and too hard: the fatigue drowns the brain in sludge, there is
no electricity, only the brain sinking under the weight of the
pollution: the fatigue is smeared all over, inside the head it is
in small lakes, and behind the eyes it drips, drips. It is fall. The
windows are open. The book has been finished now. Many
publishers have refused to publish it. There is virtually no one
left to despise it, insult it, malign it, refuse it: and yet I have
been refining it, each and every night, writing until dawn. Now
I am tired and the book is perfect and I am done, a giant slug,
a glob of goo. A woman lets me go to her apartment, on the
ocean. Perhaps she saves my life.
*
In the living room there are large windows, and right outside
them there is the beach, the ocean, the sky, the moon: the sound of
the waves, the sound of the ocean moving over the earth becomes
the sound of one’s own breathing. It is foggy, hot, moist, damp,
and when fog rises on the water, huge roaches climb the walls
and rest on the tops of the windows. They are slow, covered in
the sea mist, prehistoric, like the ocean itself. They seem part
of my delirium, a fever of fatigue: I am alternately shivering,
shaking delirious and comatose, almost dead: a corpse, staring,
no pennies for her eyes. I have no speech left. I sit and stare, or
shake and cry: but still, the ocean is there. I hear the ocean, I
see the ocean: I watch the huge bugs: at dawn, I swim: I see
the red sun rise and I swim: I hear the ocean, I watch the
127
ocean, I see how it endures, going on and on, I listen to the
sound of its endurance, I sit and stare or I shake, fevered. The
bright sunlight breaks up the fog, dries up the mist, the huge
brown bugs disappear: outside normal people chatter: the
afternoons are long, dull, too much sun, too many chattering
vulgar souls not destroyed, normal people with normal concerns: cheery seaside banter: old women on benches on the boardwalk right under my window: and at night teenagers
drinking beer, listening to the blaring radios, courting,
smoking. I avoid the bright sun of the afternoon and the normal
people. I sit in the living room, the sound of the ocean cradles
and rocks me, and I read Thomas Mann, listen to Mozart.
When the vulgar afternoon is over, I watch the ocean and I
listen to it endure. At night, I go out and in, out and in, walk
the beach, walk the boardwalk, sit in the sand, the wet sand,
watch the ocean, I watch it sitting, standing, walking, I walk
along its edge with concentration like not stepping on the
cracks in sidewalks, or I just tramp through the silky water as
it laps up against the sand. I sit on the empty benches on the
boardwalk and I watch the ocean. I go to the edge and touch
the vastness, the touch of my fingers is then carried back under
the water across the earth, and I am immortal: the ocean will
carry that touch with it forever. I breathe to the sound of it
