on the roof of the building at night looking at a man’s head. He turns into an audience which begins to clap, facing all four directions. I fly into the audience which is iron pipes and someone tells me to “Whisper, or else.”
June 7
By dating it, it signs itself, it is not a long work. I get used to living with practically nothing: like cannibal: a beer, pumpernickel, cheddar and cashews, survivors live on luxuries. Is it hot or cold, the bread is so strong it requires half a pound of cheese, plenty books plenty reading. Plenary reading, I tell Stanislaus the whole history of the Catholic church; we tell each other Christmas stories, pure rye meal, water, pure vegetable shortening and salt and plenty cheese, a racist syntax. Dear American Indians, whenever I eat American food, no, whenever I begin to tell a story I get sidetracked, did that even happen (discontinued…). Dear Florence, please forgive me for washing the dishes, but, when I saw them there so tempting so dirty I couldn’t help myself, and, it’s so much more fun than taking a bath, image et son (numero 200), or, all the foods in the world I am hungry for except one.
I’m in the grocery store across the (Macdougal) street arguing with the owner cause he charged me six dollars for a sixpack and a pack of cigarettes. His girl tells me the rest of the money went for two unpaid-for hamburgers (me and Stanislaus). I say “hamburgers” as if I never heard the word, and, still arguing, I tell the owner that he’ll have to get accustomed to the fact that some of the people in the neighborhood will be “strangers.” While I’m dreaming this, this same owner has won the lottery and he’s dancing and yelling on the streets, one hundred thousand dollars. Then I go to the shoe store to pick up repaired moccasins (Meg’s loafers or maybe platform shoes), I know the guy is going to overcharge me and say so, asking the price. It’s $4.26, which seems fair to me. The leather of the moccasins has been treated to be soft. Soft armor. “If they wouldn’t shine them so much they’d look old.” Armor: In the museum, Meg and I argue about whether (leather) there can be real 16th century shoes. I believe it and say, “If they wouldn’t shine them so much…” Belial and gold thread on the tapestries, David and Bathsheba—“Berlabee” in dream. One star of.
Left off by car at a home, full of kids. A man, Montague, is drunk, wants a kiss but is too tall, Max goes inside to a room, do I share it? Someone has to drive this drunk guy home. Sitting on the curb, cars, czars.
June 8
And the safety and the comfort of, eyes closed. Pacing at the loft, away, not away, not a story, not a project, never a story, never a project, never a comfortable chair, bed, big and fat, big breasts, quarter of three, can’t sleep and not used to having to, having the freedom to roam around the way I would do it, I keep thinking of dinner, schedules and alone in this room I look at my daddy, it’s none of your business, picnics, whose play, whose Hawthorne, whose woman in the house, moving fast. Snores. Dream Bartholomew is killed in accidental gun accident and, look in the mirror, there’s a ceremony on a huge beach in California with a row of ceremonious police or armed or army men, all three (men or types of men), Jerry Rothenberg is there, like Belial, I guess. Nobody lies or believes in his absence. “I am a thematic absence of the world.” From a made-up dream. What of the stairs. Stairs like mirror image of, and what of the stairs, the, to the dangerous loft, protect yourself, dirty the white of it, loft, written before, this same space, someone else is a drifter, comings and goings, write it out before sleep comes and goes, and then safety, eyes closed. Or endgame, or penniless, as, at bottom of barrel, or specific, as, barrel of monkeys, I don’t mind. Anyway, game. Not strong not tough, just clear red wine, held up to the light as beautiful or as decorative, the new color, decorative, just look at the color of it, and don’t leave, and don’t go away, and or but also, don’t plan, now how is that accomplished, in a day or years, not by taking it easy and not by the reflection of a blue door in a clear mirror and not by the reflection of a blue door and a pink towel in a blue mirror so you know, because the towel is there, just what blue is left, but by simply perhaps returning to the scene of the crime and writing a novel-length letter to the magistrate explaining or telling, in full detail, that, yes, this was premeditated, and, though you are educated, you should not have got off on a plea, made by others, of insanity, but, this is unheard-of, this is not done, get out of the convent, get inside the jail, you can run but you sure can’t hide.
Where is everything? Here? What is absolute safety, as from drowning. What is absolute safety from vitamin C, what is absolute safety from schedules, absolute safety from stimulation, absolute safety from three people instead of two? Admittedly three are better for the committing of crimes but criminal offences are rare in our over-all rent-paid territory, though, they are thought of, or thought up, all the time, usually by three or for three to commit, you need three. Therefore there are changes and scratches and examinations of the body you haven’t noticed, or checked, thoroughly, every part, for a while.
“Why don’t you meet me at Florence’s during the day cause it’s kinda heavy to carry over there,” and as soon as I saw you, I was watching, I came out the door, and, I didn’t look like myself at the window but even so I continue, and, “Have these policemen been bothering you” and if not, this will certainly bother you: we’re criminals anyway certainly from poems to poetry not a definite route but after that for sure, songs go there and working goes there and moving goes there and surely stories go there and ice goes there and intelligence goes there, education goes there, to say the least, and armor, or, the knowledge of armor goes there, and all the struggle that poetry, songs, working, moving, stories, and the telling of stories, ice, intelligence, and with that goes silence, education, armor and the knowledge of armor and more you can fill in creates it and it all goes there, to crime, or to dependence and I forfeit where as a communal déjà vu, for you to share. You must be careful not to wear clothes. For, like the man I watched in the restaurant, and I listened to him, your thought might wear your own suit. Then you’re done for, almost as if, almost as close as if, you were gunned for, or marked, by a professional who is and is not escapee, but surely knows our own game, from front to back, and back again, and that’s not merely stolen words, but whole chunks of ice melted and floating downtown, to destory and they will destroy the whole geographical and ecological set-up of the world and its atmosphere, I am telling you, with words. I just write it to be read to you, I do not expect you to read it, you say, more jokes. Sex, even. Well I tried to explain what touch was, now what is sex. Her or his X. X-rated. Sex now is few perceptible points of contact with what is called the world. Sex is early years. Sex is he was guiltless of a system. Sex is American. Sex is in the vividness of the present, sex is in the past, which died so young and had time to produce so little, sex attracts but scanty attention (James on Hawthorne). Sex, said Dr. Melmoth, no, I shall find little safety in meddling with that deadly instrument since I know not accurately from which end proceeds the bullet. And were it not better to take ourselves, in case of an encounter, to some stone wall or other place of strength. Well, sex is silent, diffident, more inclined to hesitate, to watch and wait and meditate, than to produce himself. And fonder, on almost any occasion, of being absent than of being present. And there is in all of this a betrayal of something, cold and light and thin, something belonging to the imagination alone. And American sex indicates a man little disposed to multiply his relations, his points of contact, with society. So, sex is always at play, always entertaining itself, always engaged in a game of hide and seek, in the region in which it seemed that the game could best be played, among the shadows and substructions of, whatever you want. Well anyway, sex is the elixir of life as gross and thin as Theodore/Nathaniel would say, the same in Greek or Latin, gift of god, or, whoever, I don’t have to put the show together but I can still keep working on it.
You present me with an alternative, I take the one, like, someone put poison in the sugar or maybe it’s poem, or, whose life lived like that, or, whose reason to listen to that—none. None poem none poem shirt none poem like shirt, suit like thought shirt like fear, none poem fear or dear everyone, too much for self. As if I am still eyes closed, in an armored pavilion all ice, you your arms and all your possessions come with you, so you make noise, shut up, I am invading your grave, as you missed mine, isn’t this what you want, aint that choice, and isn’t this division but not yet separation the boundless boundaries of our united nation just like school: a little peach in the orchard grew, a little peach of emerald hue, warmed by the sun and wet by the dew, it grew. One day passing the orchard through came Johnny Jones and his Sister Sue, those two (I am not afraid anymore to go to bed with you) and so on: that is, they ate the peach and died cause it was not ripe yet.
